Brandel Chamblee reacts to LIV Golf's liquidation news

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

The Golf Channel analyst did not mince words.

Speaking on Golf Channel, Chamblee said the players who were open to staying with LIV Golf eventually realized they could not save the league.

His verdict came after it was confirmed that LIV Golf is shutting down.

The league will no longer exist on the golfing landscape in 2027.

Private capital firm BC Partners had been in talks to relaunch the league.

But on Wednesday, it was reported that the company was ready to pull the plug on their bid to take over.

While there were some reports on Thursday that suggested there may still be hope for LIV, it has now been confirmed that the league is shutting down.

Chamblee pointed to the players themselves as a key reason for the collapse.

"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," he said.

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

Chamblee then drew a sharp contrast between what the Saudis paid and what the players were now asking for.

"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, 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."

And then came his central point.

"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 said.

He delivered his closing line with characteristic bluntness.

"They all thought that they were beachfront property in Malibu, and the market was telling them, no, you're timeshares in Toledo."

"And maybe, finally, they've got a slap in the face of reality."

The background to this moment stretches back to 2022.

LIV Golf was launched by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, or PIF.

The league attracted some of golf's biggest stars with multi-million dollar contracts.

Players like Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson left the PGA Tour to join the breakaway circuit.

The league operated on a team format, with 54-hole events and no cuts.

It was a direct competitor to the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour.

The PGA Tour responded by suspending players who joined LIV Golf.

Legal battles followed, but the tours eventually reached a framework agreement in June 2023.

That agreement was meant to unify the game under a single commercial entity.

But the deal never closed.

LIV Golf lost PIF's financial backing at the end of the 2026 season.

CEO Scott O'Neil worked for several months to secure investment partners and keep the project from going bankrupt.

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

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