Brandel Chamblee Blasts LIV Golf Stars as League Heads for Liquidation

Brandel Chamblee gives his reaction as LIV Golf prepares to enter into liquidation.

Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee did not mince words after the breakaway league confirmed it is shutting down.

LIV Golf will officially close its doors after private capital firm BC Partners pulled its bid to relaunch the league in 2027.

The decision came after a months-long effort by LIV Golf leadership to secure new investment.

The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), which launched the league in 2022, withdrew its financial support at the end of the 2026 season.

That left CEO Scott O'Neil scrambling to find new partners and keep the project from going bankrupt.

BC Partners, an international investment firm based in London, initially agreed to relaunch the league with a 17-tournament schedule.

The plan would have maintained the team format that distinguishes LIV Golf from traditional organizations like the PGA Tour and DP World Tour.

But after failing to get player commitment, BC Partners withdrew their bid.

Chamblee, a longtime critic of LIV Golf and the players who joined it, made his feelings clear once the news became official.

“You can point the finger at a lot of places here, but in order for it to have gone forward, you needed some cooperation from whatever players were going to make up this LIV 2.0,” Chamblee said on Golf Channel.

“The players and player representatives, from what I’ve read, were making financial demands that could not be met.”

Chamblee then compared the massive contracts the Saudis originally offered to something else entirely.

“When you think about what the Saudis were paying these players, in essence I’d call it hazard pay, because they knew that they were going to take on reputational damage,” he said.

“They knew it was going to be disrupted. They probably also knew that it was going to be disruptive for their careers.”

The players had been offered a significant ownership stake in the league going forward.

“So when you start to look at the players starting to want to take debt for equity, speculative ownership, they were going to have 52.5 per cent, from what I’ve read, ownership going forward,” Chamblee said.

“And the fact that they were unwilling to take on that ownership tells you that they did not even have any belief that they, as a group of players, could make this work.”

Chamblee delivered his most memorable line when describing how the players misjudged their own value.

“They all thought that they were beachfront property in Malibu, and the market was telling them, no, you’re timeshares in Toledo,” he said.

“And maybe, finally, they’ve got a slap in the face of reality.”

The collapse of LIV Golf leaves behind a complex legacy.

On the positive side, the league forced the PGA Tour to abandon its complacency.

Those at Ponte Vedra had taken the loyalty of their members for granted.

The appointment of Brian Rolapp was a big step in the right direction for the PGA Tour.

It is fair to say that LIV forced the PGA Tour to get its act together.

But the league also highlighted the greed within professional golf.

Many players who were already incredibly wealthy were prepared to turn a blind eye to the problems associated with where LIV’s funding was coming from.

The PGA Tour and DP World Tour will now face difficult times as they handle the consequences of the game’s civil war over the last five years.

It is going to be some time before it becomes fully apparent just what a mess LIV made.