Lawmakers on Capitol Hill held a bipartisan hearing on Tuesday to probe the PGA Tour’s planned merger with its Saudi Arabia-backed rival LIV Golf, a move that rocked the sports world and raised concerns about a foreign government’s control over the league.
Responding to concerns from the families of 9/11 victims and critics sounding the alarm about Saudi Arabia's efforts to obscure their human rights record, PGA Tour officials told senators their rivalry with LIV Golf was "unsustainable" and a deal was necessary to keep complete control of professional golf out of the country's hands.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, accused the PGA Tour of helping the Saudi government to use golf in a “sportswashing” effort to improve its image globally.
“Today's hearing is about much more than the game of golf,” Blumenthal said in his opening remarks. “It's about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence, indeed even take over a cherished American institution, to cleanse its public image. It's a regime that has reportedly killed journalists, jailed and tortured dissidents, fostered the war in Yemen and supported other terrorist activities, including the 9/11 attack on our nation.”
The merger between the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the European Tour, known as the DP World Tour, ended a bitter fight between the former two entities that played out both on the golf course and in courtrooms. The PGA Tour went as far as to declare that players who joined the upstart league could not participate in its events.
Lawmakers are focused on the role of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund in the new venture, among other issues, including whether or not the PGA Tour should retain its tax-exempt status after the deal goes through.
The Saudi investment in the new entity would be “north of $1 billion,” PGA Tour board member Jimmy Dunne told the committee.
Critics of the Saudi investment in golf have pointed to the kingdom's poor human rights record and links to the 9/11 attacks, which the Saudi government has long denied involvement in. Last year, PGA Tour officials initially cited their commitment to families of 9/11 victims as part of their opposition to their rival. A year later, when the two competitors were announcing their merger, one group, 9/11 Families United, said the PGA Tour’s “concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money.”
On Tuesday, members of 9/11 Families United were in the audience at the hearing, sitting behind PGA Tour Chief Operating Officer Ron Price and Dunne as they testified. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman were not able to appear Tuesday due to scheduling conflicts.
“Today we are watching a truly bizarre spectacle, as the PGA Tour is effectively turning over the game of golf to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” wrote Terry Strada, 9/11 Families United’s national chair, in a statement submitted to the committee. “We know why the PGA Tour is doing it — it’s for the money. But that isn’t why the Saudis are doing it. They’re doing it as a public relations strategy to distract from their authoritarian past and present, and especially their unacknowledged culpability for supporting al Qaeda and the hijackers of September 11.”
The U.S. intelligence community has examined the Saudi government’s relationship with the 9/11 hijackers, but while there are documented connections between Saudi officials and some of the hijackers, no conclusive allegations of involvement in the attack have been made public. Both Blumenthal and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the panel’s top Republican, endorsed the declassification of further intelligence findings for the 9/11 families seeking more information.
Dunne, the PGA Tour board member who helped negotiate the proposed merger, said in his opening statement that he lost 66 colleagues in the 9/11 attacks. In 2021, he told Sports Illustrated their offices were in the south tower of the World Trade Center and he wasn’t in the office that day because he was playing in a golf tournament.
In an interview with Golf Channel last month, Dunne said if anyone involved in the merger deal was involved with the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, “I’ll kill him myself.”
“If any person had the remotest connection to an attack on our country and the murder of my friends, I am the last guy that would be sitting at a table,” Dunne said on Tuesday “If this agreement ultimately succeeds, I have nothing to gain except the sense of pride that we help unite the game we love.”
Dunne agreed to meet with 9/11 Families United after the hearing.
Blumenthal urged the PGA Tour to abandon the deal and “stand up against ‘sportswashing,’ against the Saudi monarchy.”
“There is something that stinks about this path that you're on right now. Because it is a surrender. And it is all about the money,” he said.
Johnson similarly condemned “sportswashing,” but contended that “it would be grossly unfair to expect the PGA Tour to bear the full burden of holding Saudi Arabia accountable,” adding that “anyone who drives a car or uses oil based products has helped fill the coffers of the Saudi Public Investment Fund.”
“There's nothing wrong with the PGA Tour negotiating its survival,” the Wisconsin Republican said. “Negotiations are often delicate, mostly private, and I fear Congress and getting involved with this stage could have negative consequences. But I hope this hearing can be constructive and address the many legitimate questions the public has regarding the future of golf, and how to preserve the purity of competition at the highest levels of the game.”
Other Republicans on the committee shared Johnson’s broad concerns about Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11 or the war in Yemen, but also his argument the U.S. government shouldn’t insert itself into the dealings of private businesses. Last month, two Democratic senators asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to monitor the merger for potential antitrust violations.
“I see no constitutional power that suggests Congress should involve itself in golf,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said after accusing Saudi Arabia of committing war crimes in Yemen. “We have no business asking the PGA about their negotiations or what they might do or what they might do. It's not the business of government.”
Paul pointed to a unanimous 2021 Supreme Court decision that set in motion a compensation system for U.S. college athletes as an example of government overreach, saying “the court has totally screwed this up and Congress has let them.”
“We used to be proud. Many of us love watching amateur athletes that weren't paid,” Paul said. “Now everybody that plays basketball in college is gonna be driving a Bentley or a Rolls [Royce]. I mean, we're gonna be seeing rap stars instead of basketball stars.”
Details about the proposed golf world partnership are scarce, though new documents obtained by Congress show that negotiators discussed ousting LIV CEO Norman and giving Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy their own LIV teams.
The documents released Tuesday also detail the roles of people on the Saudi side of the negotiations, notably Amanda Staveley, a British investment banker who helped broker the Newcastle deal and now sits on the team's board, and Roger Devlin, a British businessman. Devlin was the first to approach Dunne about the prospect of a deal between the tour and LIV, the documents show.
The PIF has bought its way into other sports including soccer, with its ownership of the English Premier League's Newcastle United, and Formula One racing.
In Las Vegas on Monday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told reporters that sovereign wealth funds like Saudi Arabia's or Qatar's — which bought a 5% stake in the NBA's Washington Wizards, the WNBA's Washington Mystics and the NHL's Washington Capitals in June — would not be able to become controlling owners in NBA franchises "in the forseeable future."
"Sports are central to our culture and society,” Blumenthal said. “They have huge implications for our way of life or local economies and communities close to home and our image abroad. Athletes like the PGA Tour Golf players are role models. They are ambassadors of our values and the institutions that concern us today are vital to our national interests.”
“To have them taken over by a repressive foreign regime certainly is a matter of our national security,” Blumenthal continued. “So we hope that today's hearing will help us uncover not only the reasons for the PGA tour's sudden reversal of its opposition to the LIV Golf takeover and what it means to golf, but also to understand what similar investments by repressive regimes or other countries with deep pockets could mean for our country, for our national security and for the world.”
Price, the PGA Tour’s COO, made the case that the goal of the merger was to “protect an American institution, noting that the legal battle with LIV Golf “was undermining growth of our sport” and “unsustainable.”
“While we had significant wins in the litigation, our players, fans, partners, employees, charities, and communities would lose in the long run,” Price said. “Instead of losing control of the PGA Tour, we pursued a piece that would not only end the divisive litigation battles, but will also maintain the PGA Tour’s structure, mission and longstanding support for charity.”
Price also assured the committee that golfers would not be prohibited from speaking out against the Saudi government or have their opinions on gay rights censored in places like Saudi Arabia where homesexuality is criminalized.
Ultimately, Dunne said, the PGA Tour felt they were outgunned, underfunded and had little choice but to cut a deal with the Saudis.
“They have an unlimited horizon and an unlimited amount of money,” Dunne testified. “I'm more concerned, though, if we do nothing we're going to end up there. They're gonna end up owning golf if we don't. They can do it.”
Spectrum News' Cassie Semyon, Eden Harris, Mark Lucivero and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
