LIV Golf folds: Saudi-backed league tells bankruptcy court it will wind down

LIV Golf is calling it quits. The Saudi-backed league said Thursday in bankruptcy court that it intends to wind down operations rather than launch a new version of itself, according to the AP. Five years after it stormed in, it's headed out the same way it arrived — loudly.

The news landed in bankruptcy court, which makes this a formal shutdown rather than a rebrand or a reboot. Any plan for a next-generation LIV is off the table, at least under what the league told the court. The filing marks the end of the line for the upstart circuit.

LIV didn't just add another tour to the calendar — it split the sport in half. Its promise of Saudi riches fractured golf's landscape, reshaping rivalries, schedules and loyalties across the professional game. That rupture is the league's real legacy, and it outlasted the league itself.

Now comes the unwinding. Winding down means operations end, and the league's own filing rules out the fresh start it once seemed to be building toward. What a full wind-down looks like in practice — and on what timeline — wasn't laid out in the announcement.

For a league that spent five years promising to change golf forever, the finish is a courtroom, not a leaderboard. LIV's exit leaves behind a sport it rearranged and a question it never answered: what happens to the landscape once the money stops moving.