Golf “surrenders for the money”
“Smelly” Saudi billion dollar deal enrages politicians
7/12/2023 7:33 am
Completely surprisingly, the golf organizations PGA Tour and DP World Tour are merging with the Saudi Arabian LIV Tour – apparently mainly because the Saudi sovereign wealth fund is luring billions. US politicians are scrutinizing the deal. And are disgusted by the circumstances.
The first hearing before a US Senate committee on the controversial merger of the leading golf organizations PGA Tour and DP World Tour with the Saudi series LIV Golf has culminated in an appeal by the presiding senator to cancel the deal. “You can,” wrote the Democratic Party’s Richard Blumenthal in the diary of the PGA meeting attendees, “still fight against ‘sportswashing’, against the Saudi monarchy and against hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Blumenthal, who, in his capacity as head of the Senate Standing Subcommittee on Investigations, initiated the review of the publicly puzzling process in the first half of June, made his moral contempt out of his moral contempt after initial assessments of numerous documents and extensive correspondence from both camps No secret of the US officials’ deal with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF: “The path we have taken stinks a bit because it is a capitulation, because it’s all about money.” The call for a change of heart was expressly addressed to the PGA board, which still has to approve the much-criticized merger.
The PGA, DP World Tour on the one hand and LIV Golf on the other unexpectedly came together at the beginning of last month after a year-long dispute over the Saudis’ alleged sports washing to distract from human rights violations. With the almost sensational agreement between the unequal partners, all disputes between the two camps ended in court.
The Senate hearing at least gave an initial assessment of the financial dimensions of the merger. When asked, Jimmy Dunne, one of the key negotiators from the PGA board in the negotiations with the Saudis, estimated the investment in the future competition format promised by PIF representatives at “more than one billion dollars”.
According to PGA chief organizer Ron Price, the tour ultimately had little choice but to agree to the merger with the Saudis to end the “harmful litigation”. The number two in the PGA behind tour boss Jay Monahan, who continued to disappear from the public eye, gave no reasons for this assessment.