LIV Golf begins laying off employees while downsizing to restructure without Saudi funding

LIV Golf has informed employees their jobs will end next week as the league begins life without Saudi funding, downsizing operations as it pursues an agreement with a lead investor to reshape the league for next year.

It was not clear how many or what percentage of employees are being laid off. LIV ended its fifth season last week outside Indianapolis, one week earlier than expected.

The staff reduction was not a surprise. LIV Golf learned in April the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia would end financial backing after this season. LIV in July filed a notice under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act that indicated layoffs were likely.

There also was hope that several employees could be hired back depending on LIV securing its agreement with the lead investor and how the new league — LIV 2.0 — might look.

“The funding commitment announced by PIF earlier this year will reach its conclusion. As a result, we are scaling back operations as we transition to the next chapter of LIV Golf and work toward making LIV 2.0 a reality," LIV said in a statement Wednesday.

"This week, we informed many of our colleagues that their employment under LIV 1.0 will end in the first week of September. We are grateful to our employees for their hard work and dedication in building LIV Golf, and we remain committed to supporting those affected through this transition.”

CEO Scott O'Neil announced earlier this month that he had come to terms with a lead investor, which multiple reports have indicated was BC Partners, and they were hopeful of finalizing the deal in September.

LIV Golf had its shortest season since the year it launched in 2022, losing events in New Orleans and the team championship in Michigan, with the team title merged into the Indiana event.

Still to be determined are the futures of its biggest names, starting with Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau. Rahm still is under contract while DeChambeau started the year negotiating for a renewal. That was before Saudi Arabia pulled the plug on the funding when the Iran war led PIF to reshape its investment priorities.

O'Neil has not ruled out filing for bankruptcy as part of the restructuring. LIV already faces two lawsuits for not paying vendors for services.

Tyrrell Hatton, a four-time Ryder Cup player from England who joined LIV in 2024 with Rahm's team, entered the British Masters this week once he learned the team championship in Michigan had been canceled.

He said Wednesday he has “multiple years” on his contract with LIV. Hatton plans to play five of the next seven weeks on the European tour beginning with the British Masters, which starts the qualifying period for the Ryder Cup for Team Europe.

He said he expects LIV Golf to be playing in 2027.

“I know they have worked really hard to getting funding stuff in place. So I know it’s full steam ahead on that front,” Hatton said. He also said he has continued to play the European tour and “I don’t see why that should change for me in the future.”

O'Neil has pitched a 10-tournament schedule for LIV, half of them overseas and half in the United States. Key to that plan is making sure his players can compete anywhere, though his mantra of “Complete, Not Compete” didn't sit well with tours that lost players to big signing bonuses.

The PGA Tour has banned LIV players for at least one year dating to their last LIV appearance. An exception was made for five-time major champion Brooks Koepka, who ended his contract with LIV at the end of 2025 and returned to the PGA Tour under stiff financial penalty.

O'Neil said last week in Indiana the first stage of LIV required big investments.

“This next chapter requires something quite different — commercial discipline,” he said. ”I wasn’t here in the early days, but at least reputationally, it was a bit more free-spending than it will be in the future. We’ve taken a real disciplined look at the cost side of the business."

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Tyrrell Hatton, of Legion XIII, looks from the 13th green during the first round of LIV Golf Indianapolis, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, in Westfield, Ind. (Pedro Salado/LIV Golf via AP)

LIV Golf season-long champion captain Jon Rahm, of Legion XIII, poses with the trophy after the final round of LIV Golf Indianapolis, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026, in Westfield, Ind. (Montana Pritchard/LIV Golf via AP)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Slava ‘Sal’ Veder, best known for his picture of a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel joyfully reuniting with his family after five years in a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam, died Aug. 22. He was 99.

Veder’s family on Wednesday confirmed that the retired Associated Press photojournalist died in his sleep, just eight days shy of his 100th birthday, at his home in El Dorado County, California, outside of Sacramento.

The San Francisco Bay Area native was 46 years old in March 1973 when he was sent to Travis Air Force Base for the arrival of Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm and other war prisoners returning from Vietnam. Veder was in a crowded bullpen jockeying for pictures with dozens of other photographers when out of the corner of his eye he spotted Stirm’s four children begin to gallop toward their father.

“You could tell, even at a distance, what they were feeling. It was all over them, their faces, the way they all broke into a run. There was a surge of emotion from the crowd, too,” Veder said in a 2015 interview with The Guardian.

Using a makeshift darkroom set up in a women’s bathroom on base, Veder cranked out six images, including “Burst of Joy,” which won the 1974 Pulitzer in feature photography. Veder noted that in the photograph, Stirm has his back to the camera, rendering him an everyman soldier returning to the undeniable joy and excitement on the faces of his children.

The photo became a symbol of the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. But for Stirm, it represented heartbreak as he had been handed a “Dear John” letter from his wife, Loretta, by a chaplain upon his release and the couple divorced a year later. Stirm died in 2025.

Slava J. Veder was born Aug. 30, 1926, in Berkeley, California, to Ivan and Anka Veder, who had left Russia and taken the names John and Ann when they settled in the U.S. He was their only child.

He worked as a sports writer and news editor at several publications and in 1961, he was hired as a staff photographer by The Associated Press at its Sacramento bureau. Later, he transferred to the San Francisco office, which is where he was based when he took the prize-winning photograph.

Friends and former colleagues remembered Veder as a warm and humble person who loved to ice skate and sail. He mentored younger photographers and always took time to ask the people around him how they were doing that day.

“He was the first Pulitzer Prize winner I ever met, like holy smokes,” said Brad Mangin, a freelance sports photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area. “He was just the sweetest man.”

Eric Risberg, a retired AP photographer who worked in San Francisco, said Veder was a great mentor and teacher.

“He really, really emphasized the marriage between pictures and words. He encouraged me to dive deeper, and get more into what’s really the story?” Risberg said.

Among his many assignments, Veder took photographs of the late Ronald Reagan when he was California governor, university campus protests against the war in Vietnam, the bank robbery trial of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, and the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by disgruntled former city supervisor Dan White in 1978.

Veder retired from AP in 1993.

Har, a former AP journalist, contributed reporting previously for this story. AP staffer Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.

FILE - Released prisoner of war Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm is greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif., as he returns home from the Vietnam War, March 17, 1973. (AP Photo/Sal Veder, File)