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One Year After Golf's Wildest Day, LIV Golf Shows No Signs of Slowing Down

Bob harig | jun 4, 2024.

The man who first reached out to make a deal with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia has since resigned from the PGA Tour Policy Board in frustration over the ensuing negotiations.

The popular Tour player who was vociferous in his criticism and dislike of LIV Golf for the better part of a year softened his stance, resigned from the board, tried to get back on and is now among those pushing for a deal.

The game’s biggest name, who for years appeared indifferent to the business of the PGA Tour, was hastily added to the policy board at the urging of his peers, without a term limit.

And the PGA Tour, for the majority of its existence a non-profit membership organization, formed a for-profit arm that has already received $1.5 billion of investment with an equity program set up for players—with more to come.

A good bit has changed in the year since the shocking “framework agreement” was announced on the Tuesday morning of the week prior to the U.S. Open, with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan appearing on camera with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the PIF—which funds LIV Golf—pledging to put their differences aside.

What hasn’t changed? LIV Golf.

Yes, the league added a 13th team, captained by its biggest offseason signing, Jon Rahm. Longtime recluse Anthony Kim emerged to take a wild card spot in the 54-player lineup. Bryson DeChambeau has found his game, contending in two major championships this year.

But the idea that LIV Golf would be shuttered, diminished or marginalized—all surmised or suggested in the aftermath of the deal—has not materialized.

In fact, LIV Golf has soldiered on, adding C-suite executives, signing sponsorship deals, putting together a schedule for 2025 and beyond.

“The spigot is now wide open for commercial sponsorships, blue-chip companies, TV networks,” said Greg Norman, the Hall of Fame golfer who is LIV Golf’s CEO and commissioner. “LIV is and will continue to be a standalone enterprise. Our business model will not change. We changed history and we’re not going anywhere.”

Norman said that to stunned LIV Golf staffers in the aftermath of the June 6 agreement a year ago. His comments were viewed with immense skepticism as some wondered if he would survive with a “merger” or alliance. Norman, like almost everyone in the game, was unaware that a deal was going on. And he was somehow pledging that LIV Golf would be better and not going anywhere?

So far, Norman, who maintains he is not privy to PIF’s negotiations with the PGA Tour, has been correct.

Revolving board seats, one PIF meeting

Jimmy Dunne, who first reached out to Al-Rumayyan with a text in the spring of 2023, resigned from the Policy Board last month. Rory McIlroy, who said he’d “retire” before ever joining LIV Golf, has called for a deal between the parties. Tiger Woods was added to the policy board as a player director last summer. And Strategic Sports Group, a private equity company, pledged up to $3 billion, with an initial investment of $1.5 billion in January.

But negotiations with the PIF have, by most accounts, been sporadic. Woods and the other player directors on the board did not meet with Al-Rumayyan or anyone from the PIF until March. Player directors such as Webb Simpson and Peter Malnati said as late as that meeting in March that they were not even aware of what the PIF wanted as part of a deal.

McIlroy, at the PGA Championship, expressed concern over Dunne’s departure. But Jordan Spieth, a player director who in February suggested that PIF investment was no longer necessary, said: “I think the narrative that things are in a bad place and are moving slowly and some of the things that are asked to me or said are untrue. I know that it's false, actually. Things are actually moving positively from both sides. I think ultimately we'll end up in a place where professional golf is maybe the best that it's ever been. I think both sides believe that.”

Nobody knows what that means.

Will LIV players be permitted to return to the PGA Tour in any limited way? Will there be a separate competition, as McIlroy has proposed, that brings together all of the top players from around the world outside of the major championships?  Could LIV Golf’s schedule be reduced and folded into a new PGA Tour Enterprises endeavor? Played in the fall? Continue to run concurrently?

Those are just ideas, none of which seem to be thwarting LIV’s efforts to keep doing what it is doing.

“We know it’s going to be here, bigger, badder and better than ever before,” DeChambeau said. “It’s just going to keep growing over the next five to 10 years.”

LIV hiring while hunting for money

LIV Golf is playing the eighth event of its 14-tournament 2024 schedule this week in Houston. Unlike its original intent to avoid some of the higher profile PGA Tour events, it is being played the same week as the Tour’s Memorial Tournament, the event hosted by Jack Nicklaus.

The idea that LIV is “additive” as Norman has said on several occasions is counter to the scheduling. LIV’s tournaments on the CW Network are played in the same 1–6 p.m. ET time zone regardless of location and on tape delay when overseas. That is the traditional time slot for PGA Tour events as well, and forces those who might want to watch both to either choose or switch back and forth.

Whether LIV’s decision to play against Nicklaus’ longtime tournament is out of defiance or simply a desire to play closer to the major championships is unclear—LIV is also playing in Nashville the week after the U.S. Open when the PGA Tour has another signature event, the Travelers Championship. (Also, the Memorial has traditionally been two weeks prior to the U.S. Open and switched dates with the RBC Canadian Open this year as part of the Tour’s signature event plan.)

While it has attracted a core of devoted and sometimes defiant supporters, LIV has had modest success via television ratings and mediocre attendance, save for a couple of its international venues. Sports Business Journal reported increases on linear TV for its first two events this year on the CW Network over 2023, to more than 400,000 viewers for its first event in Mexico. A week later, LIV averaged 297,000 viewers in Las Vegas.

Those figures do not include streaming, which LIV Golf says have increased over last year and undoubtedly would give them far better numbers. LIV streams on numerous worldwide outlets including its own website. The first rounds are not available on linear TV and LIV’s most recent events in Australia and Singapore were not broadcast live, but also had a streaming audience that played overnight in the United States.

LIV has also announced numerous sponsorships in recent months including an official cap with New Era and a technology partner in Google Cloud, plus more than a dozen team partnerships.

But none of these agreements appear to be similar to the multi-million-dollar deals that the PGA Tour secures each week, enabling all of its purses and television production to be paid for before one ticket is sold. LIV Golf, for example, is not getting a huge rights fee from the CW Network; that means it must pay for its own production costs.

The team deals are important because the 13 teams are expected to subsist on their own, with only small backing from the league itself. Each team is responsible for its own travel for players, caddies and staff and for paying team contracts to players.

Aside from team prize money—which is only paid to the top three teams each week and will see all teams paid at the season-ending team championship—the best revenue sources are sponsorships or hospitality deals, which teams are allowed to negotiate.

Clearly that has been more of an appetite for LIV Golf in overseas, underserved markets. The event at Valderrama in Spain last year was popular and promises to be even more so this year with Rahm’s presence.

Tournaments in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and England have also attracted large gatherings, with the event in Adelaide a huge hit in each of the past two years. LIV Golf reported 94,000 spectators for the week at its Adelaide event in April, and the reason is understandable: star golfers such as DeChambeau, Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and other top LIV players did not typically visit those places when they played on the PGA Tour.

Hence, there are already rumblings that LIV’s 2025 schedule will see far more international datelines. It’s possible that as many as nine of the 14 events could be played outside of the United States.

“I think there's a lot of things that are going to transpire over the next five or 10 years,” said Mickelson at the LIV event in Singapore. “I'm very bullish and excited about what that means for LIV Golf ... I just see that the game of golf is going to grow on a much more global basis because of the excitement and the presence that LIV Golf has.”

Whether or not the financial bleeding subsides depends a lot on whether or not the franchise model catches on. The idea is for LIV to sell its 13 teams, something that has yet to occur and likely is not helped by the uncertainty of the negotiations. Just as RBC, the title sponsor of the Canadian Open, said it is waiting to see what transpires before re-signing with the PGA Tour, it makes sense that a potential team owner wants to be sure that LIV will still be standing or at least operating to somewhat near the same level.

LIV proceeds as if it will. Of the 13 teams, 10 have general managers that run their affairs, with smaller sponsorship deals used to shore up finances in addition to the team purses. Those GMs, such as Jeff Koski, who is Rahm’s agent and now also in charge of his Legion XIII team with LIV, run the teams as they see fit, with input from the captains.

“LIV Golf is here to stay,” said Lawrence Burian, LIV Golf’s chief operating officer, following the signing of Rahm. “The addition of Jon reemphasizes that our league is not slowing down. We are continuing to invest and build aggressively for LIV’s long-term and exciting future.’’

Burian was hired from Madison Square Garden last year and the appointment was announced the day after its season-ending team championship in Miami.

No LIV executives were made available for interviews for this story, but LIV Golf did provide the names and titles of its various hires, including chief marketing officer Adam Harter, who was most recently PepsiCo’s senior vice president of media, sports & entertainment.

LIV also hired a chief financial officer, David Phillips, who came from Equinox Group; EVP, head of events, Ross Hallett, who most recently worked as head of golf events EMA for IMG; EVP, head of team business operations Katie O’Reilly, previously the chief revenue officer for the Philadelphia 76ers NBA team; LIV also hired a head of human resources and a new executive vice president to run its London office.

The league also announced that it is moving into new, bigger office space in both New York and London while expanding its operation in West Palm Beach, Fla. In total, according to a LIV Golf spokesman, the league employs about 200 people full-time around the world, not including numerous contractors. That’s growth of some 50% since the start of 2023.

Golf's Super Bowl?

DeChambeau said earlier this year he believed a deal between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF was imminent, but the SSG investment in PGA Tour Enterprises clearly pushed that back.

The 2020 U.S. Open champion who finished second two weeks ago at the PGA Championship is still bullish on some sort of agreement. Like McIlroy, he suggested something outside of the current setup as one possibility. McIlroy has proposed a “Champions League” system that would promote the best players into a separate competition of events.

Something along those lines is where PIF investment—setting up a lucrative series of six to eight worldwide events outside of the PGA Tour and LIV—makes sense, and could be a potential big revenue source for PGA Tour Enterprises.

“How great would it be to have these signature events have a team aspect on it?” DeChambeau said. “It increases the value of those tournaments. You create a 50-50 partnership on the split of the team stuff and call it a day. We have certain events outside of the PGA Tour, we have events that are on the PGA Tour. We come together at the end of the season like the NFC-AFC. It’s not a hard fix.”

DeChambeau’s NFL/Super Bowl idea is one of many that have been tossed around outside of those who are ultimately making the decisions. And that is where there has been a void.

Nobody knows for sure how this will look and there are myriad issues to work through, not the least of which could LIV players come back to the PGA Tour in any way—if they even want to do so.

The Framework's promises and its reality

It is interesting to remember what the original six-page agreement had outlined. Among the things it stipulated was that Al-Rumayyan would be the chairman of the board of the new company, then called NewCo and now PGA Tour Enterprises. He would also be given a spot on the PGA Tour Policy Board, which runs the non-profit PGA Tour Inc.

The agreement stated that the league that launched in June 2022 would see its future determined by the PGA Tour Enterprises board of directors and that the PGA Tour would hold a majority.

There was considerable pushback about that, especially when it was viewed that if the PIF would be putting in the majority of the money, why wouldn’t Al-Rumayyan have a bigger say? Well, for now, he’s not part of it at all, and if he is, what will happen?

Monahan, who has added responsibilities with the PGA Tour Enterprises, was as part of the agreement to be its CEO. Dunne and Ed Herlihy, members of the PGA Tour policy board, were also to be members of the new board—but neither were added.

The agreement also said that an “empirical data-driven evaluation” would be conducted of LIV Golf to determine its future, and the board, overseen by Monahan, “will determine the ongoing plan and strategy.”

Elsewhere, the agreement stated that the board “will make a good faith assessment of the benefits of team golf.” Whether any of that ever occurred or is ongoing is unclear.

But one thing is not: LIV Golf continues to operate as if it will be a stand-alone league, with its team concept and 54-hole shotgun events and various sponsorship deals.

Several player contracts will expire at the end of this year, and in order to create interest, LIV will need to bring on new players. Does it continue to offer lucrative deals to existing PGA Tour players? And what does that mean about any agreement?

A year later, so much remains unknown. But from LIV’s standpoint, it appears the attitude is thus: business as usual.

Bob Harig is a senior writer covering golf for Sports Illustrated. He has more than 25 years experience on the beat, including 15 at ESPN. Harig is a regular guest on Sirius XM PGA Tour Radio and has written two books, "DRIVE: The Lasting Legacy of Tiger Woods" and "Tiger and Phil: Golf's Most Fascinating Rivalry." He graduated from Indiana University where he earned an Evans Scholarship, named in honor of the great amateur golfer Charles (Chick) Evans Jr. Harig, a former president of the Golf Writers Association of America, lives in Clearwater, Fla.

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The biggest takeaways from the LIV golfers' eye-opening lawsuit against the PGA Tour

• Senior college football writer
• Author of seven books on college football
• Graduate of the University of Georgia

As soon as the PGA Tour suspended players who competed in the rival LIV Golf Invitational Series, it seemed inevitable that the circuits' battle for the best players in the world would end up in a courtroom.

On Wednesday, Phil Mickelson , Bryson DeChambeau and nine other LIV Golf players filed an antitrust lawsuit in federal court. Three of the players, Matt Jones , Hudson Swafford and Talor Gooch , are also seeking a temporary restraining order that would allow them to compete in the FedEx Cup Playoffs .

After a summer of drama, defections and stunning developments, the gloves have officially come off.

"I don't like that they're suing the PGA Tour because they're suing the players as well," PGA Tour player Billy Horschel told ESPN on Wednesday. "We are the PGA Tour. I am the PGA Tour. Collin Morikawa is the PGA Tour. Justin Thomas is the PGA Tour. The 200-plus members are the PGA Tour."

Here are some of the biggest revelations from the lawsuit filed in federal court in the Northern District of California:

Is the PGA Tour colluding with the majors?

Lawyers representing the suspended players believe that the PGA Tour's bans on players who join LIV Golf "are vastly strengthened if the ban encompasses not only PGA Tour events, but also the four majors," which are organized by separate governing bodies.

"The Tour is aware that if it can foreclose LIV Golf players from having access to these events -- or even create enough credible doubt about whether participation in LIV Golf will end a player's chances of playing in those events -- LIV Golf will find it prohibitively difficult to sign and sustain a critical mass of players to field a competitive elite-level tour," the lawsuit said.

The players' lawyers allege that the PGA Tour "has pressured and encouraged the Major organizations to join its group boycott and to prevent LIV Golf from entering the global golf ecosystem."

LIV players who were eligible to compete in the majors were permitted to play this year.

Some of the leaders of the four governing bodies haven't minced their words about LIV Golf. PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh said as early as in May 2021 that his organization was in "full support of the PGA Tour and the European Tour regarding the current ecosystem of the professional game."

USGA CEO Mike Whan added at the U.S. Open in June: "Could you envision a day where it would be harder for some folks doing different things to get into a U.S. Open? I could. Will that be true? I don't know, but I can definitely foresee that day."

At last month's Open Championship at St. Andrews, Martin Slumbers, CEO of the R&A, told reporters that LIV Golf is "harming the perception of the sport."

Augusta National Golf Club chairman Fred Ridley, who oversees the Masters, hasn't taken such a hard line, at least not publicly. But the LIV golfers' lawyers accused him of working behind the scenes for the PGA Tour in the lawsuit.

The complaint said Augusta National representatives "threatened to disinvite players from The Masters if they joined LIV Golf." It alleged Ridley "personally instructed" players in this year's tournament not to defect to LIV Golf and that he refused to sit down with LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman to discuss the new circuit's business model.

Further, the lawsuit alleges that Slumbers and Ridley called Cho Minn Thant, CEO of the Asian Tour, "to threaten consequences relating to the Asian Tour's position in the current 'ecosystem' if the Asian Tour continued to support LIV Golf and its LIV Golf Invitational Series." The R&A took away the Asian Tour's Order of Merit winner's entry into The Open, according to the complaint.

Do the LIV players have a chance to prevail in court?

One of the challenges for the LIV Golf players, according to Craig Seebald, a partner and antitrust expert at Vinson & Elkins law firm, is proving injury. Many of the players who left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf received guaranteed signing bonuses of between $100 million and $200 million.

"Normally, when you're representing plaintiffs, you say, 'Oh my God, our plaintiffs are so hurt. They're so injured. They're going out of business," Seebald said. "But the allegation in the complaint is that to get these players across the transom to be part of LIV, they had to overpay them. They were surprised they had to pay all these upfront payments to get people over. I guess they're saying that makes it hard in the long term for them to be viable, despite the fact they have the Saudis giving them millions of dollars."

Seebald believes it will be difficult for the three LIV players seeking temporary restraining orders to participate in the FedEx Cup Playoffs to get them. Seebald did note that the Northern District of California is a popular choice of venue for antitrust plaintiffs. It's the same court that essentially blew up the NCAA's amateurism model in the Ed O'Bannon case.

"I think the chances are pretty slim that they're going to do that [issue a restraining order]," Seebald said. "This is essentially a money case. I think the court would say, 'Look, we can sort out the money later. This is a big case.' The judge might not want to just kind of jump in without knowing many of the facts before doing something that extraordinary."

Horschel, a member of the PGA Tour Player Advisory Committee, also wondered how the LIV Golf players could argue they were injured after receiving lucrative signing bonuses and competing for $25 million purses.

"Why do they need to be a part of the PGA Tour?" Horschel said. "Why do they need a double dip? Why do they need to have their cake and eat it at the same time and sort of rub it in all the other PGA Tour players' faces? That just doesn't make sense to me."

LIV Golf almost partnered with the DP World Tour

One of the more interesting revelations was that representatives of Saudi Golf met with DP World Tour officials in Malta in July. During that meeting, according to the complaint, DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley "confirmed" the new series' appeal and fit, but said the "mighty power" of the PGA Tour was his main issue and "need to avoid a collision course between the DP World Tour and PGA Tour.

"Under pressure from the 'mighty power' of the PGA Tour, the European Tour agreed to boycott and rejected the opportunity to partner with the new entrant, and instead strengthened its strategic alliance with the PGA Tour," the complaint says.

The lawyers alleged that the PGA Tour pressured the DP World Tour to amend its regulations to restrict its players from competing in LIV Golf tournaments. The DP World Tour fined its players $125,000 and suspended them from events it co-sanctions with the PGA Tour, including the Scottish Open.

"The European Tour agreed to all of the PGA Tour's demands to implement the group boycott," the complaint said.

Mickelson was suspended in March

Mickelson's controversial comments to author Alan Shipnuck about the Saudis being "scary motherf------" led him to spend four months away from golf. But part of his hiatus wasn't his own choosing.

The lawsuit said Mickelson, a six-time major champion, was first suspended for two months by the PGA Tour on March 22 for "attempting to recruit players to [LIV Golf]." An appeals committee upheld Mickelson's suspension. His request for reinstatement about two months later was denied because he had played in the first LIV Golf event in London.

"The Tour's unlawful conduct cost Mickelson endorsement deals and sponsorships," the lawsuit said. "Notably, the Tour is the only golf tour shown regularly on broadcast television in the United States, and it earns vastly more in sponsorship, advertising, and broadcast revenue than any other golf tour."

DeChambeau signed with LIV Golf twice

DeChambeau, winner of the 2020 U.S. Open and one of the most polarizing players in the game, was linked to LIV Golf long before he actually signed on June 10.

According to the lawsuit, DeChambeau signed with the Saudi-backed circuit twice. Because of the PGA Tour's "threats of punishment and career destruction," LIV Golf wasn't able to fill out its plans for a league this season.

"Some players (including Plaintiff DeChambeau) who had previously signed contracts with LIV Golf were forced to publicly profess loyalty to the Tour," the lawsuit said. "Other players who had previously agreed in principle to all terms with LIV Golf informed LIV Golf that they now could not sign, and instead publicly professed loyalty to the Tour. Players who had been enthusiastic about joining LIV Golf informed LIV Golf that they regrettably could not join in light of these threats."

What about the Ryder Cup?

The lawsuit claims that at the 2021 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, PGA of America representatives "privately threatened golfers and their representatives that they would be banned from future Ryder Cups and the PGA Championship if they joined LIV Golf."

Waugh previously told reporters that U.S. players have to be a member of his organization, through the PGA Tour, to compete in the Ryder Cup, which the PGA of America co-organizes with the DP World Tour.

Waugh repeated the organization's stance at the PGA Championship at Southern Hills in May.

Zach Johnson , the U.S. team captain for the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome, Italy, was asked in June if LIV players would be eligible for captain's picks.

"The way that we're members of the PGA of America is through the PGA Tour," Johnson said. "I'll let you connect the dots from there."

In the complaint, attorneys representing the LIV players asked the judge to "[p]revent the PGA Tour from conspiring or unlawfully agreeing with the European Tour to ban or threaten to ban players from participating in European Tour events or participating in the Ryder Cup for talking to, contracting with, playing in, or associating with LIV Golf."

PGA Tour vendors and sponsors don't like LIV Golf

In what was perhaps the least surprising allegation in the complaint, several longtime PGA Tour vendors and sponsors, including apparel, golf equipment, technology companies and golf courses, allegedly chose not to do business with LIV Golf because of their relationship with the PGA Tour.

"LIV Golf tried to enter into a business relationship with Dick's Sporting Goods," the lawsuit said. "In response, Dick's Sporting Goods informed LIV Golf that '[g]iven our relationship with the PGA Tour and our Tournament [PGA Tour Champions tournament], [Dick's Sporting Goods representatives] agree it's best to pass right now."

The complaint said Ticketmaster was prepared to work with LIV Golf, but allegedly pulled out of the deal "in response to pressure from the PGA Tour."

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How the PGA Tour’s Deal With Saudi Arabia’s Wealth Fund Could Collapse

The tentative agreement has been the talk of golf, but there is no guarantee the pact that aims to bring the tour and LIV Golf under one umbrella will overcome every threat.

By Alan Blinder Lauren Hirsch and Kevin Draper

Alan Blinder and Kevin Draper reported from Dearborn, Mich., and Lauren Hirsch from New York.

Golf’s big deal — a planned partnership between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — is not how big deals are ordinarily done.

There were almost no outside bankers or lawyers involved in negotiations that led to a five-page framework agreement , and only so much input from the PGA Tour board. The initial pact had few binding clauses and did not assign values to assets. The plan that would, as the PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, put it, “take the competitor off of the board” came as the tour faced a Justice Department investigation over antitrust matters.

“In some ways, this looks a little more like a settlement to me than an actual M&A deal,” said Suni Sreepada, a partner in the mergers & acquisitions group at Ropes & Gray who said the lack of definitive arrangements complicated the path to closing.

“The fact that they were willing to publicly announce it does mean that the parties are pretty committed to doing something,” Sreepada said. “But I guess that leaves us with a question of who holds the leverage at this point? And how does this end up getting fleshed out?”

If the agreement closes, it stands to reshape golf’s economic structure profoundly, bringing the business ventures of the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour, into a new company. The wealth fund is in line to have significant influence over investments in the company, which Monahan is poised to lead as chief executive.

Despite the Saudi sway over the new company’s coffers, as well as the plan for the wealth fund’s governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, to serve as the entity’s chairman, PGA Tour officials have insisted that the tour retains control over the competitions themselves. They also note that the tour, which had previously condemned wealth fund money as tainted and immoral, will control a majority of board seats.

“We are confident that once all stakeholders learn more about how the PGA Tour will lead this new venture, they will understand how it benefits our players, fans and sport while protecting the American institution of golf,” the tour said this month.

Those assurances have done little to curb outrage over the pact, which could still fall apart.

Here are some of the obstacles the tour, whose board is meeting near Detroit on Tuesday, and the wealth fund will have to overcome during a process that could take months. If the deal is not done by Dec. 31, it could potentially collapse, allowing both sides to decide whether they want to “revert to operating their respective businesses.”

The PGA Tour’s board could balk.

The tour has an 11-member board that includes five players. The board’s chairman, Edward D. Herlihy, and a member, James J. Dunne III, were involved in the talks with the wealth fund, but others had little knowledge of the deal until the day it became public.

The board must sign off on the agreement once the outstanding details are negotiated. Although Herlihy and Dunne are expected to vote for the pact they helped create, most other board members have been publicly silent or noncommittal.

“I told myself I’m not going to be for it or against it until I know everything, and I still don’t know everything,” Webb Simpson, a board member who won the 2012 U.S. Open, said in a recent interview. And at a news conference on June 13, Patrick Cantlay, another player with a board seat, said “it seems like it’s still too early to have enough information to have a good handle on the situation.”

Beyond the anticipated backing from Herlihy and Dunne, Rory McIlroy, who sits on the board, has indicated reluctant support for the deal, saying: “If you’re thinking about one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world, would you rather have them as a partner or an enemy?”

Other directors have not responded to messages or could not be reached for comment.

With many of the agreement’s details still being negotiated, the board did not vote on the deal on Tuesday.

The Justice Department could try to block the deal.

The Justice Department was looking at professional golf before the deal was announced, with antitrust investigators examining the tour’s closeness with other leading golf organizations and its efforts to deter players from joining LIV.

The proposed partnership did not extinguish the department’s interest. In fact, it appears to have strengthened it.

Although the tour and the wealth fund have refused to characterize the transaction as a merger, antitrust experts say semantics may not matter. Even if the deal is structured as more of a partnership than an acquisition, the Justice Department could seek to block it, as it successfully did with JetBlue’s alliance with American Airlines .

Monahan stirred more doubts in Washington with his public observation that a leading rival would no longer be a threat. Antitrust lawyers said the department could interpret his remark as evidence that the elimination of competition is the aim of the deal, not, say, improving the sport.

But Monahan also said the agreement would help create “a productive position for the game at large.” The tour is expected to focus on this in the coming months, arguing that by combining resources and repairing the rift in professional golf, the proposed venture would offer fans the best of all worlds, including more competitions between the finest players on the planet.

The end of the tension could help persuade regulators to approve the deal, reasoning that it is good for consumers.

“If I were the lifetime czar of antitrust in the United States, I would ban the deal and tell them go back and compete,” said Stephen F. Ross, who teaches sports law at Penn State and worked for the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.

But, he said, “the real world is that neither private litigation nor antitrust enforcers have ever been particularly good at policing competition between sporting entities to make sure that consumers’ preferences are respected.”

The department could also scrutinize how the arrangement will affect professional golfers, given the Biden administration’s focus on workers. In its successful effort to block Penguin Random House’s takeover bid for Simon & Schuster, the department’s antitrust regulators cited the potential effects on author compensation.

Even though professional golfers, who often earn millions of dollars in prize and sponsorship money, may appear to be a less sympathetic group of workers than others affected by corporate transactions, the department could be eager to build case law related to the labor consequences of deals.

Congress wants the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to study the pact.

The deal has been loudly criticized on Capitol Hill, and a Senate subcommittee has scheduled a July hearing. But a Senate hearing cannot stop the deal, and so some lawmakers have asked a Treasury Department-led panel to intervene.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, is an interagency panel that has broad latitude to scrutinize any transaction that could result in a foreign entity controlling an American business and threatening national interests. Control is interpreted broadly, and can exist even in an investment for a minority stake.

A transaction involving golf tours would not immediately seem to trigger a CFIUS review; it does not involve critical technologies and most likely does not involve much sensitive personal data about U.S. citizens. Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, said earlier this month that it was “not immediately obvious” the deal involved national security concerns.

The demands for a review have not detailed specific concerns besides a generalized distaste for a partnership between an American sports titan and an arm of a government “known for chilling dissent, jailing dissidents and enacting draconian punishments,” as Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, and Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, put it .

But one possible reason to scrutinize the deal involves real estate since CFIUS can review agreements involving property close to sensitive military sites. One of the PGA Tour’s biggest assets that could be controlled by the new for-profit entity is the Tournament Players Club collection of more than 30 golf courses across the United States that are owned, licensed or operated by the PGA Tour.

Alan Blinder is a sports reporter. He has reported from more than 30 states, as well as Asia and Europe, since he joined The Times in 2013. More about Alan Blinder

Lauren Hirsch joined The Times from CNBC in 2020, covering deals and the biggest stories on Wall Street. More about Lauren Hirsch

Kevin Draper is an investigative reporter on the Sports desk, where he has written about workplace harassment and discrimination, sexual misconduct, doping, league investigations and high-profile court cases. More about Kevin Draper

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Here’s what LIV golfers can and can’t do, according to their contracts

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Here's a breakdown of what LIV's player contracts stipulate.

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As litigation continues in the LIV vs. PGA Tour dispute , more and more information is becoming available as it pertains to the upstart golf league.

With a handful of legal documents — such as players contracts, which the Wall Street Journal examined earlier this week — becoming unsealed in recent days, it’s given curious observers an opportunity to look under the hood to understand the nuances of LIV. While the legal jargon can be a little difficult to decipher, there’s still plenty of takeaways from these documents.

GOLF.com reviewed two of these player contracts (of Talor Gooch and Hudson Swafford) to better understand the dos and don’ts for those under contract with the league. If you’d like to read the contracts for yourself, you can find them here and here . But for those without the time to sift through a bunch of legalese, you can check out some of the restrictions and expectations below.

Let’s get to it.

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Restrictions

No drama in the media.

One provision states that players should “not act or fail to act in any manner which brings or could be expected to bring any Relevant Person into disrepute, scandal or ridicule including as a result of any comment made to the media, via any Social Media channels or in any other public forum.”

In other words, don’t start any drama. This seems to indicate that the once-spicy Brooks Koepka-Bryson DeChambeau feud will not continue (publicly, at least) as long as they are contracted by LIV. Don’t look for any more Phil Mickelson bombshells, either — at least not from his mouth.

It was fun while it lasted.

No outside media appearances

Players are not permitted to make any appearances in the media, or grant any exclusive interviews, without obtaining prior approval from the league.

“[Players must] refrain from (i) being accredited to act as a journalist or in any other capacity for any media organization in relation to the League or any Tournament,” the contract says. “Or (ii) providing exclusive interviews or commentaries or entering into any agreements or arrangements involving exclusive interviews with or appearances in or on any media or Social Media of any kind in relation to any Event or League Activity in each case without obtaining the Specified Approval.”

LIV seems to be pushing hard to control the messaging surrounding their league, especially when the messenger is a player under contract.

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Expectations

Play all events.

As previously reported, every player under contract with LIV is expected to participate in every event on the schedule. There are eight LIV events scheduled for this season, while 2023 will feature 10 events. In 2024, and each subsequent season, LIV plans to stage 14 tournaments.

Wear team apparel

One big element of LIV’s model is the team component. This format has largely been jumbled and hard to follow so far, but as more players come aboard and teams become more established, it seems like LIV plans to push the team branding even more.

One provision in the contract (5.3h) states that players must “wear and use only the appropriate Team Apparel and not display any badge, mark, logo, insignia, or trading name” without securing the proper approval.

But the contract does allow for “a single badge, mark, logo, insignia, or trading name of one third-party supplier of golf technical equipment on the right side of the Player’s hat or cap,” so long as the hat otherwise meets all LIV contractual obligations.

Except to start seeing some Four Aces and Fireballz apparel when these pros tee it up in majors moving forward.

Participation in tournament pro-ams

Just what it sounds like: Players must the play the pro-am in any event in which entered. They must also appear at a draft party “for no less than 5 hours.” At every event, they’re also required to attend a “Photo Call & Welcome Reception,” a “Meet and Greet,” another “Meet and Greet” if they win the tournament and one hospitality/junior clinic. Phew!

Participation in corporate outings

Playing golf isn’t the only duty players will be expected to perform while under contract.

One of the stipulations indicates that players must “participate fully in in up to 7 additional Service Days” in 2022, with “12 additional Service Days in each following year.”

A Service Day is defined in the contract as “any day during which the Player is required to participate in and assist the League Operator and/or the Team Operator with meetings, negotiations and/or other activities with corporate sponsors or other business partners of the League.”

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Recruit other players

According to the Wall Street Journal report, LIV players must act as recruiters for the league.

Per the WSJ, the contract stipulates that players agree to “where requested, assist the League Operator in seeking to persuade players to enter into multiyear player participation agreements with the League Operator.”

Players will collect a $1 million bonus for winning a major championship (Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open or Open Championship) — “provided that he has, while competing in such tournament, complied with all of his obligations in this Agreement including as regards apparel”

In other words, if a LIV player wins the Masters in April, don’t be surprised if he’s wearing a LIV cap when Scottie Scheffler slips the green jacket over the champ’s shoulders.

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Golf.com Editor

Zephyr Melton is an assistant editor for GOLF.com where he spends his days blogging, producing and editing. Prior to joining the team at GOLF, he attended the University of Texas followed by stops with the Texas Golf Association, Team USA, the Green Bay Packers and the PGA Tour. He assists on all things instruction and covers amateur and women’s golf. He can be reached at [email protected].

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The LIV Golf question that the PGA Tour must answer

Richard Heathcote

Golf’s civil war is near its endgame and those deciding its fate are down to two roads. One is paved by principle, where ego is checked at the door for a journey that will be difficult yet whose direction is ultimately true. The other … well, the travelers may have their reasons for this path, some of which are staked in virtue. But the real guide here is pride, and forging down this way will only lead to another crossroads, if not a cliff. The problem for those making this decision is many have these roads confused for one another.

Those hoping for long-awaited unification in the professional game were likely disappointed with last week’s announcement that the PGA Tour would be partnering with private equity. The door remains open for future rapport with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, also known as the financial backer that spurred golf’s schism, although those talks have gone cold, multiple sources have told Golf Digest. While the deal with the Strategic Sports Group was made with future PIF involvement in mind, some of the tour’s player leaders are telegraphing they’re just fine if PIF—and more specifically, PIF’s LIV Golf and LIV players—remain on the outs. And that is a problem, because a schism remains a schism unless the sport is made whole.

“I don’t think that it’s needed,” said tour board member Jordan Spieth last week. “I think the positive [of a deal with PIF] would be a unification [of PGA Tour and LIV players], but I just think it's something that is almost not even worth talking about right this second. The idea is that we have a strategic partner that allows the PGA Tour to go forward the way that it's operating right now without anything else.”

Adam Scott was more blunt in his assessment: “We don’t need it purely from a financial standpoint.”

Financially they are not wrong. Adding $1.5 billion to its coffers, with another $1.5 billion in the wings, provides the tour a stability that wasn’t there just weeks ago. Although the $930 million in player equity shares will not prevent other players from eventually defecting—because greed and entitlement cannot be alleviated by any dollar amount—it should buy the tour some time.

Conversely, that is viewed solely through the prism of business, which is problematic because the tour is not battling another company but a foreign kingdom, one willing to bankroll its LIV project for reasons other than economic viability and willing to confer an endless runway until those goals are reached. Forget the hundreds of millions bestowed to Jon Rahm; PIF can hand out $75 million contracts to players who haven’t won in years and not think twice. Three billion for the tour is a lot but it's still less than a blank check.

Spieth and Scott, Tiger Woods, Patrick Cantlay and others involved in the tour’s direction know this, or should know this. As is often the case with riches in professional sports, it’s not about the money. It’s what the money means. To paraphrase Phil Mickelson, it’s all about leverage, and for the first time in nearly two years the tour’s constituents feel like they have the upper hand. That they, not LIV Golf, dictate their future. Or at least, they can remain on the tour side and be wealthier for it.

However, if this schism and its consequences could be distilled to one concept, it’s that a majority of stars have worried more about their bank accounts rather than where the cost of those transactions were taking the sport. Aside from a handful of individuals, this whole mess has lacked adults in the room. That presence is needed more than ever, because what comes next for the tour and its players is the hard part.

Darren Carroll/PGA of America

An avenue for LIV players to return to the PGA Tour remains low on the negotiation priority list, multiple sources familiar with the talks tell Golf Digest. Part of that low priority is due to the contentious nature of the issue. PIF is arguing for both LIV integration into the PGA Tour schedule, and for LIV players to compete in tour events. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who described his secret deal with PIF as a chance “to take the competitor off the board,” wants several LIV players under the tour umbrella, albeit with LIV shut down. Most of the top PGA Tour players do not want LIV players back without some sort of penalty or retribution. The player faction has made those intentions public in the past two weeks following Rory McIlroy’s comments that he wants the game unified again. Among those who have spoken out against a seamless homecoming for LIV members are Spieth, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and Scottie Scheffler. Two player sources tell Golf Digest that Woods is also against LIV players receiving a free pass.

"I think there's a lot of us that made sacrifices and were very ... whether it's true to our word or what we believe in or just didn't make that decision, and I totally understand that things are changing and things are getting better, but it just would ... I would have a hard time with it,” Thomas said this week, “and I think a lot of guys would have a hard time with it, and I'm sure we don't need to convince you why we would have a hard time with it. I think there's a scenario somewhere, whatever it is, down the road of some kind of version of some guys being back. But when and what that is, I have no idea."

Added Scheffler: "I think there's a different level of player that left. You had some guys that left our tour and then sued our tour. That wasn't really in great taste. Then you had some other guys that just left and they wanted to do something different. Everybody made their own decision, and I have no bad blood towards the guys that left. But a path towards coming back, I think it wouldn't be a very popular decision, I think, if they just came back like nothing ever happened. I think there should be a pathway back for them, but they definitely shouldn't be able to come back without any sort of contribution to the tour, if that makes sense."

It’s easy to empathize with this view. How do you reconcile a theoretical return to tour membership, that those who left for tens of millions in guaranteed money—money the tour warned had consequences—if consequences are not enforced? This is especially true of the LIV players that sued the PGA Tour, a lawsuit that put the tour in a vulnerable financial position. How do you reconcile the return to fans, many of whom harbor hard feelings to LIV players for causing this war? How do you reconcile partnering with those who sided with a regime accused of human rights atrocities?

However, how are those dilemmas weighed against the reality of letting the last two years continue?

This is not PIF’s decision; for all the things money can buy, it can’t purchase a conscience. This is not Monahan’s decision; he put the tour in this can’t-win scenario . Ideally the fans would be the North Star; alas, while fans will ultimately decide if golf is headed in the right way, they are not the ones behind the wheel. The choice belongs to the players who stayed on the PGA Tour. They are the ones who stayed, whose careers were and are on the line, who did what they believed was right, yet are now forced to judge those that wronged them.

Tour players may think their stance against LIV players returning is one of principle. In truth, it’s pride. Because it takes swallowing one’s pride to welcome back the prodigal son. To let others think they’ve won. To think your sacrifices were for naught. To risk the appearance of going back on what you originally stood against. But to not welcome back LIV players, to keep this war going … there’s a reason pride comes before the fall.

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