source – The PGA Tour has agreed to merge with Saudi-backed rival LIV Golf in a deal that would allow the rivals to waive pending litigation and move forward as golf’s biggest company.
The two entities signed an agreement that would combine the business and commercial rights of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf into a new non-profit company. The deal includes the DP World Tour, also known as the European PGA Tour.
LIV Golf is backed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, an entity controlled by the Saudi crown prince that has been embroiled in antitrust lawsuits with the PGA Tour in the past year. The settlement announced Tuesday would end all pending litigation.
PIF is ready to invest billions of new capital in the new entity, CNBC’s David Faber reported Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Well, it was short-lived. And totally predictable under the circumstances. Considering that LIV Golf is an entity created entirely, not for profit, but to put a smiley face emoji on Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund and the government it pays to keep the lights on. And that kind of PR is hard when you have no relationship with the public. By that I mean that no one was looking at it or talking about it:
And from the PGA’s perspective, that makes sense for a couple of reasons. First, there are great golfers who take that sweet, sweet Saudi money. Second, the PGA has NOT been receiving this money. Third, and most importantly, the PGA is a business. In other words, it exists only to make as much money as possible. And not for another reason. Despite what you hear when Jim Nantz is waxing poetic about the storied history of some place where the ghosts of past champions echo through the pines or some purple prose shit.
My immediate reaction is that this would happen all the time. It was inevitable. As much as the PGA folks and the golf media like to moralize about “sportswashing” and indignantly insist they are above such petty motives, when the rubber hits the road, it’s all about maximizing profits. And it will be great theater to hear the same holier-than-thou types who fell so hard for Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Greg Norman and the rest, have to turn into balloon animals trying to justify all of this.
Just on a practical level, that’s what happens to these rival sports leagues time and time again. The NFL merged with the AFL. The NBA absorbed part of the ABA. Teams from the WHA joined the NHL. And these are the successful ones. The vast majority of them fold in a season or two. Because it’s business Darwinism.
The difference is that, for example, Al Davis and Lamar Hunt defied the NFL and formed a rival league, no one accused them of signing a blood contract with Satan, as LIV’s critics did. And I’m not saying that the people who support LIV aren’t inherently corrupt oligarchs. So is everyone who supports events like FIFA, the Olympics and most of the sponsors who do business with these leagues. The world is a messy place, full of evil people who have a lot of money that the rest of us wish we could get our hands on. And these brave moral stands are usually made in sandcastles at a time like this.
So the PGA is making peace with the very people it promised it would never associate with. Welcome back, everyone. As The Who said about all revolutions, “Meet the new boss. Just like the old boss.”
UPDATE: I never do. Once one post is published, I move on to the next, unless I’ve made a typo or math mistake, I’ll go back and correct it. But the moment I saw this trending on Twitter I knew I blew it. And while I was trying to post it as fast as I could to qualify as actual breaking news, I missed this low-hanging fruit:
No excuses. I have to be better. Blog like a champ today.
