LIV Golf hid cancellation to avoid media flags, now says Indy will wrap season

On Friday, LIV Golf quietly stopped selling tickets for its team championship event at The Cardinal at Saint John's Resort near Detroit, proving that the tournament would not be played amid LIV's ongoing funding crisis. The championship had been scheduled for Aug. 27-30 and was set to serve as the season-ending showcase of the league's team competition.

A new report, however, suggests LIV Golf's handling of the event's apparent cancellation may have been far from transparent. Rather than providing fans with clear communication and timely updates, the league appears to have quietly pulled the plug, raising questions about whether the shutdown was managed more to avoid scrutiny than to deliver an honest customer experience.

No tournament infrastructure was erected at the course that welcomed tens of thousands of spectators for LIV Golf's 2025 Team Championship, the league's first event in Michigan.

Yet as recently as Wednesday night, LIV Golf was still selling tickets for this year's championship. By Thursday afternoon, however, fans visiting the league's website were greeted with a terse message: "The tickets you were looking for are no longer available." No additional information was provided, including whether ticket holders would receive refunds.

Meanwhile, the league confirmed on Monday that this week's event at Indianapolis will mark the end of the season, amd potentially, the end of the league as a whole.

"The four-day stroke play event will take place Aug. 20-23, at The Club at Chatham Hills, where 57 players will contend for the Indianapolis individual title and final spots in the League's individual season-long standings," said a memo from the league. "The team competition will count the scores of all four players on each team every day, culminating with one of the 13 teams being crowned the 2026 LIV Golf Team Champion."

Additionally, Golf.com is reporting that the league maintained a non-working tickets page for days because officials were worried about "avoiding additional media flags."

This is from a Golf.com social media post:

... LIV’s head of ticketing and hospitality, Michael Drobnick, laid out a plan for limiting media attention around the cancellation of one of the league’s biggest events.

“The ticketing page will remain live, but no inventory will be available,” Drobnick wrote to ticket and hospitality staffers. “If a guest visits the page to view tickets, they will see a message that says, ‘The tickets you were looking for are no longer available.’”

“After discussing with [LIV executives] Scott [O’Neil], Chris [Heck] and Ilana [Finley], we think this is the best path forward for now,” Drobnick’s message continued. “It allows us to keep the ticketing page live, hopefully avoiding additional media flags by removing it entirely, while also ensuring guests cannot proceed through the checkout process."

“Hopefully in the next 24-48 hours, we’ll have the green light to officially make the announcement. At that point, we will remove the ticketing page entirely.”

This all comes as the league is touting major investment on the horizon. On Aug. 5, CEO Scott O'Neil said that the league has reached an agreement with a "lead investor" and has garnered interest from "dozens" of other potential financial backers.

"LIV Golf has an agreement in place with a lead investor, signed by the investor and approved by the board, to anchor the transaction and play a key role in supporting the path forward for the league’s next era, driven by and for the players," O'Neil said. "We're also seeing strong interest from more than a dozen additional parties to potentially serve as minority investors, creating a multi-partner model built for long-term stability and growth."

And not only is there a new major investor, according to O'Neil, but a deal has been formulated that will make LIV Golf's players equity holders in the league itself.

For context, LIV provided financial details of the league with IndyStar in April:

• From 2024–25, LIV Golf grew more than 100% in revenue. In 2026, ticket sales were up 130% year over year.
• LIV sold more than 115,000 tickets for Adelaide and more than 100,000 in South Africa. Sponsorships are up 40% year over year
• Through the first five events, the league was pacing $100 million ahead of last year’s revenue

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: LIV Golf hid cancellation to avoid media flags, now says Indy will wrap season