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Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
The PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the LIV Golf League, which have been embroiled in a bitter legal battle for more than a year, have agreed to merge and move forward in a larger commercial business, the circuits announced Tuesday.
The tours called the stunning development “a landmark agreement to unify the game of golf, on a global basis.”
The landmark deal between the tours and the Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) was reached without the knowledge of many PGA Tour members and LIV Golf players and agents.
Said one PGA Tour player reached by ESPN on Tuesday, “No f—ing way.”
A golf agent, who represents a couple of high-profile LIV Golf players, told ESPN that he was unaware of the merger.
“You just made my heart skip a few beats,” the agent said, before the deal was officially announced.
In a statement, the circuits said the parties have signed an agreement that “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.”
The circuits said the agreement ends all pending litigation between the parties.
The three tours said they will work “cooperatively and in good faith to establish a fair and objective process for any players who desire to re-apply for membership with the PGA Tour or DP World Tour following the completion of the 2023 season.”
“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.”
Monahan scheduled a players meeting for 4 p.m. ET Tuesday in Toronto, the site of this week’s RBC Canadian Open. A player told ESPN that the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Committee met with United States Golf Association officials in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday. Monahan and other PGA Tour executives attended the meeting as well, but there was no discussion about a potential merger with LIV Golf.
In a memo to PGA Tour players on Tuesday, a copy of which was obtained by ESPN, Monahan wrote that in addition to making a financial investment in the new entity, PIF would become a premier corporate sponsor of the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and other international tours. Monahan wrote that PIF will make investments to “build an even stronger and more robust commercial business, together” and was committed to “significant financial support toward causes that positively impact the game on a global basis.”
Monahan wrote that the PGA Tour would evaluate how “best to integrate team golf into the professional game.” He said LIV Golf would complete its 2023 schedule, which resumes later this month in Spain.
Another PGA Tour member reached by ESPN on Tuesday, questioned why the merger needed to happen when, in his opinion, the PGA Tour was beating the LIV Golf League on the course and in the courts.
“It’s insanity,” the PGA Tour player said. “The LIV tour was dead in the water. It wasn’t working. Now, you’re throwing them a life jacket? Is the moral of the story to just always take the money?”
The LIV Golf League, which was being financed by PIF and fronted by two-time Open Championship winner Greg Norman, and 11 of its players, including Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, had sued the PGA Tour in federal court last year, alleging that the PGA Tour had used its monopoly power to squash competition and influence vendors, media companies and others from working with LIV Golf.
The PGA Tour filed a countersuit, alleging that LIV Golf had interfered with its contracts with players.
Still to be determined is how players such as Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, who defected to LIV Golf for nine-figure bonuses, can rejoin the PGA Tour after this year.
Monahan called the reinstatement of PGA Tour members who had defected to the LIV Golf League a “complicated endeavor and one that will be guided by established PGA Tour rules and regulations.”
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a memo to players that a thorough evaluation would determine how to integrate team golf into the game.
“They were going down their path, we were going down ours, and after a lot of introspection you realize all this tension in the game is not a good thing,” Monahan said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.
According to the release, a board of directors will oversee the new entity’s golf-related commercial operations, businesses and investments. The groups will work to establish a cohesive schedule. PIF will be the exclusive investor in the new entity and will have the “exclusive right to further invest in the new enterprise, including a right of first refusal on any capital invested.
The PGA Tour will remain a 501(c)(6) tax-exempt organization, according to the release, and will retain oversight of the sanctioning of events, administration of competition and rules.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will join the policy board of the PGA Tour, which continues to operate its tournaments. Al-Rumayyan will be chairman of the new commercial group, with Monahan as the CEO and the PGA Tour having a majority stake in the new venture. The PIF will invest in the commercial venture.
The PIF had dumped more than $2 billion into the golf enterprise, which critics have claimed is a form of sportswashing to repair the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s history of human rights violations.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
