LIV Golf has agreed to pay $1 million to an Ohio-based golf tee company called Stinger Golf to resolve a trademark infringement lawsuit between the two parties.
The dispute traces back to LIV Golf’s launch in 2022, when one of its original four-man teams was named the Stinger Golf Club. That team later changed its name to Southern Guards GC in January, ahead of the 2026 LIV season. However, the name change did not stop Stinger Golf from filing a $100 million lawsuit against LIV in June 2025.
Ultimately, the golf tee company agreed to accept $1 million from LIV, according to a July 6 filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Brian Barakat, a partner at the law firm Barakat + Bossa, which represented Stinger Golf, acknowledged the settlement fell far short of the original claim. “Obviously $1 million doesn’t represent all the damages that our client suffered,” he told Front Office Sports.
“It’s a settlement. Settlements are necessarily a compromise. What LIV did in this circumstance was pretty gross. We know that they knew long before they set up the Stinger Golf Club team that they were aware of our trademark, and they just decided that they didn’t care,” Barakat added.
The Southern Guards GC team, formerly known as the Stinger Golf Club, is made up of South African golfers Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel, Branden Grace, and Dean Burmeister.
Stinger Golf, which sells its tees at golf retail stores across the country as well as online, decided to accept the lower settlement amount largely because of fears that LIV Golf may be on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.
“They bowed to the realities of this situation and made a compromise that made business sense for them,” Barakat said. “We were very confident to go to trial. It wasn’t a compromise based on any fear of loss in the case. It was a compromise based on what we viewed as an imminent bankruptcy.”
The defendants named in the lawsuit included LIV Golf, World Wide Golf Brands — a former apparel partner of LIV — and the Stinger GC golf team. Of those defendants, only LIV Golf will be making payments to Stinger Golf as part of the settlement.
