Say it ain’t so, Joe.
After a grand jury in 1920 indicted Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven of his 1919 Chicago White Sox teammates for allegedly throwing that year’s World Series, Chicago Daily News sports reporter Charley Owens issued a plaintive plea, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” Similar sentiments are echoing today in reaction to the shocking announcement of a merger between the PGA Tour and the LIV Golf League.
Obviously, money’s the primary factor in both events, but the culpability of the White Sox transgressors can be mitigated to some degree by the poor salaries they were being paid for championship baseball. However, today’s professional golfers with their weekly multi-million dollar purses have little excuse for coveting the blood-soaked Saudi billions underwriting LIV Golf.
The PGA Tour has been the organizer of professional golf tour in the US and North America since 1968. A non-profit, it runs most of the weekly links events, including The Players Championship, the FedEx Cup and the biennial Presidents Cup. It has relationships with the separate organizations that stage the Majors of men’s golf: the Master, the PGA Championship, US Open and British Open. The women’s tour also operates under a separate entity, the LPGA.
Unlike most other professional sports, golf has projected a strong philanthropic image with tour events tied to financial support for charitable endeavors. Some have single beneficiaries, like St. Jude’s Childrens Hospital, Memphis Classic; Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Memorial Tournament and First Tee, Bridgestone Invitational. Others raise money for multiple charities, 534 in the case of the John Deere Classic.
Although there are those who question just how much of the funds collected by PGA Tour events actually get to the designated charities, golf has been perceived generally as a sport with a heart. So how did one of the most respected sports organizations in the world wind up in such an embarrassing predicament?
LIV Golf surfaced back in late 2021 as a professional golf tour seeking to compete with the PGA Tour and backed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. It was immediately identified as an effort by Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to distract attention from his country’s poor human rights record and from evidence of his own personal brutality. “Sportswashing” is the moniker given to the strategy, which refers to using sports to salvage a tarnished reputation by sponsoring sports teams, athletes and/or events.
There was in fact some speculation that MBS did not care whether or not the LIV Golf League actually became financially viable. An apparent analysis of the scheme by international financial consultants McKinsey surfaced in December 2022. It left the impression the possible favorable publicity was sufficient to make the effort worthwhile.
LIV Golf has been fronted by Greg Norman, a former professional golfer with a reputation for aggressive entrepreneurship but not the most popular fellow among his peers. Norman has been critical of the PGA Tour for many years, and in 1994 he attempted to sell the organization the idea of a World Tour, involving the top 30 to 40 players in eight events with $3 million purses. It bombed in part due to the opposition of golf icon, Arnold Palmer.
With LIV Golf Norman enjoyed some quick successes early on, signing generous contracts underwritten by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) with nearly 20 of the 100 top professional golfers. Among them were Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau. In the spring of 2022 the league announced a slate of eight events with prize money of $225 million, again backed up by PIF.
The reaction of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was swift and severe. He banned seventeen tour players when they participated in the first LIV Golf event in June 2022. After a coalition of 9/11 families and survivors sent an open letter to participants criticizing their support of Saudi Arabia’s “sportswashing,” Monahan chimed in:
“I have two families that are close to me that lost love ones, and so my heart goes out to them. I would ask any player that has left or any player that would ever consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?’”
Not surprisingly, eleven of the banned LIV golfers sued the PGA Tour over their suspensions. The plaintiffs, including Mickelson, Johnson and DeChambeau, filed an antitrust lawsuit in federal court, complaining that the PGA Tour was also pressuring the Majors and golf vendors and sponsors to boycott participants in LIV Golf. Given their eye-popping contracts with LIV Golf, it’s hard to see how the players could establish any financial losses.
In any case, the PGA Tour countersued for “tortious interference,” claiming LIV Golf misled the golfers about their contractual obligations to the PGA Tour. To complicate matters further, a magistrate judge ruled that the PGA Tour had the right to subpoena PIF and its chief, Yasir Al-Rumayyan which opened the Saudi to some serious personal risks.
This was where matters stood on June 6 when the merger of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf was announced publicly. According to a press release issued by the former, an agreement had been reached to combine the golf-related commercial businesses of both entities into a jointly owned, for-profit vehicle (yet to be named) with the goal of delivering “maximum excitement and competition among the game’s best players.” The DP World Tour, which is already closely tied to the PGA Tour, is included in the deal.
Key elements of the arrangement include:
---all pending litigation between the parties will end,
---the PGA Tour Inc. will continue to function as a nonprofit for some activities,
---PIF will be the “exclusive investor in the new entity,”
---Jay Monahan will continue as Commissioner of PGA Tour and will be Chief Executive Officer of the new organization,
---Yasir Al-Rumayyan will join the PGA Tour Policy Board and will be Chair of the Board of Directors of the new organization,
Monahan’s comments in the news release and later in public interviews were jarring. He labeled the merger a “transformational partnership” and applauded PIF chief Al-Rumayyan’s “vision and collaborative and forward-think approach,” claiming it “will engender a new era in global golf, for the better.”
The coalition of 9/11 families whose original condemnation of Saudi “sportswashing” Monahan supported, wasted no time in condemning the agreement, describing the tour and Monahan as “just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation.”
Monahan and Al-Rumayyan negotiated the arrangement in apparent secrecy. The PGA Tour commissioner admitted not involving in the negotiations his constituency, the players, including several who had turned down LIV Golf money and remained loyal to the tour. No player indicated awareness of the ongoing discussion and many were angry. At a meeting during the recent Canadian Open in Toronto, it was estimated that 90 percent of the players wanted Monahan out.
The US Department of Justice already had the PGA Tour on it radar for potential violation of antitrust laws. It’s not likely to be impressed by a merger obviously designed to eliminate competition.
Congress is also getting into the act. Shortly after the deal was announced, Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) drafted legislation to strip the PGA Tour of its tax-exempt status.
Perhaps more serious, US Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), chair of the Permanent Subcommittee of Investigations (PSI), has written Monahan expressing concern over not only the terms of the agreement, but also the “sudden and drastic reversal of position.” He asked for all tour communication with the PIF and any other related records by June 26.
Having a major sport that has been identified with America for over a century suddenly under the apparent control of a foreign government’s sovereign wealth fund is not likely to be accepted quietly in the political arena. Does it sound like TikTok?
Lost in the heated rhetoric about the merger is the fact that it is not a done deal. The proposal has to be approved by the PGA Tour’s ten member policy board, which acts as the organization’s board of directors. It includes five players: Patrick Cantlay, Charley Hoffman, Peter Malnati, Rory McIlroy and Webb Simpson, none of whom were involved in the secret negotiations.
It should also be noted that the players will have even less opportunity for direct input in the new organization’s board of directors which will be chaired by Al-Rumayyan. There is already some discussion about a players union similar to those operating in other major US sports.
What will happen? It would be foolish to guess. Maybe the plaintive pleas of the 9/11 families and recollections of Jamal Khashoggi’s dismemberment will prick the collective conscience of the PGA Tour policy board.
Or maybe, they’ll just count the money like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). In the aftermath of Khashoggi’s death Graham called MSB “a wrecking ball,” and declared “I cannot see him being a reliable partner to the United States.” Fast forward to April of this year when Graham traveled to Saudi Arabia after the kingdom paid $36 billion for Boeing jets built in South Carolina. “They picked Boeing 787 over Airbus. I came over here to say thanks to Saudi Arabia. They’re thinking about buying more jets.”
Which is the America you prefer?
https://www.pgatourmediaguide.com/intro/tour-history-chronology
https://www.si.com/golf/news/feature-2019-11-14-a-man-and-an-idea-ahead-of-their-time
https://golf.com/news/timeline-liv-golf-how-we-arrived-pro-golf-civil-war/
https://www.sportico.com/law/analysis/2023/liv-golf-pga-tour-case-1234711404/
https://www.barrons.com/news/pga-chief-accepts-hypocrite-claims-after-liv-merger-1e246e24
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/26/jamal-khashoggi-mohammed-bin-salman-us-report