Business of Sport

PIF close to $1.5bn stake in PGA commercial arm

December 11, 2024, 5:15 PM

Anthony Kim at the LIV Golf Jeddah event. The PIF's PGA investment is happening as talks continue to merge the PGA and LIV tours

6% stake targeted
Matches US consortium
PGA/LIV talks ongoing

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is close to agreeing a deal to acquire a minority stake in PGA Tour Enterprises, the tour’s commercial arm.

The sovereign wealth fund is aiming to acquire a stake of around 6 percent as part of the deal, Bloomberg reported.

The investment will amount to $1.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal claimed, but will need to await the outcome of the US Justice Department’s approval of the merger between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-owned LIV Golf amid anti-trust concerns.

The PIF investment would value PGA Tour Enterprises at $12 billion and match the $1.5 billion that Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of American sports team owners led by Fenway Sports Group, invested in January. That initial investment could rise to $3 billion, Strategic Sports Group said.

Ever since the PGA Tour and LIV announced a deal in June 2023 to merge, the two tours have been trying to agree on a schedule that would allow players to compete in tournaments in both leagues.

While concerns have been expressed about the Saudis walking away from the deal, the impending arrival of Donald Trump as president in the new year has given hope that an agreement can be reached.

The president-elect has met with both PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF’s governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, in recent months. Trump said “it would take me the better part of 15 minutes to get that deal done”.

PIF is in separate talks with the DP World Tour over a potential tie-up and investment, Bloomberg reported last month.

PGA Tour and the DP World currently have an alliance until 2035 that allows some reciprocal memberships for players, guarantees an increase in prize money and lets them work together on events.

Saudi Arabia has a vast number of sports sponsorship deals, now more than 900, according to a recent report by Play the Game, a publicly funded sports ethics institute in Denmark.

While experts said the investments are part of the kingdom’s strategy to diversify away from oil, their long-term success will not be known for some time to come.