Freedom has a Price: LIV to merge with PGA Tour
Curious to hear thoughts on the conclusion of the PGA & LIV saga... I can't imagine the number they had to give the PGA to get this done.
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The Saudi's really are just going to buy everything the US has to offer aren't they lol
Rory turned down a ~$300M payday for "loyalty" and the PGA turns around and does this not 2 years later.
Really tough optics for the Tour at this stage - hopefully the larger product being promised will be worth the hit they are taking now. Doesn't help that it appears most players found out on Twitter.
The MBS/Saudi negotiation strategy is to keep attaching more 0's to their offer. LIV, Newcastle, everything / everyone is for sale at the right price, that's the free market at work. This is just the first chapter.
My bet is NFL team is on the cards too.
Why a team and not the whole NFL at this rate?
Their sports washing model is quite sophisticated. They don't want to dominate, they want to integrate IMO. "We are friendly partners with deep pockets" type shit. I'd bet he's going to spend billions building top notch courses in the desert.
The Newcastle takeover in soccer is a good example. They took over a very storied British brand and didn't really rock the boat by splashing cash on big name players like the Qataris and Abu Dhabi did. The fan protests died out super quick, and are basically done now that NFC made top 4.
So rather than go to war with the Jerry Jones types, I think they'll come in friendly with promises of new stadiums and massive investment. What better way to get positive spotlight in the US than to buy and invest in an NFL franchise.
I doubt it for the NFL. I forgot where I read it, but there are owner by laws that are set in stone. I believe you have to be a US citizen and one family/person has to be the majority owner. I think the only team that got around this is the Packers, which is owned by the municipality, but thats grandfathered in. Plus any sale has to be voted in by all owners or need a majority.
I hear ya, but I'm jaded by these ME nation states flouting rules in soccer with no penalty.
The Qataris and Abu Dhabi flagrantly break FFP rules in soccer, as do others, because $ talks. But those are just league rules and FIFA is notoriously corrupt, so I guess it makes sense they get away.
The big one is that PIF bought Newcastle (brokered by Amanda Staveley who was also part of this deal), with a condition that the Saudi state would not control the club. Then they place a sitting Saudi minster on the board and its been crickets.
This is a good read into Saudi power and influence and how the UK government bent over backwards to keep them happy: https://theathletic.com/4375454/2023/04/06/saudi-newcastle-boris-govern…
The first three paragraphs alone will tell you the extent of their reach. How do you fight nation states and egos with deep deep DEEP pockets? you don't, you bend and succumb. It's quite humbling.
but i would argue that building out a successful franchise in an American sports league will be tough bc of the salary cap unlike in PL where you can just pour in money and build a legacy franchise eg man city. i think it will be less attractive for the saudis to go after them bc of this -- sheer amount of capital won't make a large difference and you need dedicated ownership to be successful like joe lacob/warriros and cuban/mavericks
Not salary caps but there are a ton of rules in soccer around transfer spend. They've been getting away with it for years like the rules don't even exist.
You misunderstand their objectives. The primary goal isn't to create a winning team, it's to sports wash their image, but they do end up winning with the way they work. They don't need to run the franchise a la Cuban, see Manchester City. They just hire the best manager, the best GM, the best directors and put a bunch of dough behind them.
They don't care if they lift trophies or not, it's incidental. They want people to gloss over things like Khashoggi, and how Saudi royals fund terrorists and all the other heinous shit they do.
I think it is good for us as fans as we will see the best players playing against each other more frequently (Rory vs Brooks etc...) however some of the PGA Tour players have been mugged off so badly. Can't imagine how Rory must feel turning down $300m+, sticking his neck out publicly backing the PGA Tour all while Jay Monahan was negotiating behind the scenes to team up with LIV.... must feel like a real knife in the back.
Given Rory has been much quieter in recent weeks about LIV I would guess he knew this was coming.
I feel for Matsuyama man. Someone pay the man
My dude is out here flying spirit
This is going to be an interesting case study going forward, and also interesting because its happening in real time:
- Long term, good for the golfers because they get more money. However, it does hurt guys like Rory or even mid tier guys Keegan Bradley who probably could have gotten a lot of money to basically go to LIV and come back.
- Right now, you have the PGA tour (ownership) and the players (labor) at separate ends. The players could literally go start a separate tour and it would mess up the whoel deal.
- Real egg on the face for Jay Mohohan (sic) for doing a 180 turn in less than a year. His press conference was true chick think (shoutout Adam Carolla) "Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information that I had at that moment"...yea.
- I know a lot of people are saying its a lesson in always take the money, but I look at it as using what you have a means for an end. Money/business is funny because you have a make a decision with it, are you trying to be ethical or just see it as a game. Lot of guys build stuff not with the intention of ultimately trying to have it viable, but just to sell it, that's basically what happened with LIV, they weren't trying to build a new product that would last, they were trying to build one that would serve as a means to an end. Look at a guy like Marc Lore, invented diapers.com, but was selling diapers at a loss; however, he sold that brand to Amazon and they had to shut it down after not being profitable. Lore than did this again to Walmart, selling them Jet.com that is also no longer viable.
My read is that they’re going to have to pay Rory and some of the other higher profile guys to keep them around. He’s not going to get $300M but I think $50-100M is not out of the question given where we’re currently at. That offer was made when the sports rights market was red hot and now things have cooled off substantially. They’ll probably point to the situation at Diamond and ESPN cutting overhead as they prepare to go DTC in a few years as a negotiating tactic. I think the guys that are truly SOL to your point are the Keegan Bradley’s of the tour. My guess is they‘re going to get offered peanuts or nothing.
I’m curious about how the rights piece of this situation plays out. The PGA Tour has a deal with large networks through 2030 so they’re all set, but I wonder if Nexstar gets a payout in exchange for dropping any claims they have any to LIV’s broadcasting rights beyond this year.
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