After LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New Jersey on Tuesday, the details have slowly trickled out as to what it would take for the breakaway circuit to survive.
A proposed transaction with London-based private equity firm BC Partners that would inject $300 million in funding to the cash-strapped enterprise appears to be LIV Golf’s lifeline. But for that deal to be consummated, a “requisite number of players” who “equal or exceed (a) 2/3 in amount and (b) 1/2 in number of such Eligible Player Claims held by all Players” must commit to the tour within 35 days from the petition date, a period that ends in mid-October, according to the filing. That vague designation could be a proxy for some combination of the tour’s top stars, like Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau or Dustin Johnson. Those three golfers are owed a combined $18.7 million as creditors, a number that only includes pre-existing obligations.
But the prospect of pulling that off has at least one other LIV Golf creditor on edge. “It feels very risky,” Jared Kleinstein, the founder and CEO of Fresh Tape Media, said in an interview. “I came into reading the case assuming the BC Partners deal was a great position for LIV 2.0 to be in. I’m hopeful for them, but cautiously optimistic that they can get the same threshold of the previous players.”
