PGA Tour, Saudi PIF leaders to play together in Middle East golf event

If one pro-am is good, two would be better for the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, whose leaders will reportedly participate in an event in Saudi Arabia this week.

This comes courtesy of Bunkeredreported Thursday morning (which was confirmed by other outlets) that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan will be at each other’s place again this weekend at the Ladies European Tour in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Arabia. This event comes as part of the Aramco Series visit to Riyadh – named after the Saudi oil giant – and the Future Investment Initiative, a series of conferences held in the Kingdom to promote future growth and investment opportunities.

Bunkered reports that Monahan and Al-Rumayyan will play in the pro-am together on Thursday evening, following in the footsteps of their pro-am at the DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship earlier this month.

Despite this public appearance, it is not clear how close the two sides are to reaching a definitive agreement that will unite professional golf, as the calendar reaches 17 months removed from the shocking announcement of the “framework” and 10 months removed from the two. the parties’ initial “agreement deadline”. Nevertheless, the increasing number of meetings – public and private – shows that there is at least some progress in the talks between the two sides.

However, the news comes as the PIF has announced its intentions to dominate spending in the coming years. Saudi Arabia’s nearly trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund has been one of the most powerful drivers of global investment over the past decade, but the country’s lucrative domestic projects and global oil market volatility have changed the Fund’s economic outlook as it turns upside down. the future.

It is not known what the deal between the two parties would look like, but indications are that it will involve the PIF buying a piece of the shares in PGA Tour Enterprises – the Tour’s new, for-profit arm. Earlier this year, another institutional sports investment group called Strategic Sports Group agreed to invest $1.5 billion (with the potential to grow to $3 billion) in PGA Tour Enterprises in a deal that valued the Tour’s revenue division at $12.3 billion. .