Bankruptcy files are notoriously cumbersome, but any bankruptcy judge will admit that tedious paperwork is necessary. If a company declares bankruptcy, and thus seeks some sort of legal protection against its current state, it had better be able to explain why.
But the process of doing so is as much a nightmare for lawyers as it is for their printers. It does not take much for the number of pages to pass the limit of tens of thousands. Only on Thursday evening, thousands of pages were recorded The bankruptcy case of LIV Golfthrough its lot of international entities, its 13 franchises and dozens of other subsidiaries. Looking at this could send you into a daze, but there is a lot that can be gathered from these documents, which have been prepared by the management and advisers of LIV. Thursday’s trove offers a main theme: LIV Golf due so many company money.
Of course, this is probably implied by everything we know about the company backed by Saudi Arabia. But a closer look shows how expensive it is to run any golf league, but especially one that wants to stunt its competition with flashy technology and deep pockets.
Thursday’s filings include a massive list of assets and liabilities for LIV Golf Incorporated, with amounts ranging from $13.46 owed to FedEx to millions owed to Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau. Many of the contracts that LIV Golf maintained in September have been rejected or are expected to be rejected, but that is beside the point. The documents are a reminder that so many companies had made an agreement with LIV Golf.
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Take the $178,087.50 that LIV owes the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, presumably for licensing music to play at their events and on their platforms. In this case, it costs a lot of money to be Golf But Louder.
There is the $9,350 that LIV owed to ASAP Sports, the transcription service for interviews and transcripts used in the golf industry. LIV owes $28,689.24 to AT&T and $49,609.59 to Avalara Inc., a tax and compliance firm (and that’s just a few of companies starting with the letter “A”).
There are companies for press, insurance, travel management, public relations. There are many famous brands, such as Equinox gyms, which LIV owes $22,850, or Uber, which LIV owes $89,407. And then there are many other generic ones, like Exciting Events Inc. (owes $7,000), Narrative Strategies LLC (owes $27,000) or SportsMEDIA Technology Corp (owes $352,418.50, a number LIV disputed).
There are recognizable names, such as the broadcaster Jerry Foltz, or the Chatham Hills Clubthe host course of LIV’s final event in Indiana. But then there are others that sound a little goofy on the surface. According to the filing, LIV owed $25,804.26 to Run Like a Deer, Inc. – comedian Andrew Santino’s company, which has created broadcast content with LIV Golf over the years – although LIV has flagged it as a disputed claim.
In the course of doing business, the league was constantly accumulating a helluva tab. Much of this became public through lawsuits that were drawn up during the summer, once the Saudi PIF made it clear that it was no longer funding LIV in the future – forcing LIV CEO Scott O’Neil to face questions about the bankruptcy weeks before he was ready to publicly commit to it.
But beyond that was due, there is more proof than that was paid. As are the quarterly payments of $4.946 million to Rahm – a total of just under $20 million per year, for his Player Participation Agreement (read: contract). There was a massive deal paid to Greg Norman in September 2025, for $5.8 million. On the same day, another $3.6 million bonus was paid to Norman, about eight months after he was replaced as CEO. Not far from Norman’s name on the sheet are Eugene Davis and Jon Zinman, which LIV brought in as independent directors in April to oversee the restructuring of the business, each earns $150,000 a month. (That’s right, people brought to install the structure of the business and determine how new money flows into everything, they also make a pretty penny.)
There is another word that is used in all the most recent filings: Undetermined. In the 292-page document outlining the assets and liabilities of LIV Golf Incorporated, that U-word occurs 808 times. Sometimes to explain the definition of how things are noted in the filing, but otherwise to explain that the number due to, for example, Phil Mickelson, is undetermined. The amount of money LIV Golf May should the parties that had sued him, such as World Golf Group and Premier Golf Group – who say that LIV took concepts from his original ideas – is indeterminate
All this should only serve as a final reminder of LIV Golf 1.0. He wanted to be everything, and he was paid everything. And in the end, that didn’t work.
