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

[snapfade]

6 minutes ago, iacas said:

LIV has like four good players and a whole lot of terrible ones. And… THE PGA IS NOT THE PGA TOUR.

Super gross. I read later a minority stake? So they won't own it, but they are going to have a big say in things.

Gross doesn't begin to describe it. I may be done with the PGA Tour.

Plus, I heard they may be renaming the new entity? So it won't be named "PGA Tour" anymore. Has anyone seen further news there?

First, it's not "holier than thou." And like who? I'm still disgusted. This sucks.

I won't. Many I know won't.

But Jay already has.

Yep.

I get that it makes business sense, but there's more to the world than literally just money.

Spot on.

Add the PGA and I'm there with you.

The PGA is not the PGA Tour.

Ticket sales are almost irrelevant.

In regards to ticket sales not dropping. Its relevant if people that are so opposed to LIV, and a PIF merger and so forth stop going it would effect ticket sales. Would that put a dent in the overall bottom line? Doubtful, but I'd like to see some stats of  on the ticket sales next year. There is that, "I'll never watch a PGA Tour event crowd." So one would assume there is the will not attend group. If enough people stop watching/going to Tour events, it could have a slight impact. But, not going to happen. I will still go to tour events along with everyone else.  

[saevel25]

7 minutes ago, iacas said:

Plus, I heard they may be renaming the new entity? So it won't be named "PGA Tour" anymore. Has anyone seen further news there?

So, the PGA Tour will slap their label on stuff to get their cut, which funds their non-profit. 

8 minutes ago, iacas said:

Add the PGA and I'm there with you.

The PGA is not the PGA Tour.

My bad. 

[imsys0042]

 

3 minutes ago, klineka said:

Isn't that bad enough?

It is.   I think it's disgusting and with PIF acting as such a large investor I won't be watching.   

However I am hopeful that in the long term the source of this funding is not around forever and that the DP and PGA tours retain control of whatever this becomes long term.

[snapfade]

Here's something that got me to thinking, and maybe someone here has a good answer. For the Tour come up with 20mil designated events, were they 1, nervous and wanted to do something to keep players, or 2, knew something was coming down the road and they would get a good return on investment? 

[iacas]

5 minutes ago, imsys0042 said:

However I am hopeful that in the long term the source of this funding is not around forever and that the DP and PGA tours retain control of whatever this becomes long term.

It's going to stick around.

Woof.

Is Jay Monahan the PGA Tour commissioner (or whatever this new super league is called) on June 6, 2024?

[billchao]

I guess valuing integrity only applies to golfers playing by the rules and not to the people running the organization.

[mcanadiens]

23 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

PIF (the Saudi investment fund) is the exclusive investor and has exclusive rights to invest more money, including the right to refuse money from other investors.

That's probably the most significant thing there. 

[PatrickMurtha]

Oddly enough, I don’t feel angry, actually kind of amused, although I do feel the sudden need for a long shower.

Really, it was to be expected. “Money talks, shit walks.”

This is why I’m only 5% as interested in sports as I was when I was 25 - and that 5% has been directed to (a) golf (until now), (b) minor league baseball, and (c) sports (mainly baseball) history. The big organizations - Olympics, World Cup, MLB, NFL, etc - became too corrupt and big-money-oriented for me, and mostly that happened quite a long while ago. It’s not that I’m so holy, it’s that if I want business news and political news and crime news, I’ll go to those sections of the paper, OK? The actual SPORTS are almost an afterthought. 

Also, as I have said in relation to other things, from now on everyone is going to have to go to law school just to be able to understand the news every day. 

Edited June 6, 2023 by PatrickMurtha

[Elmer]

4 minutes ago, billchao said:

I guess valuing integrity only applies to golfers playing by the rules and not to the people running the organization.

PGA to golfers-"dont take that money or your dead to us"
PGA to PIF (the Saudi investment fund)- "we will take that money, just leave it on the night stand"

[Jeremie Boop]

I stopped watching a majority of sports well before any of this. Though I'm disappointed to see this. Just reinforces my decision to enjoy playing sports,, but not watching.

[imsys0042]

6 minutes ago, iacas said:

It's going to stick around.

Woof.

Is Jay Monahan the PGA Tour commissioner (or whatever this new super league is called) on June 6, 2024?

 

shameful and what a shame.   Pro golf seems to not stand for very much outside of the majors now.

[saevel25]

Looks like this was done with out much input outside of a few people.

 

[iacas]

Peter with the first intelligent thing he's said in three years.

 

[boogielicious]

This sickens me. I am surprised that Jimmy Dunne is involved too. What will be curious is since they will now be a For-Profit entity, anti-trust laws may apply even more. They have no competition now.

I will not be watching the PGA Tour events now. I have enough other fun stuff to do in my life. I hardly watch sports anymore anyway.

[Pretzel]

21 minutes ago, mcanadiens said:

That's probably the most significant thing there. 

Bingo - even if the new entity starts out with a 33% financial stake for each organization (which is incredibly unlikely given they discuss that the PIF is fronting all of the initial investment money) the fact of the matter is that the PIF has enough money to dilute the financial stake of the PGA/Euro tour immediately without it amounting to much more than a rounding error on their cumulative balance sheet. There is also no way for the PGA/Euro Tour to prevent their financial stake from being diluted in such a fashion, but the PIF does have the right to do exactly that themselves. 
 

In other words it may not happen today or tomorrow, but eventually the financial stake in the combined entity will effectively be entirely owned by the PIF. The PIF has purchased both the PGA and Euro tours on an extended payment plan, and as an added bonus they even got the PGA Tour to provide the board members that actually have to successfully operate their new professional golf business. They don’t even have to do much of the work to run it all or figure out how to be successful (since they clearly didn’t have the right answer with the LIV), they just have to sign a check occasionally and collect the profits at the end of the quarter, it’s literally that easy for them!

[TourSpoon]

Get the popcorn out. I can't wait to see how he responds. 

[DeadMan]

13 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

What will be curious is since they will now be a For-Profit entity, anti-trust laws may apply even more.

Antitrust laws already apply to non-profits. Their applicability does not change if a business is for profit or not.

That said, the DOJ may get more involved, because this looks like more of a monopoly now than it was a year ago.

11 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

Bingo - even if the new entity starts out with a 33% financial stake for each organization (which is incredibly unlikely given they discuss that the PIF is fronting all of the initial investment money) the fact of the matter is that the PIF has enough money to dilute the financial stake of the PGA/Euro tour immediately without it amounting to much more than a rounding error on their cumulative balance sheet. There is also no way for the PGA/Euro Tour to prevent their financial stake from being diluted in such a fashion, but the PIF does have the right to do exactly that themselves. 
 

In other words it may not happen today or tomorrow, but eventually the financial stake in the combined entity will effectively be entirely owned by the PIF. The PIF has purchased both the PGA and Euro tours on an extended payment plan, and as an added bonus they even got the PGA Tour to provide the board members that actually have to successfully operate their new professional golf business. They don’t even have to do much of the work to run it all or figure out how to be successful (since they clearly didn’t have the right answer with the LIV), they just have to sign a check occasionally and collect the profits at the end of the quarter, it’s literally that easy for them!

The thing that cuts against this is the PGA Tour has a majority of the board of the new entity and a majority of the voting stake. At least according to the press release. So the PIF can invest money, but it may not have the control that it wants. A lot of this will depend on how the actual agreements are drafted, so it's to early to say. It could be that the PIF ends up a sponsor of all these golf entities but the PGA Tour is still controlling everything. It could also end up with the PIF running everything. And even if the PGA Tour maintains control, that might change with further PIF investments. 

There's still a lot in the air on exactly how this will work.

[TourSpoon]

6 minutes ago, DeadMan said:

There's still a lot in the air on exactly how this will work.

And there will be a lot on the air...speculating for the next few golf news cycles on this issue. I wonder how the PGAT player's meeting today will go.