🏌️ You only LIV once

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter, sits atop the world’s second largest proven oil reserves, and is the super-majority owner of one of the world’s most valuable companies. 

It also owes, through its sovereign wealth fund, $4,853,164.84 to an entity called “Dude Golf Enterprises, LLC,” bankruptcy filings show. (The dude whose enterprises are owed almost $5 million is pro golfer Cameron Smith.)

Such is the discordant but illustrative story of LIV Golf: at a remove, it’s geopolitics and soft power and interpersonal feuds fueled by real and concocted slights; up close, it’s golfers chasing ever-larger novelty checks and interpersonal feuds fueled by real and concocted slights. 

LIV Golf filed for bankruptcy protection this week, a little less five years after its October 2021 founding. Over the course of its existence, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth funds, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), pumped more than $5 billion into the project. At the start, the intention was to rival and eventually surpass the PGA and the world’s elite golf circuit. 

But earlier this year, PIF said it was turning off the money spigot at the end of 2026. As part of the bankruptcy proceedings begun in US bankruptcy court in New Jersey, a restructuring expert will help to reshape the organization with the help of a $50 million loan from PIF. What exactly that looks like remains to be seen. 

The demise of LIV is not an isolated incident in the formerly glittering constellation of Saudi-backed vanity projects. Almost all of a planned 170-kilometer long, 2-kilometer wide city called The Line were canceled earlier this year. Also hitting the chopping block: plans for a Saudi ski resort, enabled by a $5 billion dam. Both were part of the royal family’s grandiose $500 billion city-building project called NEOM. 

The Kingdom’s most visible European sporting asset, the English Premier League’s storied-but-hard-luck Newcastle United, spent the summer losing their manager and selling their best players after a below-expectations investment. (If a sudden cash infusion were ever the plan at Newcastle, PIF may have been several years too late: recently adopted rules have curtailed English team owners’ ability to spend too far beyond their cash flow.)

The Takeaway 

Years of post-pandemic low oil prices, paired with huge cash outlays to break ground of mega projects, pushed Saudi officials to reconsider their grand ambitions to reshape (and rebrand) their economy, even before the US attacked Iran and the resulting war all-but paralyzed MidEast oil flows for months.

Now, paradoxically, oil prices are high, but regional instability means the Kingdom’s once-reliable cash cow is operating a significantly reduced capacity. In that context, a $50 million loan to see LIV through bankruptcy restructuring looks less like the least the Saudi’s can go, and a little bit more like the most. 

— Ben Walsh

• 🎬 Oscars: The surprise reveal of a documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Theranos founder and convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes has shaken up the Oscar race, with “You Can See Everything” rocketing from a 0% to 29% overnight on prediction markets over its chances at an Academy Award Best Picture nomination on buzz alone. 

• 🤖AI: Positive buzz for the new Astra product has ChatGPT contending — after quite some time far from the top of the board — to be the best AI at the end of the year according to LM Arena. ChatGPT now has a 22.9% chance of finishing the year atop the board and ending Claude’s domination of the category. 

*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.

The US Treasury Department tripled the initial size of its next bond buyback, saying it will purchase up to $6 billion in 10- to 20-year government debt. That size appeared to underwhelm bond investors, who pushed yields up on the news. 

• Earnings from Macy’s due out premarket.

• August producer price index slated for release at 8:30 a.m. ET.

• Oracle and Adobe poised to release quarterly results after the close.