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In response to
"(Reuters): US Senate panel examines PGA Tour-LIV Golf tie-up, Saudi involvement"
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mud
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VF: The LIV–PGA Tour Merger Faces the Ire of Senate Democrats: “How a Brutal Regime Can Buy Influence”
Posted by
mud
Jul 11 '23, 08:53
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Saudi-backed LIV Golf faces accusations of sportswashing as PGA Tour representatives defend their proposed merger in front of a panel of senators Tuesday. “We pursued a peace,” the PGA Tour’s chief operating officer says.
BY TOM KLUDT
JULY 11, 2023
Tuesday’s Senate hearing on the proposed merger between the PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf was supposed to be headlined by the individuals at the center of the sport’s new world order. Senator Richard Blumenthal, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, launched an investigation into the deal four weeks ago, seeking testimony from PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, LIV CEO Greg Norman, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund that has bankrolled LIV. But when Blumenthal pounded the gavel to commence the subcommittee’s hearing Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill, the proceeding was underscored more by their absences.
The witness chairs were instead filled by two representatives from the PGA Tour—chief operating officer Ron Price and Jimmy Dunne, an independent director of the Tour’s policy board. Both characterized the would-be merger as a means of survival. “Instead of losing control of the PGA Tour, an American institution and tradition, we pursued a peace that would not only end the divisive litigation battles, but would also maintain the PGA Tour’s structure, mission, and long-standing support for charity,” Price said in his prepared testimony. Monahan has been on medical leave since June 13, a week after the merger was announced, which kept him away from Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Norman and Al-Rumayyan were both absent from the hearing due to “scheduling conflicts.” A spokesman for LIV said that the league’s acting chief operating officer, Gary Davidson, “was offered to the Senate and they declined to have him testify.”
LIV poached top players from the PGA Tour—like Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka— by offering mammoth contracts, representing an “unprecedented attack,” Price said. Along with imposing suspensions on those breakaway players, the PGA Tour also found itself mired in litigation with LIV. “The dispute was undermining growth of our sport and threatening the very survival of the PGA Tour and it was unsustainable.”
Price’s emphasis on the Tour’s “American-ness” was telling. Ever since it set out to challenge the PGA Tour, LIV has stirred up political acrimony due to the central role of the Saudis. Critics, such as Blumenthal, have argued that the kingdom is using the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund that is currently worth around $700 billion, to sanitize its record on human rights with hefty investment in elite athletics. In his opening remarks on Tuesday, Blumenthal said the hearing was “about much more than the game of golf.”
“It is about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence – indeed even take over – a cherished American institution simply to cleanse its public image,” Blumenthal said. “A regime that has killed journalists, jailed and tortured dissidents, fostered the war in Yemen, and supported other terrorist activities, including 9/11. It’s called sportswashing.”
It wasn’t long ago when the PGA Tour was voicing the same lament. In a countersuit filed against LIV last fall, the PGA Tour said that LIV was attempting to “sportswash the recent history of Saudi atrocities.” Monahan even invoked 9/11 when making the case for players to remain loyal to the PGA Tour. “I would ask any player who has left or any player who would ever consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?’” Monahan said in an interview last year. Since the merger was announced last month, which would combine the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and Europe’s DP World Tour into a single commercial entity, Monahan has faced a torrent of criticism.
In prepared remarks submitted to the committee before the hearing, Dunne, a cofounder of the financial firm Sandler O’Neill + Partners who helped broker the deal between the PGA Tour and LIV, also invoked 9//11 Tuesday— but to a very different tune. “I said at the outset, golf is incredibly important to me. In fact, September 11, 2001 found me on the golf course for an early morning round. It was there that I learned of the attack on our country, and of the deaths of my mentor Herman Sandler and 65 of our colleagues in the collapse of South Tower of the World Trade Center. There is not a day when I fail to think about the friends I lost that day,” Dunne said. “But I am very confident, as well, that this was the best path forward for the Tour, for the players, for the fans, for the game of golf, and indeed for our country.”
On Capitol Hill, Democrats have supplied most of the outrage toward the PGA Tour-LIV merger. Along with the probe by Blumenthal and the subcommittee, Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden has launched his own investigation into the matter. “I’m going to use all the clubs in the bag to get to the bottom of it,” Wyden told me last month.
Meanwhile, Republicans have displayed much less appetite to look into the deal, with Mitch McConnell saying it is “not a governmental concern” and Ron Johnson, the ranking member of the Senate investigations subcommittee, saying he doesn’t think Congress should get involved. In his opening remarks at the hearing on Tuesday, Johnson said that he did not sign on to Blumenthal’s request for information from the PGA Tour and LIV “because the parties are in the midst of what should be private negotiations and there is no deal to review.” The PGA Tour and LIV have thus far only struck a “framework agreement,” and Johnson said that any congressional inquiry could derail a still “delicate” negotiation. Johnson, a golf enthusiast, was also sympathetic to those who made the deal, saying there “is nothing wrong with the PGA Tour negotiating its survival.”
“It would be grossly unfair to expect the PGA Tour to bear the burden of holding Saudi Arabia
accountable. After all, anyone who drives a car or uses oil-based products has helped fill the
coffers of the Saudi PIF,” Johnson said. “Foreign investment in the U.S. is generally a good thing, and I’d rather have the Saudis reinvest their oil wealth in America as opposed to China or Russia.”
Saudi Arabia has signaled that it has major ambitions in the sporting arena, where its financial supremacy has allowed it to exert considerable influence. The PIF bought English Premier League team Newcastle United in 2021, and in the last year, Saudi Arabia’s soccer league has attracted stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, and N’Golo Kanté. More recently, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) has been in discussions regarding a potential investment from the PIF. Tennis greats such as John McEnroe and Chris Evert have called fault on that development, while current players such as Nick Kyrgios said he would welcome the Saudi investment. Andy Murray, a former world number one, has previously rebuffed offers to play in Saudi Arabia, but he appeared to modify that stance amid the ATP’s talks with PIF.
“It's definitely something I would have to think about," Murray said earlier this month. "Unfortunately it's the way that a lot of sports seem to be going now."
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