For LIV Golf and its players, the hits just keep on coming. One day after finally confirming that next week’s LIV Team Championship has been cancelled, the league revealed dramatically reduced purse payouts for this week’s LIV Golf Indianapolis event.
The Indianapolis tournament, which was originally scheduled as the Individual Championship event, will now also act as the Team Championship.
But LIV stars will be playing for a lot less money than originally planned. That is in addition to extensive purse cuts previously announced at the start of the season.
Here’s what you need to know.
Just before the 2026 LIV Golf season began, the league announced a reduction in prize money for the season-ending Individual and Team Championships.
While the bonus pool for the Individual Championship had been $30 million in previous seasons, the 2026 bonuses would be only $10 million, a massive drop of $20 million. Instead of $18 million, the Individual champion would receive only $6 million. Second-place prize money was reduced from $8 million to $3 million, and third place dived from $4 million to $1 million.
The Team Championship bonus pool was also reduced before the season opener, from $50 million to $40 million.
But on Monday, following weeks of reports, LIV Golf announced that the Team Championship was cancelled, and that the 2026 Team Championship, originally scheduled for next week in Michigan, would be decided at this week’s LIV Indianapolis event along with the Individual champion.
While both bonus pools will be paid out at LIV Indianapolis, the total amount of money paid out by the league will be far less, according to the payouts listed in the event’s media guide.
The bonus pool for the Individual Championship will remain at the reduced $10 million figure. The Team Championship bonus pool, however, will be cut by another $10 million.
Instead of playing for $40 million in bonuses split among the top three teams, down from $50 million in 2025, the leading teams will share only $30 million.
The winning team’s bonus was cut from $11.2 million to $8.4 million. The runners-up will now get $4.8 million instead of $6.5 million, and third place will earn $3.6 million, down from $4.8 million.
For context, last year’s LIV Team champion Legion XIII received $14 million in total bonus money: $8.4 million to the team and $1.4 million to each of the four players on the winning team. This year, the $8.4 million figure will stay the same, but the individual players will not receive an additional bonus.
All players in the field will compete for a separate $10.1 million purse specific to the LIV Indianapolis event, but that figure is also reduced from last year. In 2025, Sebastian Munoz earned $4 million for winning LIV Indianapolis. Jon Rahm took home $2.25 million for second place. In 2026, the winner will earn only $2.02 million, with the runner-up receiving $1.136 million.
The prize money reductions come while LIV is fighting for its survival. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia’s PIF announced it was pulling all funding from LIV Golf. Since then, the league has been trying to convince investors to finance its future, and its star players to stick around for next season.
The post LIV Golf makes major prize-money cuts after scrapping team event appeared first on Golf.
