Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund who founded LIV Golf alongside Greg Norman nearly five years ago, has stepped down from his position as chairman of the LIV board, according to three people briefed on the matter.<\/p>\n
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday<\/a> that LIV was planning to tell its staff members and players on Thursday that the PIF would pull its funding of the league at the end of the 2026 season. Further, the London Telegraph reported late Wednesday<\/a> that LIV CEO Scott O\u2019Neil already had informed some players and staff of the move by PIF, and that Thursday would be a formal announcement by PIF.<\/p>\n Al-Rumayyan\u2019s move to step down is another layer in the PIF\u2019s decision to pull back from LIV, as the league is expected to add new board members while it seeks additional investment.<\/p>\n Al-Rumayyan, an active golfer himself, has championed LIV from the very beginning, including the league\u2019s franchise-based model and team golf competition.<\/p>\n He was part of the small circle that negotiated the \u201cframework agreement\u201d with the PGA Tour in 2023 and was at the White House meeting in early 2025 with President Trump, the PGA Tour\u2019s Jay Monahan, Tiger Woods and Adam Scott, when it appeared the sides were close to hammering out a deal.<\/p>\n When LIV launched in 2022, Al-Rumayyan famously said he would pay a $54 million bonus to any player who shot a 54 in competition.<\/p>\n Al-Rumayyan has been chairman of the PIF since 2015, and he also is chairman of the Premier League\u2019s Newcastle United. Al-Rumayyan has other sports ties and has been a close ally of President Trump. In 2023, he was named Sports Business Journal\u2019s \u201cMost Influential<\/a>\u201d in sports.<\/p>\n Al-Rumayyan\u2019s decision to step down comes as O\u2019Neil, LIV\u2019s CEO since early 2025, has been actively talking up the league\u2019s plan to raise outside funding in an effort to stay afloat in 2027 and beyond. In Augusta earlier this month, O\u2019Neil was touting LIV\u2019s growth in revenue by $100 million in 2026 via sponsorships with companies like HSBC, Salesforce and more.<\/p>\n LIV Golf did not comment publicly for this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund who founded LIV Golf alongside Greg Norman nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,10658,99],"class_list":["post-614597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-liv-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}