LIV Golf is playing its last round - and nobody knows what comes next
The Saudi-backed circuit canceled its Michigan team finale, moves its swan song to Indianapolis this week, and heads into a future with no confirmed investor and no scheduled 2027 season.
In brief
LIV Golf is playing its last round - and nobody knows what comes next
The tournament starts Thursday. By Sunday it will be over. And when the final putt drops at The Club at Chatham Hills in Westfield, Indiana, professional golf may never look quite the same again.
LIV Golf confirmed Monday that its Indianapolis event - running August 20-23 - is now the circuit's 2026 season finale. The Michigan team championship, originally set for August 27-30 at The Cardinal at Saint John's Resort in suburban Detroit, is gone. In an official statement, the league confirmed: "With LIV Golf Indianapolis serving as the final event of the season, the previously scheduled Aramco LIV Golf Michigan, originally set for August 27-30, at The Cardinal at Saint John's Resort, will not take place."
That's the polished version. The messier one: tickets for the Michigan event could no longer be purchased on LIV's official website as of last Thursday. Players were already making other plans. Tyrrell Hatton, Tom McKibbin, and Adrian Meronk entered the field for the DP World Tour's British Masters, scheduled for the exact same dates as LIV Michigan. The league hadn't said a word publicly. For weeks, golf fans heard whispers of the league's shortened season, but LIV's official channels hadn't addressed the matter, leaving interested parties - including ticket-holders - in the dark.
The canceled concert series was another tell. Citing "unavoidable changes in the entertainment program," LIV's concert series set for Indianapolis was also canceled. Those who purchased tickets for Michigan will receive a refund.
How we got here
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund announced it would end funding of the LIV Golf league after the 2026 season. That news broke in April, but the full weight of it is landing now. The PIF, which pumped more than $6 billion into LIV since 2022, confirmed in April it would finance the circuit only through the end of the 2026 campaign. Then the question became whether it would even last that long.
"Every remaining tournament is on the fence," a senior executive at one of LIV's major league-level partners told Front Office Sports. The circuit's payments from the PIF arrive on a monthly basis, meaning each event effectively depends on a disbursement decision that could be reversed.
LIV's non-U.S. operations reported losing nearly $600 million in 2024. The league has now canceled two events this season. LIV Golf's facade began to crumble late in 2025 when Brooks Koepka suddenly announced he was leaving a year before his contract was to expire. He was quickly brought back by the PGA Tour, signaling the circuit was more willing to negotiate with notable golfers who wanted to return now that CEO Brian Rolapp is in charge.
The league's own CEO has been talking out of both sides. Scott O'Neil alluded in a broadcast interview in April that PIF could pull its funding: "The reality is you're funded through the season and then you work like crazy as a business to create a business and a business plan to keep us going." On Monday, he put a more optimistic frame on things, saying the league is "reimagining LIV Golf as a fundamentally new League owned by the players and anchored in a sustainable business model." He has not named the lead investor he claimed to have secured earlier this month. O'Neil stated LIV had agreed to a new deal with a lead investor that could lead to a 2027 season, but has yet to say who that investor is or how much money they would provide.
What's actually at stake in Indianapolis
Despite all the chaos surrounding it, the tournament itself has genuine competitive stakes. Legion XIII Captain Jon Rahm has clinched his third consecutive season-long Individual Championship, but the other two spots on the 2026 podium remain up for grabs with Bryson DeChambeau in the mix. The individual winner in Indianapolis will collect $4 million from the $20 million individual purse.
This year's tournament is played over 72 holes - LIV having moved from its traditional 54-hole format to four-round tournaments in 2026. Fifty-seven players will contend for the Indianapolis individual title, and the team competition will count all four players' scores each day, culminating in one of the 13 teams being crowned the 2026 LIV Golf Team Champion.
LIV returns to Indianapolis where it welcomed a league U.S.-record 60,000 fans across three days in 2025, concurrently setting LIV Golf's single-day U.S. merchandise sales record. Whether that enthusiasm translates when everyone in the stands knows it might be the last event for the foreseeable future is a different question entirely.
What the players face
For the 57 players in the field Thursday, the week is freighted with personal stakes that go well beyond prize money. LIV has reportedly approached hundreds of prospective investors, engaged U.S. investment banking advisor Ducera Partners, and brought on two independent board directors. None of that has produced a concrete commitment on record.
LIV Golf was awarded Official World Golf Rankings points earlier in 2026, with players winning LIV events able to climb the leaderboard to gain entry to the major championships. Losing that platform matters. A player who spent the last four years building a LIV career now faces the PGA Tour's reinstatement process, an uncertain exemption status, and a schedule where the slots are already spoken for.
What investors are being pitched, according to a circulating deck, is a leaner league with a sharper team identity - proposals for a 2027 schedule include 10 events: five "team majors" in markets where LIV has performed best, such as Australia and South Africa, plus five U.S.-based "team signature events" timed around individual majors. That plan exists on paper. Funding for it does not, at least not publicly.
LIV Golf launched in June 2022 with Saudi billions and the explicit goal of breaking the PGA Tour's grip on the sport. The league was positioned as a rival to the PGA Tour and drew high-profile athletes; in 2023, it agreed to merge with the PGA Tour, but that deal never came to fruition. Four years and more than $6 billion later, Rahm will drain a birdie putt Sunday afternoon in Westfield, Indiana, and the scoreboard will go dark.
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CAN I KICK IT? screens New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument, on Aug. 22. (Courtesy SHAOLIN JAZZ)
The live-cinema series CAN I KICK IT? returns to the National Mall this month with what its producers are calling the "Gangsters on the Mall" chapter of their free outdoor summer run. On Saturday, August 22, the SHAOLIN JAZZ production brings the 1991 crime classic New Jack City to the Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument for a night of film, music, and community under the DC summer sky.
What sets the event apart is the sound. As the film plays, DJ 2-Tone Jones builds an original score in real time, reimagining one of the most iconic crime movies of the ’90s through hip-hop, soul, funk, and more. It is less a movie screening than a live performance built around the film.
The details:
Film: New Jack City (1991), with a live soundtrack by DJ 2-Tone Jones
When: Saturday, August 22 — seating opens at 7:30 p.m. (bring lawn chairs and blankets); film begins at 8:30 p.m.
Where: Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument, Independence Ave SW & 15th St NW
A parking note from the organizers: expect road closures and restricted parking east of 14th Street NW due to a separate race event in the District. Roads west of 14th Street NW will be accessible and available for parking.
New Jack City is the second of three screenings in this year’s free CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series, which opened with Black Panther at Skyland Town Center and concludes with Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial on September 5. Produced by the Washington, DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, the series has presented more than 150 live cinematic experiences at venues across the country, from Lincoln Center to SXSW.
"I wanted to be able to tell good stories with substance and remove the ‘ego’ out of the art," said Andrew Huang during a recent interview. Now, he’s building his career at the intersection of discipline, creativity and innovation.
Andrew Huang, founder of New Place Studios. (Courtesy photo)
As a Chinese American, Huang was reared with a deep respect for hard work, consistency and excellence. He describes his childhood as "not so affluent" and later attended college to hone his passion for videography. "In college I tried to do something I loved, which was video, but along the way I knew that I had to find a job. And so I thought, ‘what was the low hanging fruit to get to that stable 9 to 5 job?,’" he stated.
Later in life, Huang found himself working for corporations where his creativity was often limited, eventually leading to burnout. "I worked in a corporation for a long time and there were a lot of missing pieces. I wanted to fill in gaps missing in corporate video production," said Huang.
He later described how his upbringing and a mindset of "survival" led him toward a corporate career. However, his desire for balance and authentic storytelling ultimately pushed him to take the entrepreneurial leap.
"I founded a new place where you can create video and film with ‘substance and style,’" said Huang. His desire for work-life balance and passion for storytelling naturally evolved into a small business based in Virginia. With the launch of New Place Studios, the entrepreneur quickly found himself reconnecting with the values that would become the foundation of everything he creates behind the camera.
Huang said being a business owner has allowed him to first embrace himself. While others may see video as simply capturing moments, he sees it as a way to preserve stories that inspire, connect and leave a lasting imprint.
By combining cinematic visuals with cutting-edge production techniques and a keen understanding of branding, Huang helps organizations and individuals communicate their vision with purpose. He said understanding a client’s "why" serves as the compass for delivering the services they need.
One benefit of working with a small business, he said, is that clients get to see the production process unfold through a micro lens while working with the same faces throughout the entire project. "The work feels personal," said Huang.
Huang does not regret leaving behind the flash-over-substance mentality and corporate hustle culture. That does not mean the Asian American entrepreneur has been without challenges in the industry. "It’s relatively hard to find other Asian American creatives or people who would want to work with me in the DMV," said Huang.
He identifies the industry culture in which everyone is trying to blend in, creatives may fear displaying their Asian identity and some feel pressure to adopt an American corporate persona. He also points to what he describes as a level of gatekeeping within the industry. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2024 statistics, Asian American and Pacific Islander entrepreneurs own more than 3 million businesses and employ 5.2 million people in the United States.
After tapping into organizations such as SCORE, which offers free small business mentorship, New Place Studios has become a trusted creative partner throughout the DMV (Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia). The company produces a range of creative services, including commercials, corporate branding, documentaries, film, 2D animation, motion graphics and photography.
For Huang, entrepreneurship has become more than a departure from corporate life. It has given him the freedom to create with intention, build meaningful connections and tell stories that go beyond the surface.
The 2026 CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
For three Saturdays this summer, some of Washington’s most familiar public spaces will do something they rarely do after dark: fill up with blankets, lawn chairs, and the sound of a movie being scored live, in real time. CAN I KICK IT?, the traveling “live cinema” series produced by the DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, is bringing a free outdoor run to the city — pairing three era-defining films with an original soundtrack performed on the spot by DJ 2-Tone Jones.
The premise is what sets it apart from a normal screening in the park. Rather than simply pressing play, 2-Tone Jones builds a score as the film unfolds, pulling from hip-hop, soul, funk, jazz, rock, electronic music, and sounds from around the world. The result, the organizers say, is less a movie night than a one-time performance — the same film you know, wired to a soundtrack you have never heard and will not hear again. Guest DJs warm up the crowd starting at 7:30 PM before each 8:30 PM screening.
The 2026 outdoor schedule
All three events are free and open to the public.
Saturday, August 8 — Black Panther at Skyland Town Center. A pop-up marketplace and community activities kick off the evening; guest DJs at 7:30 PM, film at 8:30 PM. Marvel’s superhero epic gets a one-night-only live score in Southeast DC.
Saturday, August 22 — New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument. Seating begins at 7:30 PM; the film starts at 8:30 PM. The 1991 crime drama plays out at the foot of one of the country’s most recognizable landmarks.
Saturday, September 5 — Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial. Seating at 7:30 PM; film at 8:30 PM. The series closes with Brian De Palma’s crime saga against the backdrop of the Memorial, scored live from start to finish.
First up: Black Panther at Skyland Town Center on August 8. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
A DC company with a national footprint
SHAOLIN JAZZ describes itself as a Washington-based arts company working at the intersection of music, film, art, and culture, and CAN I KICK IT? is its signature production. According to the organizers, the series has staged more than 150 live cinematic experiences around the country — at performing arts centers, museums, festivals, and cultural institutions including Lincoln Center in New York, SXSW, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Republic Square in Austin, the Tacoma Armory, and The Cary Theater.
“CAN I KICK IT? has always been about creating a shared experience,” said Gerald Watson, co-founder of SHAOLIN JAZZ. “When you combine iconic films with live music in public spaces, something special happens. People aren’t just watching a movie — they’re experiencing it together. That’s what makes these nights so memorable.”
Cinema as a community event
The DC run lands as cities across the country look for new ways to activate public space through arts and culture — and this series is a straightforward pitch for how to do it: take a landmark everyone already knows, add a film everyone has an opinion about, and let a live soundtrack turn the evening into something neighbors experience shoulder to shoulder. Families, film buffs, and music fans are all invited, and admission won’t cost a thing.
The CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series runs August 8, August 22, and September 5. All events are free; check SHAOLIN JAZZ (shaolinjazz.com) for the latest details and any weather updates before heading out.
