How Red Sox, Celtics Ownership To Play Huge Role In PGA Tour Future
A wild week in professional golf ended with another major announcement, this one from the PGA Tour.
The Tour on Sunday night announced its policy board unanimously approved an outside investment group to negotiate with while it continues talks with the Saudia Arabian Public Investment Fund. The investment group, Strategic Sports Group (SSG), is a conglomerate of some of sports’ most influential owners, a group that includes Boston Red Sox owner John Henry and Boston Celtics governor Wyc Grousbeck.
Red Sox chairman and CEO Tom Werner is also listed among the investors comprising SSG, as is Fenway Sports Group as a whole and FSG president Mike Gordon. Other big names from the sports world include Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry and Cohen Private Ventures, a group led by New York Mets owner Steve Cohen.
In a memo to players announcing the decision (noting the investment group is led by Fenway Sports Group), the Tour assures its membership that it is “very confident in an eventual, positive outcome for all players and the PGA Tour as a whole.”
The PIF is the economic force behind the relatively new LIV Golf series, a new tour that has spent the last couple of years trying to pick off PGA Tour players to join their league. However, the PGA Tour and the PIF announced a shocking merger in June, but that announcement was sparse in terms of actual details. The two sides agreed to end litigation and temporarily agreed to stop poaching players. Because of antitrust concerns, though, that poaching agreement was ultimately tabled. That opened the door for LIV to make its biggest move yet, convincing reigning Masters champion and world No. 3 Jon Rahm to leave the Tour for LIV on a deal reportedly worth up to $500 million.
That sport-altering move might have been the ultimate power play by PIF to put pressure on the Tour as a year-end negotiating deadline with the Tour looms. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan are scheduled to meet this week and continue negotiations, Golf.com reported.
The SSG news, regardless of what comes from the PIF talks, was very much needed for the Tour. Not even the PGA Tour, a $1.5 billion business, could come close to matching the financial might of the PIF. Despite LIV’s lack of tangible value and revenue as an actual golf product, the league has been able to pick off former major winners with absurd contracts, in some cases doubling players’ career earnings with one contract. The Tour can’t match that and needs outside investment, which it will get from SSG.