LIV Golf’s existence has always depended on one thing: Saudi Arabia’s willingness to pay for it. Since 2021, the league has operated as if it had a blank cheque, buying up stars to play at lavish global events. Total spending has exceeded $5 billion.

That largesse is now in question. Last week, there were reports that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund was reconsidering the investment. LIV’s CEO, Scott O’Neil, told TNT Sports over the weekend that the league is funded through the 2026 season, revealing the precarious situation. Previously, he told players it was funded at least through 2032.

The key question is whether LIV will have money to continue. A more important question is why $5 billion hasn’t been enough to transform the league into something more than a spectacle.

One answer is that LIV has been trying to buy the wrong thing. The real currency of sports is attachment to rivalries and histories. LIV bought attention and naturally expected attachment to follow. So far, it hasn’t.

Consider the competition. The PGA Tour was formed in 1968, but many of its events date back decades earlier than that. Over time, as players return to compete in hallowed tournaments, they aren’t simply playing one another. In the eyes of fans, they’re joining a standard and a legacy. The same events, the same courses, played year after year, teach spectators what matters and why.

LIV’s founders can be excused for thinking that the PGA Tour’s slow-burn fandom could be disrupted. By the late 2010s, even some of the latter’s top players were publicly voicing frustration with the state of the game. Rory McIlroy complained about the slow pace of play and Bubba Watson said it was “stale”. Neither adjective is exactly conducive to building a 21st-century sports business.

LIV debuted in 2022 with a faster format designed to make golf more palatable to the age of short-form video attention spans.

But above all, LIV bet on star power. Money was no object. During its first season, the league offered record prizes, including a $50 million team championship purse. LIV also poached PGA Tour players with massive guaranteed contracts. In 2023, Jon Rahm received a deal reportedly — and some might say, notoriously — worth more than $300 million.

The business logic was straightforward: In today’s highlight-driven sports culture, fans follow stars. So if LIV wanted to become relevant (and stay that way), it needed enough stars to draw attention.

It worked — briefly. Each player poached from the PGA Tour generated headlines (and outrage). But LIV and its backers failed to understand that watching a group of stars isn’t the same as caring about what happens to them. For many fans, the most pressing question around Rahm wasn't whether he could uphold the standard of play he'd established on the PGA Tour. It was whether he'd sold his soul for a league that few golf fans were watching.

Viewership numbers tell the story well. In February, LIV’s 2026 Riyadh opener averaged 23,000 US viewers across four days. That same weekend, the PGA Tour’s Waste Management Open averaged 3.1 million.

Adding insult to injury, Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed, two of LIV’s expensive stars, returned to the PGA Tour before the start of this season. In a clever bit of marketing, the Tour is promoting its 2026 competition with the slogan: “Where the Best Belong”.

LIV’s missteps aren’t unique to golf. China decided to spend heavily on becoming a global football superpower in the 2010s. No expense was spared. During the 2017 winter player transfer window, clubs in the Chinese Super League collectively outspent Premier League clubs, and Shanghai SIPG even signed Brazilian star Oscar dos Santos Emboaba Júnior — mononymously known as Oscar — away from Chelsea FC.

The strategy drew global attention, but China’s football clubs had shallow roots in their communities, and the money did little to build real loyalty. When the real estate bubble fuelling much of the spending burst, so did China’s football boom. Many clubs, including former champions, went bust.

In the aftermath, Chinese officials have shifted to a slower, more sustainable model focused on domestic players and long-term development. Fandom, they’ve learnt the hard way, can’t be rushed.

For governments that don’t want to slowly build something from the ground up, there is another option. In 2008, Abu Dhabi United Group, an investment group connected to Abu Dhabi’s Royal Family, purchased Manchester City FC. The company didn’t try to create fandom from nothing. Instead, they invested in an existing fanbase and a league that’s followed globally. The money bought success and enduring attention because the rivalries and the stakes were already there. (1)

LIV never had that luxury. And now it seems likely that Saudi Arabia will soon stop funding the league. What will be left behind if it does? Without a dedicated fanbase, the league may have little to show beyond receipts for its spending. It’s an expensive lesson.

(1) Much of Man City's fanbase is genuinely grateful that its owners have devoted the resources required to turn a middling club into a Premier League and Champions League winner. But the feeling isn't universal. Some fans are upset about spiralling ticket prices, while others are rightly unsettled by under-investigation allegations that the club breached Premier League financial regulations. Among other charges, the club is being investigated for making off-books payments to players.

• Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of sports. He is the author, most recently, of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale