Scott O'Neil arrived at LIV Golf's first US event of 2026 with a press conference that doubled as a public statement of intent — a long walk through how the league's CEO sees its future, what its problems look like from his desk, and what the next step is.
"This 100 per cent is what I love to do," O'Neil told reporters at LIV Golf Virginia, the league's first event back on American soil this year. "When my phone rings, it's usually not that everything is going really well and we'd like you to be a status quo leader. So when my phone rings, it's usually an opportunity for transformation or turnarounds or hyper-growth."
It was, perhaps deliberately, the language of a man preparing investors as much as a fan base. Asked what he wakes up thinking about, O'Neil framed the league's task in three repeated words.
"This is transaction, transaction, transaction," O'Neil said. "That's what I wake up thinking about. That's what I go to sleep thinking about."
O'Neil walked through what he described as the foundations he inherited 18 months ago: distribution growth from 450 million homes to over a billion; viewership expanding from 1.7 million to 3.3 million per weekend; an Australian event drawing 5.5 million viewers; attendances of 60,000 in Indianapolis, 50,000 in Dallas, 45,000 in Chicago and 43,000 in Detroit.
"I was told repeatedly when I first started, well, you'll never sell tickets in the US," O'Neil said. "And then we saw 60,000 sold in Indie, 50 in Dallas, 45 in Chicago, and 43 in Detroit. I thought, there's some real business for this business."
But the foundations, he conceded, were not a finished product. The league has had to "rightsize" the business, with a financial advisor at AlixPartners and counsel from Gibson Dunn brought in to tune a new business plan that will go to investors in the coming weeks. New board members Gene Davis and John Zimman, O'Neil said, were brought in to apply experience to a turnaround.
"I had a dozen inbound calls this weekend — inbounds from potential investors," O'Neil said. "It was a split between private equity, family office and then your traditional high-net-worth, you probably know who they are."
"If you ask me where the value of this business is, it's in the teams," O'Neil said. "Once we set the business in the right direction, with the right trajectory, with the right revenue base and cost base — which we're well on our way to doing — these teams will have extraordinary value."
The most sensitive question of the day — about players exiting LIV for the PGA Tour or beyond — drew a reply that doubled as both a defence and an open door.
"One of the beauties of LIV Golf, the thing I enjoy most about it, is that we are for golf. We always have been and we always will be," O'Neil said. "Our players, we commit them to 14 weeks. They come and play. They know exactly the weeks they're expected to play. They show up and they play. If another tour is open for them to play — that's 14 weeks out of 52, that's 38 weeks. So if you want to see the best players in the world playing together more often, no problem. Let's do it on the other 38 weeks."
He returned, repeatedly, to the language of pressure — and to his own appetite for it.
"There's nothing more special in pulling a team together than pressure," O'Neil said. "It's how diamonds are created."
The league has not yet shared a timeline for closing its new business plan or naming new investors. O'Neil told reporters he expected to lock the plan down before going to market.
"You'll find urgency here," O'Neil said. "You'll find pace. You'll find less sleep, more action."