GOLF
Who owns the PGA Tour & LIV Golf? Look inside the executive leadership and Board of Directors
The golf world is still trying to get its head around the news today that the three major golf tours have announced a merger. Let’s take a look at who is behind these tours.
Golf is a big business. We see it every week with the huge payouts to PGA Tour players. We’ve seen the players’ houses in the Netflix docuseries ‘Full Swing’. Those players who decided to defect to the LIV Tour got huge payouts from the Saudi-backed tour. Brooks Koepka, who has experienced success on both tours recently was supposedly paid $100 million to leave the PGA Tour.
So who is behind the PGA Tour, who has spent the millions of dollars to get the LIV Tour started?
Who owns the PGA Tour?
The PGA Tour is a non-profit organization and is managed by a Board of Directors headed by Ed Herlihy in his role as Chairman. Others on the board are Randall Stephenson, Mary Meeker, Jimmy Dunne and Mark Flaherty. There is also an Executive Leadership team led by Commissioner Jay Monahan, who announced the merging of the three professional tours.
The PGA Tour, as a non-profit organization, donates millions of dollars every year to charity. The Tour’s headquarters are in Ponte Vedra Beach in Florida at TPC Sawgrass. It manages the PGA Tour Champions, the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Latinamérica. The relations with the former European Tour, now called the DP World Tour, have been strengthened over the last year ever since the emergence of LIV Golf.
Who owns LIV Golf?
The Public Investment Fund (PIF) is led by HRH Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, also known as the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia. Yasir al-Rumayyan is head of the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.
According to the company’s website, “It has a public legal personality, as well as financial and administrative independence. Different administrative levels are interconnected under the supervision of the PIF Board of Directors to ensure transparent communication, effective work and significant progress to achieve specific and clear results.”
The company is involved in may investment projects, such as the English soccer club Newcastle United and has stake in Capcom, Nexon, the Red Sea Project, Boeing, Facebook, Disney and Bank of America amongst many others. The company has shown interest in Formula 1 and has recently bought four soccer teams in the Saudi teams, including Al Nassr, who Cristiano Ronaldo plays for and Karim Benzema’s new club Al-Ittihad. The company has been accused of sportwashing, the practice of using sport to try and wash its image.
The new agreement with the PGA Tour has caused a lot of discontent in the United States with 9/11 Families United:
Who owns the DP World Tour?
DP World, the leading provider of global smart end-to-end supply chain and logistics solutions, is the title partner of the DP World Tour, which is administered by the European Tour group, according to the Tour’s description on LinkedIn:
“The DP World Tour is the main men’s professional golf Tour of the European Tour group, with a global schedule featuring a minimum of 43 tournaments in 21 different countries across the 2022 season. Formerly known as the European Tour, which was established in 1972.”