Senator asks LIV Golf, PGA Tour leaders for data on merger

WASHINGTON — The chief of a Senate subcommittee is demanding the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf current data about negotiations that led to their new settlement and plans for what golf will seem like underneath the association.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., despatched letters Monday to PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and LIV CEO Greg Norman spelling out the “serious questions regarding the reasons for and terms behind the announced agreement.”

Blumenthal, who’s chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, mentioned he additionally needed to listen to the tour’s plans to retain its tax-exempt standing.

Last week, LIV and the tour surprised the golf world by agreeing to merge the PGA Tour and European tour with the Saudi golf pursuits, whereas additionally dropping all lawsuits between the events. The governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which bankrolls LIV, will be part of the PGA Tour board of administrators and lead a brand new enterprise enterprise as its chairman. The PGA Tour itself will stay a tax-exempt entity.

It was a transfer anticipated to obtain scrutiny from federal regulators and lawmakers, and the launch of a Senate investigation is among the many first dominoes to fall.

The settlement introduced final week was to mix the golf-related companies of Saudi’s Public Investment Fund – which incorporates LIV Golf – with these of the PGA Tour and European tour. That could be a brand new for-profit firm nonetheless to be named.

Among the uncertainties is how LIV Golf goes ahead after 2023. PIF’s governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, is to be chairman of the brand new enterprise, with Monahan as CEO and two PGA Tour board members becoming a member of them on an govt committee.

In his letters to Monahan and Norman, Blumenthal wrote in regards to the skepticism critics maintain over the Saudis’ intent “to use investments in sports to further the Saudi government’s strategic objectives.”

“Critics have cast such Saudi investments in sports as a means of “sportswashing” – an try to melt the nation’s picture world wide – given Saudi Arabia’s deeply disturbing human rights document at house and overseas,” the letter mentioned.

Blumenthal requested for a sweeping set of paperwork – primarily all communications between LIV and the tour starting in October 2021 by the current.

Al-Rumayyan mentioned final week that Norman was not apprised of the deal till shortly earlier than it was introduced.

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