Ending years of rancor and legal disputes, the PGA Tour has agreed to merge with Saudi-backed LIV Golf.
In a joint statement, the two organizations declared it “a landmark agreement to unify the game of golf, on a global basis.”
That’s a sharp turn from the rhetoric after the two had filed dueling antitrust suits, with the upstart LIV maintaining that the decades-old PGA had engaged in anticompetitive practices. The PGA had objected to LIV coming into its turf and luring talent away with hefty payouts, describing that behavior as illegal interference.
As a result of the merger agreement, all legal claims have been dropped by the parties.
The yet-to-be-named merged entity will bring together combines PIF’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from a model that delivers maximum excitement and competition among the game’s best players.”
“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA Tour’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV — including the team golf concept — to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.”
The merger will have major implications for golf’s media partners. The CW, now run by Nexstar Media Group, picked up rights to LIV starting this year as its first live sports programming. The PGA is in business with Disney/ESPN, NBCUniversal and Paramount, all of which took a pass on LIV rights when they became available upon the circuit’s launch in 2022.
Backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV set out to disrupt the sport of golf and use it as a global promotional platform. The effort has drawn fierce criticism, even from some of LIV’s top players. Phil Mickelson, who defected to LIV after a successful PGA career, spoke out against human rights abuses perpetrated by the Saudis in a book interview. Mickelson later said he had been misquoted. The star was one of several big names attracted to paydays that ran into the hundreds of millions. Tiger Woods was reported to have turned down $1 billion to defect to LIV.
While Woods, Rory McIlroy and other PGA mainstays held firm, major winners such as Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed and Dustin Johnson switched to LIV. They were then barred from competing
MORE to come …
