DeChambeau says LIV 2.0 trades upfront money for player control

Bryson DeChambeau says the next version of LIV Golf will pay its players less up front and give them more say in how the league is run. He made the point on Raj Shamani's Figuring Out podcast, in an episode posted Saturday, while talking about the bankruptcy of the league he joined in 2022.

"Live is a team golf concept and they're going through bankruptcy right now, funny enough," DeChambeau said about an hour and eight minutes into the conversation. When Shamani said LIV owes him $5.7 million, DeChambeau answered: "Exactly. Yeah. More than that actually."

The court record backs up the first part. LIV's Chapter 11 filing in September listed DeChambeau's company with a claim of about $5.77 million under his player participation agreement, second only to Jon Rahm, according to USA Today. LIV flagged the claim as contingent, which means it may not owe all of it. The Washington Post, citing the Financial Times, reported that those figures cover only third-quarter obligations, not the rest of the contracts.

Where he says the money went

DeChambeau, who captains Crushers GC, said the teams were doing well. "Our teams, we generated almost $29 million last year in revenue," he said, against about $21 million in player pay, travel and other costs, which he put at roughly $8 million in EBITDA. He didn't break out which teams those numbers covered.

His complaint was with the league company above the teams. He said it "wasn't really managed that effectively" and that player payments "got pushed down to the teams when they went bankrupt." He added that the people involved expected far more capital from "the guys that were funding it."

The pitch for LIV 2.0

DeChambeau said the business model still works and that he's helping build the new version now. "It's no funny business, no nothing. It's going to be done right," he said. "This is going to be a league, hopefully, that exists forever."

He described it as a partner to the rest of the game. "It's not combative. We're not trying to compete against the tour," he said, adding that the goal is to "bring value" across the golf market.

The biggest change he described is in how players get paid. The first time around, he said, players demanded big upfront money because they had no real control over how the league was run. "This time around it's more the opposite," he said. "We're not really getting paid, but we do have the governance."

LIV has been collecting player commitments for the new league. About 15 players gave tentative commitments by the Oct. 25 deadline, as we reported, and the Saudi Public Investment Fund's Oct. 30 date passed this week without a public update.

What to watch

DeChambeau is the biggest name still attached to LIV. The next real news is the restructuring plan itself: who funds it, what the players would own, and what a 2027 season looks like. The full episode runs about two and a half hours, and the LIV section starts around the 1:08 mark.