PGA Tour agrees to merge with Saudi-backed LIV Golf

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The PGA Tour on Tuesday announced that it was merging with LIV Golf, the Saudi-funded breakaway league that had lured away some of the game’s best players with hefty paychecks, a lighter schedule and less-competitive tournaments.

The stunning announcement came amid litigation between LIV and the PGA Tour, which both had filed lawsuits against the other. In August, LIV Golf filed an antitrust suit saying the tour — by banning players who had defected to LIV — was intentionally trying to curtail competition, but the PGA Tour countered with a lawsuit that claims LIV committed “tortious interference” by encouraging golfers to violate terms of their existing tour contracts.


The two sides have agreed to mutually “all pending litigation between the participating parties,” the PGA Tour said in a statement announcing the merger.

The organizations "will work cooperatively and in good faith to establish a fair and objective process for any players who desire to re-apply for membership with the PGA TOUR or the DP World Tour following the completion of the 2023 season and for determining fair criteria and terms of re-admission,” the PGA Tour said.

The Tour said the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which backed LIV, will merge its golf businesses with the other tours to create a new, for-profit organization.

 

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‘Betrayed and humiliated’: PGA Tour players speak out amid LIV Golf merger​

uesday’s news shocked the entire golfing world, including players on the PGA Tour, who felt betrayed and humiliated, per Todd Lewis of the Golf Channel.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), announced a partnership for men’s professional golf going forward.

“Tell me why Jay Monahan basically got a promotion to CEO of all golf in the world by going back on everything he said the past 2 years,” PGA Tour member Dylan Wu tweeted. “The hypocrisy. Wish golf worked like that. I guess money always wins @PGATour.”

No PGA Tour member, not even Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy, had any idea of this developing situation.

Like everyone else, PGA Tour players first discovered the news on social media.

“Nothing like finding out through Twitter that we’re merging with a tour that we said we’d never do that with,” said McKenzie Hughes, a Canadian golfer, on Twitter.

 

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Rex Hoggard of the Golf Channel said on live television that many players “are angered” about Tuesday’s news. He even received text messages from players calling for Monahan to resign.

Shortly after the news dropped live on CNBC, a formal memo from the Commissioner followed.

“We are pleased to move forward, in step with LIV and PIF’s world-class investing experience, and I applaud PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan for his vision and collaborative and forward-thinking approach that is not just a solution to the rift in our game but also a commitment to taking it to new heights,” Monahan’s statement read.

“This will engender a new era in global golf, for the better.”

The Commissioner went behind the scenes to strike a deal with PIF, which has poured almost $1 billion into LIV Golf.

A year ago, Monahan suspended players who left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf.

Now the two leagues will co-exist, merging into a single entity, as the PIF will invest considerable amounts of money into professional golf.

“Today is a very exciting day for this special game and the people it touches around the world,” said Al-Rumayyan. “We are proud to partner with the PGA TOUR to leverage PIF’s unparalleled success and track record of unlocking value and bringing innovation and global best practices to business and sectors worldwide. We are committed to unifying, promoting, and growing the game of golf around the world and offering the highest-quality product to the many millions of long-time fans globally while cultivating new fans.”

 

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PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan burned everyone who trusted him​

Jay Monahan had his price and it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, I suppose.

The Saudi-backed LIV Golf league was throwing hundreds of millions of dollars around on players, tournaments and legal fees to compete with the PGA Tour. Maybe it was naive to think there wasn’t an endgame where the commissioner of golf’s premier circuit to came out on top.

After two years of holding the PGA together, of convincing the majority of the game’s top players not to accept the blood money coming from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, of revamping the Tour schedule with designated event purses worth $20 million each, of securing trust from sponsors, stakeholders and anyone else who could’ve put the final nail in the PGA’s coffin, the end came without warning on Tuesday morning and it was Monahan holding the hammer.

The PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf will merge into one, for-profit entity. Professional golf as we knew it is dead, almost unilaterally destroyed by the man entrusted to save it.

No one was given any indication this sort of deal was possible, let alone being negotiated. PGA Tour players — the same ones who had Monahan’s back, who turned down millions — found out about the merger on Twitter.

How he can even dare to face them again is mind-boggling. Judging from the early responses of those on Tour, it won’t be pretty.

But none of that matters to Monahan, apparently. He emerges from the seismic shift with more power than ever as the CEO of the yet-to-be-named organization. PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan will serve as chairman. The Saudi fund will initially serve as exclusive investor to the new endeavor, meaning Al-Rumayyan is the only person Monahan must dance for now and already were seeing him move in ways previously thought impossible.

Take what Monahan said at the Travelers Championship almost exactly one year ago, June 22, 2022, as the Tour announced massive changes to retain its talent from LIV’s overtures:

“The PGA Tour, an American institution, can’t compete with a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf. We welcome good, healthy competition. The LIV Saudi Golf League is not that. It’s an irrational threat, one not concerned with the return on investment or true growth of the game.”

Here’s what Monahan said on Tuesday, after announcing the merger:

“What’s happened today is we’ve recognized that together we can have a far greater impact on this game than we can working apart,” Monahan told CNBC. “…We’re announcing to the world that on behalf of this game we’re coming together. It’s less about how people respond today and it’s all about how people respond in ten years. When they see the impact we’re having on this game together there will be a lot of smiles on peoples faces.”

 

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Inside PGA players' meeting over LIV merger after Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy snubbed​

Neither Tiger Woods nor Rory McIlroy was briefed about the secret deal between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to merge the tours and unite golf again. The two tour veterans are said to have only found out on the same day as the rest of the world did when the announcement came out of nowhere on Tuesday.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan penned a letter to tour members announcing the move after the initial morning release. Several players discovered the news through this communication, while others first learned about the development through social media.

Later that afternoon, Monahan met with around 100 of his members at Oakdale Golf and Country Club in Toronto, who are there for this week's Canadian Open. Among those present at the 75-minute-long player meeting was McIlroy.

The Golf Channel reports that the former world number one was not an active participant aside from one exchange with Grayson Murray. After taking exception to something the American said, McIlroy apparently challenged him to "just play better". Murray gave the suggestion short shrift, telling the Northern Irishman to "F- off!"

Monahan addressed the assembled media after the meeting and made mention of McIlroy by name on Tuesday. Asked whether he regrets not speaking to top tour players striking the agreement in principle, the commissioner explained:" What we've agreed to here is a framework agreement, and the binding elements are tied to the litigation," he said. "A lot of these details we've got to work through.

"If we had announced a definitive agreement this morning, and I was calling them in the morning, and I had made commitments on behalf of the PGA Tour and not had an opportunity to fully vet them with our policy board and with those two individuals in a larger group, then that would be a complete miss on my part, and I recognize that.

"But this was us reaching a framework agreement. We think it's the right agreement. Obviously, Tiger and Rory's perspective is one that I understand very well, and it was part of my thinking throughout these conversations, and it will be a part of my thinking going forward.

"Now that we're in a framework agreement, I look forward to talking to all of our players, including the two of them, to make certain that this comes off the right way."

Alluding to players such as McIlory and Woods, who turned down significant sums to stay put, he added: "It probably didn't seem this way to them, but as I looked to those players that have been loyal to the PGA Tour, I'm confident they made the right decision.

"They have helped re-architect the future of the PGA Tour, they have moved us to a more competitive model. We have significantly invested in our business in 2023, we're going to do so in '24."

 

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With Saudi-PGA deal, once-shunned crown prince makes dramatic move to extend kingdom’s influence​

After years of isolation over his human rights abuses, Saudi Arabia's crown prince is elevating his standing in the United States in part by diving into American sports, business and culture. And no example has been as striking as his bold entry into professional golf — the favorite sport of presidents and millions of other Americans.

Tuesday’s surprise announcement of a commercial merger between Saudi Arabia’s $650 billion sovereign wealth fund, the PGA Tour and the European tour in the short run looks to end a messy legal battle between Saudi Arabia's LIV Golf and the PGA.

But for the Saudis, it’s much more than a major business deal. It’s the latest and perhaps most dramatic move by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to wield his kingdom’s oil wealth in reshaping his country's economy and advancing Saudi influence regionally and around the world, while muting critics. Prince Mohammed has assumed much of the duties and leadership of his aged father, King Salman.

The commercial merger followed the kingdom’s purchase of the Newcastle United soccer team and staging of Formula One races and multiple other sports events.

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia's most prominent U.S. supporter celebrated.

Former president and current leading Republican presidential contender Donald Trump, whose golf courses and family have been a top beneficiary of Saudi investment, boasted that last year he had predicted a merger between Saudi upstart LIV golf and the PGA. Trump had warned pro golfers at the time they would lose millions if they stayed loyal to the “very disloyal PGA.”

A “big, beautiful, and glamorous deal,” Trump tweeted at the Saudi-U.S. golf announcement. Trump's golf courses were snubbed by the PGA Tour after his followers' violent Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, while rival Saudi golf tour LIV patronized Trump courses, for undisclosed sums.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who in 2018 had promised a “tsunami” of opposition against the crown prince over Saudi Arabia's killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, tweeted the PGA-LIV tour merger was “beyond exciting." He noted it could benefit the golf industry in his state of South Carolina.

Saudi exiles in the U.S. expressed disappointment. In the hours before the golf deal was announced, they had hosted a sparsely attended press call to try to bring attention back to the Saudi rights advocates, American citizens and family members still being held in Saudi prisons or banned from traveling.

“I think what the Saudi government has been noticing so far is that using money for sportswashing is working out for them,” said Abdullah al Oudh, whose father, a popular cleric, has been in prison in Saudi Arabia since publicly expressing hope that the crown prince would end a now-mended rift with another Gulf state, Qatar.

“They have used it once, twice, three times ... to just whitewash their crimes. And it's been working for them so far," al Oudh said.

It all has marked a stunning turnaround in the global standing of Prince Mohammed, who became almost globally despised after the 2018 killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who had written of the crown prince’s brutal ways.


The crown prince's aides and other Saudi officials killed Khashoggi after luring him to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The U.S. intelligence community concluded the crown prince had authorized the plot.

Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden pledged to make the crown prince a “pariah." It's a phrase that has been repeated in almost every Western article about the two since.

World leaders for a time shunned Prince Mohammed, leaving him standing awkwardly alone at summits as other leaders shook hands and smiled for photos. Global businesses briefly boycotted Saudi conferences.

Coming on top of Saudi Arabia's invasion of neighboring Yemen, its failed blockade of neighboring Qatar, its brief detention of Lebanon's leader, and intensified detention and torture of rivals, journalists and rights advocates, the Khashoggi killing stained Prince Mohammed's reputation, indelibly.

In the five years since, however, the crown prince has made his way out of isolation.

 

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For starters, there has been no known repeat of high-profile killings like that of Khashoggi, whose apparent strangulation and subsequent dismemberment with a bone saw was recorded by Turkish surveillance.

The kingdom released the best-known of the Saudi women jailed under Prince Mohammed for asking for women's right to drive. That's even though many other lesser-known Saudis, including U.S. citizens or residents, remain in prison or under travel bans for peacefully advocating for more representative government or for commenting on Saudi government policy.

Meanwhile, oil production cuts by Saudi Arabia reminded Washington of Saudi Arabia's key strategic attraction. Biden came calling last July and did an awkward fist bump with the crown prince, as his administration sought to repair relations and get oil flowing more freely again.

Shrewd Saudi diplomacy has played a part as well. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the crown prince, and Iran reopened its embassy in Saudi Arabia, the same day as Saudi Arabia's stunning breakthrough in U.S. sports. It made the day a showcase of the ambitious crown prince's return to the global fold, even if no state dinners are likely for him at the Biden White House.

Tensions with the U.S. remain over Saudi Arabia's continued repression of Saudi dissent at home and abroad, the kingdom's throttling back on oil production, its relations with Russia, and its resumed ties with Iran, in a deal for which China claimed credit.

The golf deal announced Tuesday gives the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, and its chairman the crown prince, significant say in the direction of the sport in the U.S. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the fund, told interviewers he planned to make the game a sport for the everyman and expand its following globally.

It was unclear how Saudi Arabia's escalated investment in U.S. sport would affect the kingdom's sovereign immunity, which is a longstanding practice of international law that shields foreign leaders from other countries' courts. The PGA Tour had insisted in U.S. courts that U.S. commercial exemptions to sovereign immunity meant that the Saudi national wealth fund and Saudi Arabia's leaders were vulnerable to U.S. legal action and public scrutiny of its business deals.

It's also unclear if the golf deal and Saudi Arabia's other investments in the U.S. have won over enough of its critics in Congress, including those objecting to Saudi Arabia's much-desired arms purchases from the U.S.

“So weird,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat and lasting critic of the crown prince's rights abuses, tweeted after the golf announcements. “PGA officials were in my office just months ago talking about how the Saudis’ human rights record should disqualify them from having a stake in a major American sport. I guess maybe their concerns weren’t really about human rights?”

For Saudi Arabia, the move could be an economic boost as well. The crown prince, known as MBS, has focused investments from the sovereign wealth fund on sports and some emerging industries, not always successfully.

“This all has to go to the very singular focus and goal of MBS to diversify the country's economic platform” away from oil exports, said Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Program. That includes with entertainment and tourism for foreign visitors, which the prince also has pushed.

“And then if a byproduct is that it also creates a better reputation and decreases reputational risk, I'm sure they're happy about it,” Panikoff said.