LIV Golf’s 2025 season ended Sunday in Plymouth, Mich., with Jon Rahm adding a team title his individual season-long honors locked up the previous week. It came only hours after the PGA Tour saw an emotional Tommy Fleetwood finally break through to claim his maiden U.S. victory along with the FedEx Cup.
From 14 LIV tournaments held across seven months and nine countries, here are the biggest takeaways from the 2025 campaign.
Team race was better than the individual
There was far more excitement, and less confusion, in LIV’s Team Championship than in its individual finale the previous week in Indianapolis. In Indiana, Rahm left many wondering how a player could capture the season-long honor of being the league’s best with no victories while Joaquin Niemann won five times. The answer, although not palatable, was Rahm was more consistent throughout the year, with four runner-up results and only one finish outside the top 10 in 13 events (a T-11). Niemann accrued only 23 points from the eight events he didn’t win, while Rahm beat the Chilean in those legs. Still, even Rahm called the season-long victory “slightly bittersweet.”
The Team Championship at the Cardinal at Saint John’s saw much more compelling and understandable drama. Rahm’s Legion XIII (which includes Tyrrell Hatton, Tom McKibbin and Caleb Surratt) defeated Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers in a playoff. Legion XIII had come from behind to match the Crushers at 20 under while the all-South African Stinger team was 12 under in the three-team final. The event’s format was match-play for the first two rounds before stroke play the final day with each team having all four scores count.
Both Rahm and Hatton made two birdies in regulation, before the playoff extended into a second hole. Rahm and Hatton hit it close and ended the playoff with birdies over DeChambeau and Paul Casey. “In a way, if there was ever a question mark or an asterisk for having won the whole season without winning [an individual event], in my mind, with this it goes away,” Rahm said afterward. “It's a lot of validation for all of us … for the team, just how well we did all year. [It was] stressful, but we got it done, and I wouldn't want it any other way.”
New signings
Most of LIV’s new signings were underwhelming. The league added seven players before and during the year: McKibbin (who finished 20th in the standings), Luis Masaveu (52nd), Jose Luis Ballester (35th), Ben Campbell (36th), Yubin Jang (relegated), Frederik Kjettrup (relegated), and Chieh-Po Lee (47th). Northern Ireland’s McKibbin had four top-10s and was the best of the crop while Ballester, a former U.S. Amateur champion who signed mid-season after wrapping up his college career at Arizona State, was also impressive with a T-2 playoff loss in Chicago. Kjettrup, the Danish golfer, ended 57th with no points and was relegated.
Reunification appears distant
The hope that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf would come together seems to have cooled significantly, and this sapped plenty of hype for LIV. This was evident during new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp’s first major press conference at the Tour Championship in Atlanta. Asked if “the best players should be meeting more often” than the four majors, the former NFL executive said: “I would offer to you that the best collection of golfers in the world are on the PGA Tour. There’s a bunch of metrics that demonstrate that, from rankings to viewership to whatever you want to pick.”
World Rankings are back in LIV’s sights
The board of the Official World Golf Rankings met during the Open at Portrush. Whether the group, led by Trevor Immelman, can decide on awarding LIV points in time for its 2026 season is the top question. LIV’s application for OWGR points was formally rejected in 2023, due to uncertainty surrounding the team element and a lack of proper relegation and promotion. But LIV, which resubmitted its application in July, has tidied up some areas and hopes it will go a long way toward earning points. Most importantly, LIV says it will enforce relegation, which last week cut Majesticks GC co-captain Henrik Stenson, as well as Andy Ogletree, Mito Pereira, Yubin Jang, Kjettrup and Anthony Kim. Previously, the league had allowed relegated players such as Bubba Watson and Branden Grace back onto LIV.
At 55, Phil Mickelson is still competitive
David Fitzgerald
Although it wasn’t Lefty’s best year, especially at the majors where the Open was his only made cut, Mickelson (55.97 points) finished 24th on the league’s individual standings. The top 24 are automatically exempt for next season and Mickelson finished with more points than Hatton (52.15), who will be playing for Europe next month in the Ryder Cup.
A new CEO
LIV Golf transitioned from former World No. 1 Greg Norman to Scott O’Neil, who previously stewarded the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA and the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL. O’Neil spoke well and met with golf industry figures frequently, including the organizers of the four major championships. This year, LIV was granted an exemption into the U.S. Open by the USGA for its leading points scorer not already exempt, which was taken by five-time winner, Joaquin Niemann. There was also one LIV spot into the Open, which Sergio Garcia earned. Next year, the U.S. Open will award two spots for LIV players.
Cooling down at the majors
Erick W. Rasco
The major championships last year were a boon for LIV, which rode an enormous wave when DeChambeau won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst with a dramatic bunker save to defeat a crestfallen Rory McIlroy. That was a month after DeChambeau finished second at the PGA Championship at Valhalla.
This year, LIV players cooled off at golf’s four biggest events. DeChambeau was once again the shining light, although there were glimpses of good golf from Rahm and Hatton. DeChambeau was T-2 at the PGA for a second straight year, and although he came within three shots with nine to play, the Californian couldn’t find the extra gear to pressure Scheffler over the back nine at Quail Hollow. At Portrush, DeChambeau turned around an opening 78 with rounds of 65-68-64. It was the second-lowest score over the last 54 holes in the 153-year history of the Open. Still, it was too late for the 31-year-old, who is searching for his third major, and only amounted to a T-10 that was a distant eight shots behind Scheffler.
Former Masters champion Patrick Reed was third at Augusta and DeChambeau played in the final group with McIlroy but faded to a T-5. At the PGA, Rahm gave Scheffler a minor chase but faded down the stretch to a T-8 alongside Niemann. At Oakmont, Hatton was in the mix until the 71st hole but he and fellow LIV golfer Carlos Ortiz finished T-4. Apart from DeChambeau, LIV golfers never were in position to win any of the four majors.
TV
LIV secured a major TV broadcast partner in Fox, which aired the upstart league on its various platforms in 2025. Still, U.S. TV ratings continue to be overshadowed massively by the PGA Tour. LIV’s highest ratings day on the main Fox network was 484,000 for the Doral tournament in April in Miami, while the PGA Tour saw 1.7 million tune into the Valero Texas Open that same day. There are, however, international broadcast deals with ITV in the U.K. and DAZN globally. In May, LIV also announced a live broadcast partnership with KC Global Media. The Singapore-based company said it would show LIV events on AXN—a pay-TV channel owned by KC Media—to sports fans in more than 94 million homes in 19 countries across Asia.
Ryder Cup
Jamie Squire
LIV will likely triple its contingent across both teams at the Ryder Cup from Rome in 2023 to next month’s showpiece at Bethpage, going from one (Brooks Koepka in Rome) to three: Hatton and DeChambeau will be among the automatic qualifiers while Rahm, who played in 2023 but was not yet part of LIV Golf, will likely be one of European skipper Luke Donald’s picks. Having representation at one of the five biggest events in golf is important for LIV, and even more important will be at least one of their guys winning two or more points and playing a starring role.
Making strides in the events business
LIV has started to resonate at the event level after adding some innovative ideas and tweaking existing tournaments. The 2025 season began at LIV Golf Riyadh in February—played at night under lights—and it ended on Sunday after three consecutive U.S. tournaments with good atmospheres: Chicago, Indianapolis and Michigan. Although the flagship event continues to be LIV Golf Adelaide, where 102,000 fans attended over three days in Australia in February, the 54-hole circuit is adding some tournaments that are intriguing and well-attended.
Take LIV Golf U.K. for example, which staged a second edition at the JCB Golf and Country Club in the Midlands of England. The tournament has struck a sweet spot in several areas, including the location in the Midlands which, apart from the Birmingham-area welcoming the DP World Tour’s British Masters, doesn’t see much top-level golf. At JCB, LIV U.K. has balanced competition, event activations and musical performances, and this has yielded more than 40,000 fans for two straight years. Both were the week after the Open Championship. There was also a reported 40,000 fans at LIV Golf Chicago three weeks ago and nearly 60,000 for its debut in Indiana (a league attendance record among its U.S. events). Combined with the party atmosphere of LIV Golf Hong Kong and the league’s debut in Korea in May, LIV has developed between four and seven events any tour would welcome.