Rory McIlroy says ‘very difficult’ for LIV Golf to survive bankruptcy

World No. 2 Rory McIlroy cast doubt on LIV Golf surviving bankruptcy to continue on as a competitor to the PGA Tour.

“It’s hard,” McIlroy said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi. “It looks like every day that goes by, there’s another player who was on LIV who says that they’re not going to rejoin for LIV 2.0.”

LIV Golf filed for bankruptcy in September after Saudi Arabia ended its multibillion-dollar financial support. The league is trying to restructure into what it calls LIV 2.0, a plan that includes paying players with equity. That strategy took a hit last week when star Jon Rahm said he would not stay.

“It is going to be very difficult for them to get out of this Chapter 11 bankruptcy and go forward,” said McIlroy, one of the PGA Tour’s biggest stars and an outspoken critic of LIV Golf. “But if they do, it’s certainly not going to be a threat to the traditional order of the game as it maybe once was.”

LIV Golf initially shook up the golf world when it started play a few years ago. The league lured players from the PGA Tour with big contracts. But enthusiasm faded, and then the Saudis pulled funding. 

Last week, LIV Golf secured a financing commitment of as much as $300 million from the credit arm of BC Partners, potentially obtaining the funding needed to launch a 2027 season.  

McIlroy also said that India could become a major growth market for golf, citing rising fan interest, a growing middle class and the country’s vast sports audience.

The six-time major champion said he was struck by the crowds during his first tournament in India in 2025. He compared the roughly 20 million US television viewers he said watched the Masters with average audiences in the hundreds of millions for matches in the Indian Premier League, the country’s dominant cricket tournament.

“Once upon a time, cricket was seen as an elitist sport, and all of a sudden, that’s been brought to the masses,” McIlroy said. “I think we can do a similar thing with golf.” BLOOMBERG