For two years, the professional golf world has been battling each other over the breakaway Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour poaching away some top talent from the PGA Tour and DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour).
Golfers who left for LIV were banned from the PGA Tour, leading to lawsuits filed by some former players and the tours against each other. It has all been very messy, but ever since this year’s Masters, there has seemingly been a cooling of tensions between the LIV world and the PGA and DP World Tours. Brooks Koepka contending at Augusta and then winning the PGA Championship only further complicated matters within the rift, as the majors (which aren’t under the umbrella of the PGA Tour) had allowed all qualified parties to continue competing. With the Ryder Cup upcoming, where LIV golfers likely weren’t going to be selected but Koepka was going to qualify on points just off of his major success, there was some impetus on all sides to figure out how to coexist.
The result was a stunning announcement on Tuesday morning that the three entities were merging with one another to bring LIV Golf’s team concept under the umbrella of the two Tours, with the Saudi Public Investment Fund remaining as the lead stakeholder.
The PGA TOUR, DP World Tour and the Public Investment Fund (PIF) today announced a landmark agreement to unify the game of golf, on a global basis. The parties have signed an agreement that combines PIF’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from a model that delivers maximum excitement and competition among the game’s best players.
There were a number of reasons for the various Tours to all look to reach this agreement, and that was laid out in one of the early paragraphs of the release where part of the agreement includes dropping all legal action against each other. None of the Tours wanted to go deep into discovery on lawsuits, and this will allow them to drop all of that and move forward.
Notably, today’s announcement will be followed by a mutually agreed end to all pending litigation between the participating parties. Further, the three 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, consistent with each Tour’s policies.
On the LIV side, it gives them a better chance of continuing to exist long-term, as there have been rumblings some players are not exactly thrilled with the situation and were going to be exploring how to return to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour whenever their contracts ran up. This allows them to do that, but also seems to ensure LIV won’t completely fade away — and might be able to land a TV deal that isn’t on the CW — in the near future.
From a golf perspective, this brings all the best players in the world closer to playing against each other again, which we’ve seen in the majors has been something we’ve been missing. That said, the PGA Tour going into business with the PIF will only raise questions about how involved the Saudis will be in PGA Tour business, with it being very difficult for the Tour to shrug off given one of the main points of attack on LIV has been the human rights atrocities committed by the Saudis and how blatant LIV Golf was as a sportswashing attempt — especially given the announcement includes this nugget: “PIF’s Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan will join the PGA TOUR Policy Board.”
Those questions won’t just come from the outside, as many PGA Tour players were apparently blindsided by the announcement.
Hearing from multiple PGA Tour players that they had absolutely zero heads up on this before the announcement was made on social.
— Shane Bacon (@shanebacon) June 6, 2023
Given how outspoken some PGA Tour players were against LIV Golf for the reasons of where the money was coming from, there may be some internal blowback coming the Tour’s way.
