PGA Tour, Europe to merge with Saudis and end LIV litigation
The most disruptive 12 months in golf ended Tuesday when the PGA Tour and European tour agreed to a merger with Saudi Arabia’s golf pursuits, making a enterprise operation designed to unify expert golf everywhere in the world.
As part of the deal, the perimeters are dropping all lawsuits involving LIV Golf in the direction of each other environment friendly immediately.
Still to be determined is how avid gamers like Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, who defected to Saudi-funded LIV Golf for nine-figure bonuses, can rejoin the PGA Tour after this 12 months.
Also unclear was what sort the LIV Golf League would absorb 2024. Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a memo to avid gamers {{that a}} thorough evaluation would determine learn how to mix group golf into the game.
The settlement combines the Public Investment Fund’s golf-related enterprise corporations and rights — along with LIV Golf — with these of the PGA and European excursions. The new entity has not been named.
“They were going down their path, we were going down ours, and after a lot of introspection you realize all this tension in the game is not a good thing,” Monahan said in a cellphone interview with The Associated Press.
“We have a responsibility to our tour and to the game, and we felt like the time was right to have that conversation.” Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will probably be a part of the board of the PGA Tour, which continues to operates its tournaments. Al-Rumayyan will most likely be chairman of the model new
enterprise group, with Monahan as a result of the CEO and the PGA Tour having a majority stake throughout the new enterprise.
The PIF will spend cash on the enterprise enterprise. Monahan said the selection received right here collectively over the previous seven weeks.