Golf
Published June 9, 2024 at 5:28 am ET
The PGA Tour reported progress without details of a face-to-face meeting between its negotiating committee and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as it tries to work toward a deal.
“We want to get this right and are approaching discussions with careful consideration for our players, our fans, our partners and the future of the game,” the tour said in a statement issued Saturday morning.
Participating in the Friday afternoon meeting in New York were the “transactions committee” of PGA Tour Enterprises and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund that funds rival LIV Golf.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan Rich Graessle
Rory McIlroy is on the committee and said he was encouraged by the progress. He called the three-hour meeting “very productive, very constructive and very collaborative.”
“Things are definitely going in the right direction,” McIlroy said after the third round of the Memorial. He participated in a video call. “A lot of progress was made. “I can’t really say much more than that, but it was really positive.”
PGA Tour Enterprises is the commercial group that emerged from the framework agreement announced a year ago between the PGA Tour, PIF and the European tour.
PGA Tour Enterprises hired Strategic Sports Group, which initially invested $1.5 billion earlier this year.
Negotiations are underway to bring PIF on board as a minority investor and there has been more activity than previously believed.
McIlroy, who joined Tiger Woods and Adam Scott on the transactions committee, said he has been meeting with PIF representatives every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the past few weeks. The tour described negotiations as “accelerated” in recent months.
Friday’s meeting was the first in-person discussion since players and board members met with Al-Rumayyan in the Bahamas the day after the Players Championship in March.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch
The tour said the committee and the PIF have been meeting “several times a week to work on potential deal terms and come to a shared vision for the future of professional golf.” It only said that “more progress was made” in New York.
“We remain committed to these negotiations, which require working through complex considerations to best position golf for global growth,” the tour said.
McIlroy said those multiple meetings have more to do with finances, such as the investment possibilities of PIF and SSG.
“But I think last night there was more talk about the future of the game and the vision, and that’s where I thought a lot of progress was made,” he said.
Fake images of Rory McIlroy
Woods and Scott are on the full board of directors of PGA Tour Enterprises, along with player directors Jordan Spieth, Webb Simpson, Patrick Cantlay and Peter Malnati.
McIlroy resigned from the PGA Tour board of directors last November, and Simpson tried unsuccessfully to have McIlroy replace him.
McIlroy, the loudest voice who has gone from harshly criticizing LIV to being more willing to make deals, is part of the transactions committee and ultimately has no voting rights.
But it has relationships with both sides of the table. McIlroy had said he would be more in a listening mood as business leaders (Al-Rumayyan and his team at PIF, a PGA Tour Enterprises committee that includes four SSG investors) worked out the details.
“We’re there to maybe give a perspective from the player’s point of view,” McIlroy had said Thursday. “But I mean, this is a negotiation about an investment in PGA Tour Enterprises. “This is some ‘big boy’ stuff and I will certainly listen more than I will talk.”
He said Saturday that he weighed in at times.
“The mute button went off a couple of times to ring,” he said.
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