LIV Golf (Saudi PIF), "Mergers," and More

[GolfSwami]

13 hours ago, boogielicious said:

 

And yet the NFL and NCAA exist and the others do not. So who really won? No damages awarded? Pyrrhic victory at best. LIV only exists to try and take the PGAT down. They will fail as the others did. Your argument is still very weak.

The AFL was a result of the lawsuit. 10 of the 32 current NFL teams are from AFL and NFL merger.   The NFL discriminated against black players while the AFL actively recruited them and played a big role in fully integrating football.   Seems like a pretty significant impact on the history of the game. So to answer your question,  the fans and players won.

The PGA Tour isn't going to fold.  The most likely result is some sort of merger or agreement between the tours. The competition is already having a positive impact on player payouts. 

[Vinsk]

49 minutes ago, GolfSwami said:

The NFL discriminated against black players while the AFL actively recruited them and played a big role in fully integrating football. 

Yes. But this has nothing to do with what’s taking place between LIV and PGAT. This is not racial discrimination. 

[Hardluckster]

5 hours ago, iacas said:

Yes, which is why I said it would have played a role.

I didn’t say it was the sole factor.

From what I've read it seems that legality plays no role in the result of a TRO, but then again I'm no lawyer. 

[iacas]

42 minutes ago, Hardluckster said:

From what I've read it seems that legality plays no role in the result of a TRO, but then again I'm no lawyer. 

No, and the lawyers with whom I spoke said that if they had been disbarred/suspended in an illegal way the judge could rule that way too.

@DeadMan could share his thoughts too, but it tracks for me that if they shouldn’t have been suspended to begin with, they’d be eligible to play.

But maybe because they didn’t take that angle the judge couldn’t consider it. Or maybe it’s too big a thing.

[turtleback]

21 hours ago, jshots said:

Lol I'm not even going to argue with someone who asks about another's profession as some weird condescending ego stroke. Its incredibly clear that there is prior precedent for sports leagues and anti trust violations in this exact type of situation. The density it takes to be this sure of yourself about the righteousness of the PGA Tour here is incredible. Its not black and white.

'exact type of situation'??  Team sport where the players are unionized employees vs. individual sport where players are independent contractors are the exact type of situation?  Legal analysis thrives on much smaller distinctions than this, which is why having a nodding acquaintance of how law works is important.

 

I never said anything is black and white.  I am essentially saying that you are spewing legal nonsense.

[jshots]

3 hours ago, turtleback said:

'exact type of situation'??  Team sport where the players are unionized employees vs. individual sport where players are independent contractors are the exact type of situation?  Legal analysis thrives on much smaller distinctions than this, which is why having a nodding acquaintance of how law works is important.

 

I never said anything is black and white.  I am essentially saying that you are spewing legal nonsense.

I'm spewing legal nonsense? Are you a lawyer? I'm basically using the exact arguments in claims from gigantic law firms representing LIV players, stuff that I'm reading all over the place from actual lawyers. Its not as if I just came up with this shit on my own.

So the ad hominem attack on my profession seems undeserved to me.

[iacas]

32 minutes ago, jshots said:

I'm basically using the exact arguments

You’re not.

[Zippo]

38 minutes ago, jshots said:

I'm spewing legal nonsense? Are you a lawyer? I'm basically using the exact arguments in claims from gigantic law firms representing LIV players, stuff that I'm reading all over the place from actual lawyers. Its not as if I just came up with this shit on my own.

So the ad hominem attack on my profession seems undeserved to me.

I don’t think you can have an ad hominem attack against a profession, by definition. 
 

[GolfSwami]

8 hours ago, Vinsk said:

Yes. But this has nothing to do with what’s taking place between LIV and PGAT. This is not racial discrimination. 

Besides directly responding to the question in the post, it has everything to do with the issue.... Literally..... Everything.. It is THE argument for LIV. 

Competition is what protects employees and consumers. Competition tends to force better behavior.

 

 

 

[Vinsk]

30 minutes ago, GolfSwami said:

Besides directly responding to the question in the post, it has everything to do with the issue.... Literally..... Everything.. It is THE argument for LIV. 

Competition is what protects employees and consumers. Competition tends to force better behavior.

 

 

 

What are you talking about? Blacks being discriminated against in recruiting was the issue. Racial discrimination has nothing to do with what’s taking place with the LIV players complaints. The NFL suit was all about racial discrimination which did cause an effect with competition but it was the racial discrimination that was at point. 

[GolfSwami]

55 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

What are you talking about? Blacks being discriminated against in recruiting was the issue. Racial discrimination has nothing to do with what’s taking place with the LIV players complaints. The NFL suit was all about racial discrimination which did cause an effect with competition but it was the racial discrimination that was at point. 

Radovich was white.

The AFL signed black players because it made their product better not because of a court decision.

 

[jshots]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

You’re not.

These 2 quotes are copy pasted directly from the complaint. I'm not asking you if I am using the exact arguments, I'm telling you that I literally pulled them out of the text. I bolded the things I've been re-iterating over and over again. 

"As the Tour’s monopoly power has grown, it has employed its dominance to craft an arsenal of anticompetitive restraints to protect its long-standing monopoly. "
"Before LIV Golf’s entry, golfers who sold their services in the elite professional golf services market had no meaningful option but to play on the Tour if they wanted to pursue their profession at the highest levels. This provided the Tour with enormous power over the players, including the ability to force players into restrictive terms that foreclose them from playing in competing events and the ability to suppress player compensation below competitive levels"
 

1 hour ago, Zippo said:

I don’t think you can have an ad hominem attack against a profession, by definition. 
 

Against my profession. Text book ad hominem - attacking me personally rather than the argument I am making. Maybe you missed the original comment, but he asked what my profession was as evidence that I know nothing about law or economics. Pretty low blow IMO.

[Vinsk]

4 minutes ago, jshots said:

Before LIV Golf’s entry, golfers who sold their services in the elite professional golf services market had no meaningful option but to play on the Tour if they wanted to pursue their profession at the highest levels

Elite golfers don’t have the right to make millions playing golf. It’s a privilege. How is it the PGAT’s fault that this Tour created by players, provides a means for them to do so yet no one else has? And now LIV comes along to try and do that, and guess what? Nothing stopped them! They have a choice that is meaningful other than the PGAT but now they’re crying that they can’t have both!? WTF can’t you see here that this is ridiculous?

[Aguirre]

11 hours ago, GolfSwami said:

The competition is already having a positive impact on player payouts. 

To the top players. 

The AFL and NLF are leagues. The AFL and ABA succeeded because there were more markets demanding the team sport. 

Almost certainly, the top PGA Tour players are undercompensated by prize money. Yeah, that's pretty much every league, and pretty much every sport. Even in ones without strict salary caps. It's just how these things work. But they don't work as exhibitions. That's the point.

BTW, why is this being bogged down in some sort of legal discussion about anti-trust law and other nonsense? Let our broken-ass legal system work all that out. In the meantime, f*** LIV.

[turtleback]

7 hours ago, jshots said:

I'm spewing legal nonsense? Are you a lawyer? I'm basically using the exact arguments in claims from gigantic law firms representing LIV players, stuff that I'm reading all over the place from actual lawyers. Its not as if I just came up with this shit on my own.

So the ad hominem attack on my profession seems undeserved to me.

"As the Tour’s monopoly power has grown, it has employed its dominance to craft an arsenal of anticompetitive restraints to protect its long-standing monopoly. "
"Before LIV Golf’s entry, golfers who sold their services in the elite professional golf services market had no meaningful option but to play on the Tour if they wanted to pursue their profession at the highest levels. This provided the Tour with enormous power over the players, including the ability to force players into restrictive terms that foreclose them from playing in competing events and the ability to suppress player compensation below competitive levels"

There is nothing in that quote that in any way tries to argue that team sport cases provide any precedent for this situation, which is what I challenged you on.  If you are going to cite precedents they need to be on point.  Simply citing a situation involving a sport and antitrust issue doesn't make that a relevant precedent for a case involving qualitatively different sports (i.e., a team sport with employees and an individual sport with independent contractors) and completely different possible antitrust issues.  Football and antitrust therefore golf and antitrust is not a valid implication.  The devil is in the details and none of the details in these two situations are remotely similar.

And there is no ad hominem on your profession, it is a recognition that your profession has not prepared you to do legal analysis.  And that's fine.  But it puts the validity of your legal arguments into context.

Since you asked, I'm not a lawyer but my professional credentials authorized me to represent clients and practice law on certain specific sections of the tax code, which I did for over 20 years.  So I am at least conversant with legal reasoning and have experience, albeit in a different area, with how legal reasoning works.  So, I'm not a lawyer but I am more knowledgeable than the average bear about the law because of that training and experience.  That doesn't make me right, but it does inform my opinion.

[iacas]

7 hours ago, jshots said:

I'm not asking you if I am using the exact arguments

I was taking about the football stuff. It’s a lousy legal position that has almost nothing to do with what we have here now.

As Rich said, you need to tie more than just “sports” and “antitrust” together.

Also, where is the NFL now? Oh, even more of a monopoly? Cool.

P.S. Again, being a monopoly alone isn’t illegal.

P.P.S. Asking your profession and pointing out a fact is not ad hominem. Drop it.

[The Flush]

 

[Vinsk]

What a great finish to the St. Jude Classic…good to see Zalatoris finally win. And once again…just astronomically more entertaining than the LIV nonsense.