There now “appears to be three options for the PGA Tour” after it selected Strategic Sports Group as its “preferred bidder following a final round of proposals” from U.S.-based investment groups last week and reclaiming "some leverage by laying out a credible alternative option to the Public Investment Fund (PIF),” according to Kershaw & Broadbent of the London TIMES. While SSG “might not be able to challenge PIF in terms of resources,” the consortium has “significant experience in sports investments,” particularly in the U.S. The tour "could now choose to partner solely with SSG," thereby "reigniting golf’s civil war and risk losing another wave of star players to LIV. The tour could also "ultimately decide to merge solely with PIF" while the third option is that PIF and SSG both take stakes and work as partners in the new entity. Combined net worth of SSG’s investors “reportedly exceeds” $50B but that figure is “still dwarfed” by the PIF’s financial resources, worth upwards of $775B. A three-way deal “would benefit all parties, in some respects.” PIF would still have a “significant investment in the new entity.” The benefit is obvious for SSG. LIV might "still exist beyond 2024," but it would “not be a hostile threat poaching the PGA Tour’s stars while driving up purses and pressure on and from sponsors.” The signing of Jon Rahm was an “emphatic reminder of the PIF’s spending power” and also served as a warning to the PGA Tour, should it decide to side with SSG alone. Further high-profile defections, while causing acrimony, would “continue to strengthen the PIF’s hand” (London TIMES, 12/11).
STILL NO MATCH: WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Radnofsky, Beaton & Lombardo noted that even as they "continue to work toward a rapidly approaching deadline to join forces" -- which both sides say they still want to do -- the PGA Tour and the Saudis are “re-arming themselves in an effort to gain last-second negotiating leverage, and possibly battle each other again. The consortium represented a list of deep-pocketed power players, a signal that even if the Tour doesn’t end up doing a deal with PIF, it has at hand a "long list of rainmakers lining up to work with them." That exact scenario explains the Saudis’ second goal in signing Rahm. LIV and the Public Investment Fund have also been bracing for a downside outcome, people. They began to consider "poaching another player from the PGA Tour" as a sort of insurance policy, something that could strengthen LIV in case the two sides failed to come to a deal and resumed their rivalry. In the months since the Tour and the PIF "announced plans to merge, a number of angry Tour players had reached out to LIV, many openly upset over being blindsided by the planned tie-up." The PGA Tour heard the Saudi message as it was intended. They were "privately dismissive" of the idea that Rahm "could prop up LIV if the two sides failed to finalize their agreement." One more star player, they reasoned, wouldn’t change the fact that LIV was still broadcasting to small audiences on the CW Network (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 12/11).
DISGRUNTLED MAYBE? In Miami, Greg Cote wrote Rahm has "become the biggest player to abandon the PGA Tour for LIV Golf," the "crown jewel of Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing." Cote wrote Rahm, "gets his money." And "loses everything else." Rahm’s name "is trash now, and it will be for all-time." Cote: “Shame on you, Jon Rahm. Enjoy the blood money as you disappear into the oblivion of The CW” (MIAMI HERALD, 12/10). USA TODAY’s Nancy Armour wrote only Rahm can say “whether he sold his soul.” Armour said, “His principles and his reputation, however, are now owned by the Saudis.” The damage to Rahm’s reputation, and the Tour he supposedly loved so much, “can never be undone.” Armour: “Once one of the game’s good guys, Rahm is now a hypocrite and a sellout. But hey, he’s getting paid. That’s all that matters to him now” (USA TODAY, 12/11).
