By Anthony Caruso III | Publisher
For several months, LIV Golf League was rivals with the PGA Tour. LIV Golf League even bought some of the PGA Tour’s top players with their Saudi-backed money.
However, through an announced merger, the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, and the LIV Golf League will work together. The PGA Tour and LIV Golf League were in a bitter lawsuit for more than a year.
Yet, the landmark agreement would unify golf on a global basis. The agreement was reportedly reached without the PGA Tour and LIV Golf members aware of it previously.
“Awesome day today,” Phil Mickelson said in a tweet.
The parties have signed the agreement. According to the statement, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) will make investments in the game to make it stronger.
“(It) combines PIF’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from a model that delivers maximum excitement and competition among the game’s best players,” the statement said.
With this agreement, the previous litigation has ended. The three tours will work together with the players.
“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA Tour’s history, legacy, and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV — including the team golf concept — to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.”
The LIV Golf League became a competitor to the PGA Tour in recent years. It is backed by PIF and had signed Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, and nine others, who competed on the PGA Tour.
It’s not clear at this time how they can apply for reinstatement into the PGA Tour at the end of this season if they choose to do so.
“They were going down their path, we were going down ours, and after a lot of introspection you realize all this tension in the game is not a good thing,” Monahan said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.
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