LIV Golf player Jon Rahm on Tuesday said that he and the DP World Tour had “come to an agreement.” That ends a “stalemate between the two sides that threatened Rahm’s Ryder Cup eligibility.” But Rahm’s status on the circuit is “no longer in question.” Rahm said that he and the DP World Tour “both made concessions to reach a deal.” The tour in statement said, “This involves payment of all outstanding fines accrued from 2024 to date, along with participation in agreed DP World Tour tournaments (outside the majors) in the remainder of the 2026 season” (GOLFWEEK, 5/5). LIV “settled the fines” Rahm accrued this year -- estimated at $3M -- and then he “even had to dig around in his own bottomless pockets for the sanctions he built up in 2026.” That “amounts to roughly $300,000″ (London TELEGRAPH, 5/5).
Rahm said that he has “multiple years left on his contract with LIV Golf and doesn’t see ‘many ways out,’” as the league attempts to find new financing with Saudi Arabia’s PIF pulling its funding after this season. Rahm: “Right now, I have several years in my contract left. I’m pretty sure they did a pretty good job when they drafted that, so I don’t see many ways out.” He added that LIV golfers “had been told that there would be PIF funding for ‘many years.’” Rahm: “Like everybody, [I was] surprised. Obviously, [it was] unexpected. We did hear the news that there would be funding for many years. But then as the future of the league goes, I think that’s obviously a question for the businesspeople.” LIV Golf player Tyrrell Hatton also said that he has “multiple years left” on his contract (ESPN.com, 5/5).
LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil on Tuesday “took questions from a LIV media official for 28 minutes inside the tennis building at Trump National Golf Club” outside D.C. O’Neil mentioned “sponsorships, ticket sales, television contracts and the league’s global footprint as reasons for optimism that it could secure funding.” The league plans to take its 13 franchises to market, and O’Neil said that those teams would be “offered to potential buyers with players in place.” O’Neil: “The way the process will typically work -- I may be getting ahead of myself -- is that we’re going to create a business plan, we’re going to lock arms with the players, we will go to market and raise money on a top level, and then we will get investors in teams in that order. The players on the team should be locked in” (AP, 5/5).
