LIV Golf's final event of 2026 has a significantly reduced prize fund. The rebel league has long been known for its huge payouts, be it in player contracts, individual competitions and team prizes.
At its recently completed event in New Jersey, Joaquin Niemann cashed a winner's check good for $4 million
. That was in line with previous tournaments on the circuit. The total money up for grabs on the individual leaderboard was $20 million.In addition, there was $10 million in the pot for the teams, and in that Jersey event, Bryson DeChambeau's Crushers GC divided up a $3 million first-place team prize.
For this week's LIV Golf Indianapolis event, Aug. 20-23 at The Club at Chatham Hills, the numbers are down.
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The total prize fund for players is $10.1 million, with the winner to get $2.02 million, almost half of what the winner normally gets.
And because LIV canceled its 2026 Team Championship event,which was set for next week in Michigan, the team prizes for this season will also be doled out this week in Indy.
The winning team will share in a first-place prize of $8.4 million. The total team money in 2026 is $30 million, down from the $40 million that LIV said originally would be at stake in Michigan. That compares to $50 million in total prize money for the teams that was paid out in 2025, when Jon Rahm's Legion XIII split a winning team pot of $14 million.
LIV Golf also pays out even more money to its season-long individual championship. A year ago, Rahm made yet another $18 million just for that. In 2026, LIV is paying out $6 million to the golfer who claims that honor, with $3 million going to the runner-up and $1 million to the third-place finisher, for a total of $10 million in all in that category.
The backdrop of all this that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund announced earlier this year it would no longer pay for LIV golf beyond the 2026 campaign and that triggered a series of financial questions surrounding the league. The Michigan event was the second one of 2026 that LIV canceled. It's unclear whether contractual obligations were affected by those two events not being played.
According to a story by The Athletic, LIV golfer Charles Howell III said on Tuesday that players have yet to be paid from last week's LIV Golf New York stop in New Jersey but he did say he was told payment would arrive Wednesday. “No one is worried about not getting paid,” Howell said in the report.
Todd Kelly is the assistant managing editor of Golfweek.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: LIV Golf prize money payouts for season finale in Indianapolis are cut in half
