These Are The Golfers Who Are Owed The Most Money After LIV Golf Officially Filed For Bankruptcy

LIV Golf spent years throwing enormous amounts of money at some of the best golfers on Earth to convince them to leave the PGA Tour. Now Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson have landed in the considerably less glamorous position of being listed among the bankrupt league’s biggest creditors.

LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 protection Tuesday in New Jersey, listing between $100 million and $500 million in assets against a staggering $500 million to $1 billion in liabilities. According to Reuters, Rahm is owed roughly $7.5 million, DeChambeau $5.7 million, and Johnson $5.5 million in unsecured claims, but that might not reflect the entirety of the situation.

LIV Golf’s Biggest Stars Are Now Its Creditors

That is a pretty incredible reversal.

LIV launched in 2022 with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund essentially providing an open checkbook, spending more than $5 billion while offering gigantic signing bonuses and prize purses to poach stars from traditional professional golf.

Four years later, the people LIV once paid fortunes to recruit are waiting in line to get paid.

Rahm has the largest player claim at $7,472,527.47. DeChambeau is next at $5,769,230.77, while Johnson is owed roughly $5.5 million. Cameron Smith is listed at $4.8 million, Tyrrell Hatton at $3.4 million, and former LIV player Brooks Koepka at $1.7 million.

Fourteen players appear among the league’s 30 largest unsecured creditors, but it’s also worth noting those numbers may not reflect money they were theoretically owed in the future after signing multi-year contracts.

There is something objectively funny about spending billions to lure golfers away from the PGA Tour and eventually having those exact golfers appear on your bankruptcy paperwork next to vendors and other unpaid obligations.

The situation emerged after PIF decided this year to end the open-ended financial backing that had allowed LIV to operate without the traditional inconvenience of needing its business to support itself.

That turned out to be fairly important.

Bankruptcy Does Not Mean LIV Is Dead Yet

LIV is not simply shutting the doors and selling the team logos on Facebook Marketplace.

The league’s restructuring announcement says it has reached an agreement with BC Partners Credit aimed at keeping the operation alive through a court-supervised recapitalization. The proposed version would shift LIV toward a player-first ownership model and potentially return in 2027 with new investors.

PIF has also agreed to provide nearly $50 million in financing during the bankruptcy process, subject to court approval.

That is considerably different from permanently covering LIV’s enormous operating losses.

The bankruptcy therefore creates a strange decision for players who joined because LIV offered financial security that traditional golf could not match. They now have unpaid claims, uncertain future contracts, and the possibility of becoming owners in a smaller version of the league instead (Rahm alone reportedly has far more money remaining on his broader contract than the $7.5 million currently listed as an unsecured claim).

For years, the central question surrounding LIV Golf was how long Saudi money could keep the experiment going. We apparently have an answer: just long enough for the golfers to become the debt collectors.