Fenway Sports, the owners of Liverpool FC, have moved a step closer to becoming significant partners in golf’s new world order having been chosen as the investors Tiger Woods and the rest of the PGA Tour policy board wish to negotiate with from now on.
The announcement from the Tour came in the wake of Jon Rahm’s £450 million move to LIV last week. Inevitably, the timing made many wonder if the Saudi sovereign wealth fund was preparing to be cut loose by the Tour in merger negotiations.
However, sources maintain that Fenway’s decision is good news for unity in the game. The owners of Anfield, John Henry and Tom Werner, are the leaders of the Strategic Sports Group, an alliance of American financiers with strong connections to the Middle East. Additionally, SSG already maintains contacts in Saudi Arabia.
The Tour’s policy board, which has been rocked by rumors of player unrest, moved quickly to announce the identity of its preferred American private equity investors. This could mean that Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund and chairman of LIV, will have a meaningful and substantive conversation later this week.
The memo to the Tour’s professionals stated, “We also anticipate advancing our negotiations with PIF in the weeks to come.” “Please know that although we are unable to provide additional information at this time, we are extremely optimistic about a final result that will benefit every player as well as the PGA Tour as a whole.
“In addition, the DP World Tour will remain a crucial component of our progress toward PGA Tour Enterprises—the name of the for-profit organization that will house the Tour, DP World Tour, and LIV Golf.”
After sifting through the pool of possible investors, the Tour informed its membership that SSG had emerged victorious. The owners of the Chicago Cubs, Boston Celtics, New York Mets, and Atlanta Falcons are members of SSG. Gerry Cardinale, the managing director of RedBird Capital, which owns AC Milan and 25% of Redbird IMI, the Abu Dhabi-owned investment group that is presently attempting to seize control of Telegraph Media Group and the Spectator, is among the other members of the group.
Right now, LIV is unavoidably in the spotlight in the male professional game—possibly more so than at any other point in the two-year breakaway narrative. It’s evident that the impacts are also being felt on the leaderboards, particularly on the European circuit.
The 2010 Open champion Louis Oosthuizen made it four LIV winners in the first five events of the wraparound DP World Tour season on Monday when he won the weather-delayed Alfred Dunhill Championship on the outskirts of Kruger Park.
Due to joint promotion with the South African or Australian tours, players such as Oosthuizen, Dean Burmester, and Joaquin Niemann were able to tee it up in the last month.
Leave a Reply