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Diagram of the major investors, fixers and political allies and patrons that are connected to LIV Golf. Public Investment Fund Trump World Performance54 LIV Golfers PLUS 45 OTHERS CONSULTANTS McKinsey & Company Public Investment Fund Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan White & Case M. Klein & Company Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Majed al-Sorour Newcastle […] More
Saudi money has revived a Premier League soccer team and sent it to a cup final on Sunday. Those cheering say they shouldn’t have to answer for the source of its recent success.NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, England — As he walked out of the tunnel and onto the field at St. James’ Park, Eddie Howe paused for a beat. Much of the time, Newcastle United’s manager makes a conscious effort to maintain the distance between himself and the effects of his work. It is a natural instinct, a self-defense mechanism.But for once, Howe could not stop himself from taking in the tableau. All around him, the steep banks of seats were filled with striped black-and-white flags. In the Gallowgate, the grandstand that serves as the stadium’s heart and lungs, there were banners for heroes current and past.“A lot of the time, you do separate yourself from some of the feeling around the city,” Howe reflected a couple of hours later. “But it’s good to get an idea of what it means. The view of the stadium, all of the scarves and the flags: It is an incredible place to play.”In recent years, that has not always been the case. For more than a decade, as it bristled under the unpopular and at times deliberately provocative ownership of the British sportswear tycoon Mike Ashley, St. James’ Park stewed in melancholy and resentment and despair.The contrast, these days, is stark. Newcastle has the distinct air of a club going places: possibly to Europe, and the Champions League, by the end of the season; and, more immediately, to Wembley, to face Manchester United in Sunday’s league cup final.On the bitingly cold night in January when Howe’s team confirmed its place in that showpiece, the club unveiled to the crowd Anthony Gordon, a winger acquired from Everton for more than $45 million a couple of days earlier. Clutching a Newcastle scarf and blinking under the floodlights, he seemed just a little taken aback by the fervor of his greeting.“All we saw was relegation,” Manager Eddie Howe said of the club he took over in November 2021. It now sits in fifth place.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGordon is just the latest in a string of a dozen or so new signings added to the squad at considerable expense in the past year, but that recruitment drive is not the only explanation for Newcastle’s rise.Howe has also reinvented or repurposed many of the players he found when he first arrived: Joelinton, a misfiring forward turned into an all-action midfielder; Sean Longstaff, an academy product given a second chance; and, most spectacularly, Miguel Almirón, an eager but mercurial winger who suddenly, on either side of the World Cup, decided to be the Premier League’s deadliest finisher.That all have flourished, unexpectedly, under Howe has burnished Newcastle’s underdog sheen, one that fits neatly with the club’s and the city’s sense of itself. There is something inherently romantic about the restoration of Newcastle. In one light, it is a rare and precious feel-good story for English soccer. The problem is that, in another, it really isn’t.RevitalizedEvery couple of minutes, Bill Corcoran has to put the brakes on his train of thought to engage another fan wanting to throw a some coins or a folded bank note into his collection bucket. A volunteer for Newcastle’s West End Foodbank, Corcoran greets them all like old friends.He chews the fat with each of them about the evening’s game. Only lowly Southampton, bottom of the Premier League and on the verge of firing its coach for the second time this season, stood in between Newcastle and Wembley. Most of the fans, though, seem suspicious of this state of affairs. A twist, they assume, is coming. Loving a team and trusting it are very different things.In between, without missing a beat, Corcoran returns to the subject at hand. Or, rather, subjects: At various points, he sweeps in the Tasmanian genocide of the 1820s, the relative merits of freeing Julian Assange, the Irish famine and the history of the Mikasa, a 20th-century Japanese battleship. This is not traditional pregame chatter.It is, though, indicative of the strange intellectual territory Newcastle’s fans have found themselves occupying over the last 18 months, ever since their club was purchased by a consortium fronted by the British financier Amanda Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, but backed largely by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s enormous sovereign wealth fund.Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund, has been a regular guest in the owners’ box at Newcastle.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe deal itself was wreathed in controversy. The Premier League blocked the sale, at first, on the grounds of suspected Saudi involvement in the piracy of its broadcast rights. It only allowed it to go through after it had received “binding assurances” that the P.I.F. was a distinct entity from the Saudi state. (Last week, in a legal dispute over the P.I.F.-backed LIV Golf series, the fund claimed “sovereign immunity” in front of a federal judge in California.)The deal’s eventual approval drew thousands of fans to St. James’ Park in celebration. A smattering waved Saudi flags. A handful wore traditional Saudi dress. The effect was jarring and disorienting: a brutal, repressive autocracy being greeted as liberators from the hated regime of Sports Direct.Since then, the club’s owners have delivered everything the fans could have asked. Howe was appointed as manager. Newcastle has twice broken its transfer record to acquire a new star. It spent more money in last year’s January transfer window than any other club on earth. A team that had been languishing at the foot of the Premier League table has, in the blink of an eye, become a contender.The effect has reverberated beyond the confines of the stadium. “There is a real buzz in the air,” said Stephen Patterson, the chief executive of NE1, which represents the interests of 1,400 businesses across Newcastle’s downtown. “The success has spilled out of the club and into the city itself.”In part, that is to do with a slate of major infrastructure projects getting underway in a city — and a region — that has long felt both underappreciated and underfunded by England’s political and financial power center in London. “The skyline is evidence of investor confidence,” Patterson said. “I’ve never known so much public and private investment in the city.”The soccer team, though, has acted as an accelerant. “It has de-risked a lot of projects,” said Rachel Anderson, the assistant director of policy at the North East England Chamber of Commerce. “Developments that have sat on ice for a long time have come online. The takeover has acted as a catalyst. It makes it easier to raise financing or to greenlight a project.”“There is a real buzz in the air,” a business executive in Newcastle said. “The success has spilled out of the club and into the city itself.”Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat “buzz in the air,” though, has come at a cost. The P.I.F.-led takeover of Newcastle has been condemned by a host of human rights organizations: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, FairSquare.Democracy for the Arab World Now, a group launched by colleagues and friends of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said that allowing the takeover to go through normalized “a dictator who literally goes around butchering journalists.” Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, said before the deal was announced that she was “horrified” at the prospect of Saudi ownership of an English club.In the same time frame that its team and its city have started to soar, Newcastle has been turned into a cipher for the dangers of sportswashing, accused of being nothing but an attempt by the Saudi state to “distract from serious human rights violations,” as Amnesty put it. Inside Newcastle, the club’s new reality still feels a little like a dream. Outside, it has been cast as something far darker.Moral ArbitersThe day the takeover went through, Charlotte Robson was invited onto a prominent national radio show to discuss the meaning and merit of Newcastle’s new ownership. At one point, she remembers, another member of the panel bemoaned that the club’s fans had allowed it to happen. “It really struck me,” said Robson, a board member of the Newcastle United Supporters Trust. “Because I don’t remember us being given much of a say.”It would be wrong to suggest there has been a uniform response among Newcastle’s fans to their new reality, beyond the fact that absolutely nobody misses Mike Ashley. At times, as the initial celebrations suggested, there have been some who are happy to embrace the links to Saudi Arabia, or at least the iconography of that connection.For many, though, it has been a more complex, considered process. Robson herself would ideally like to see the club owned — at least in part — by the fans. She does not equate being a Newcastle fan with being a “supporter of the nation state of Saudi Arabia.”Striker Chris Wood, acquired last January, in Newcastle’s alternate jersey, which critics gleefully noted is in the colors of the Saudi flag.Ed Sykes/Action Images, via ReutersShe has, though, been able to take pleasure in the club’s rise. “The fact that the majority owners are not especially visible is important,” she said. “That’s been helpful for a lot of fans trying to dissociate the club from the ownership.”So, too, has the nature of the team. The club’s spending has been considerable, but hardly wanton by the bloated standards of the Premier League. What she calls the “redemption story” of the more long-serving members of the squad, meanwhile, has made it feel more organic. “Almirón was signed by Rafa Benítez, three managers ago,” Robson notes. “You can point to the coaching staff and say it’s because of them.”Her instinct, though, is largely that many fans resent the idea that it should fall on them to act as “moral arbiters” for the game, when nobody in a position of power — the Premier League, UEFA, the British government — is prepared to do the same.“The league has a policy dating back years of letting potentially unscrupulous actors in,” she said. “The average fan is a bit put out that it’s apparently their job to object, when all they want to do is watch their team.”That, certainly, is where Corcoran falls on the spectrum. Despite his unprompted disquisition on the many and varied failings of British and American foreign policy, 1820-2023, he insisted he has not had to “persuade himself” to accept the ethical legitimacy of Saudi ownership.All he has seen so far, he said, has been encouraging: The owners have pledged to match whatever donations to the food bank he and his fellow volunteers can raise on matchdays. There have been no edicts passed that contravene his sense of what Newcastle United should represent.St. James’ Park, which stewed in resentment under its former owner, now bounces with life again on matchdays.Lee Smith/Action Images Via Reuters“If they asked us to compromise our morals, we would be the first to protest,” he said. “Newcastle is about being inclusive, being welcoming, open to everybody, and those values will not change. It is not worth being a great team if it comes at the cost of being ourselves.”Not everyone has been able to make that sort of accommodation. “There is no glory in success obtained like this,” said John Hird, a member of NUFC Fans Against Sportswashing, a lobbying group set up in the aftermath of the takeover.Though a vast majority of fans have “respected our right to protest,” Hird said, his group has been regularly falsely smeared — particularly online — as some sort of sleeper cell composed of Sunderland fans, seeking to effect the destruction of Newcastle’s impending golden age.In reality, its aims are a little more modest. Hird said he would like to see the city’s lawmakers, as well as larger, more established fan groups, “make good on their promise to be a critical friend to the Saudi owners.” He would encourage those fans won over by the benefits of the takeover “at least to speak up on human rights.”Though its numbers are small — “we accept we are a minority,” Hird said — the group has done what it can to make its voice heard, staging protests outside St. James’ Park and, last week, delivering a letter to Eddie Howe on behalf of the family of a dissident imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.Thus far, though, it has been lost in the clamor generated by Newcastle’s ascent. Every train south is booked this weekend. St. James’ Park is an “incredible” place to play once more. Newcastle has the air of a club going places. Most fans do not see it as their job to stop and think about how it got there.Lee Smith/Action Images, via Reuters More
The decision in a case involving the LIV Golf series could reveal details of the operations of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.A federal magistrate judge has ruled that the leader of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which has bankrolled the new LIV Golf series, must sit for a deposition by lawyers for the PGA Tour who sought his testimony as part of the tangle of litigation involving the sport-splitting circuit.The decision, released on Thursday night in California after an interim legal skirmish that dealt with questions of sovereign immunity and the reach of Saudi law, could reveal details of the wealth fund’s operations and the power of its governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, over its investments abroad.The wealth fund is expected to ask a federal judge in San Jose, Calif., to review the decision by the magistrate judge, Susan van Keulen, who is helping oversee the bitter legal clash between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.In her 58-page ruling, portions of which were redacted in the version that became public late Thursday as the sides jousted about its confidentiality, van Keulen wrote that it was “plain” that the wealth fund was “not a mere investor in LIV.”Instead, the judge wrote, the wealth fund was “the moving force behind the founding, funding, oversight and operation of LIV.” Al-Rumayyan, she wrote elsewhere in her order, “was personally involved in and himself carried out many” of the wealth fund’s activities to create and develop LIV.A Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 7A new series. More
As the league announced more details of a 14-stop second season, former President Donald J. Trump’s courses remained central to the schedule, deepening his ties to Riyadh.Former President Donald J. Trump’s golf courses will host three tournaments this year for the breakaway league that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is underwriting, deepening the financial ties between a candidate for the White House and top officials in Riyadh.LIV Golf, which in the past year has cast men’s professional golf into turmoil as it lured players away from the PGA Tour, said on Monday that it would travel to Trump courses in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia during this year’s 14-stop season. Neither the league nor the Trump Organization announced the terms of their arrangement, but the schedule shows the Saudi-backed start-up will remain allied with, and beneficial to, one of its foremost defenders and political patrons as he seeks a return to power.Part of LIV’s scheduling approach, executives say, hinges on the relative scarcity of elite courses that can challenge players such as Phil Mickelson and Cameron Smith — and the abundance of them in a Trump portfolio that is more accessible than many others to the new circuit. In a court filing last week, LIV Golf complained anew that the PGA Tour had warned “golfers, other tours, vendors, broadcasters, sponsors and virtually any other third parties” against doing business with the rebel league.But Trump, whose courses hosted two LIV Golf events in 2022, has expressed no public misgivings about his company’s ties to the league, which has drawn attention to Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses and prompted accusations that the country was turning to sports to repair its reputation. A confidential McKinsey & Company analysis presented to Saudi officials in 2021 suggested there were significant obstacles to success and underscored the limited financial potential for one of the world’s largest wealth funds.Long before Monday’s announcement, the Trump family was closely entangled with the wealth fund, which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman oversees and the PGA Tour is now trying to draw directly into its legal fight against LIV.A Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More
The executive’s departure is the latest turmoil for LIV, which has drawn plenty of attention but no major television or sponsorship deals.Atul Khosla, the veteran sports executive who was expected to guide LIV Golf into the franchise model on which it has staked its viability, has resigned from the venture that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund financed in a challenge to the PGA Tour.Khosla’s exit, just more than a year after LIV announced his appointment as its chief operating officer, comes as the start-up struggles to gain sustained traction and, confidential records reported by The New York Times this week suggest, is far from reaching the benchmarks that would make it successful.“At the conclusion of LIV’s successful inaugural season, Atul Khosla decided to move on,” Greg Norman, LIV’s commissioner, said in a statement on Friday, days after players and agents were privately told that Khosla would step down. “We respect A.K. and his personal decision.”Khosla is not the first senior official to leave LIV this year, and the outfit has faced questions over the future of Norman, a two-time winner of the British Open and a vociferous critic of the PGA Tour’s design. But while a departure by Norman would threaten to deprive LIV of one of men’s golf’s most familiar and time-tested voices, Khosla was increasingly seen as the LIV executive most integral to fashioning a way forward.At the same time, suspicions about the true scope of his power swirled in the weeks before he left LIV. In a recent court filing, the PGA Tour accused the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, as the wealth fund is formally known, of having an outsize role in managing an operation that has attracted a handful of the world’s top players, including Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Cameron Smith.But even with the defections of those players and some others from the PGA Tour, LIV has not secured the television and sponsorship arrangements that are the lifeblood of top-tier professional sports. Such deals were seen by McKinsey & Company consultants, in an analysis privately prepared for Saudi officials last year, as vital to the new league’s prospects for success.Moreover, LIV, which some experts regard as little more than an effort by Saudi officials to sanitize the country’s reputation as a human rights abuser, has not achieved other benchmarks identified by McKinsey as crucial to realizing even a “coexistence” with the PGA Tour, including signing most of the world’s top 12 golfers and facing “no/mild response” from the golf establishment.LIV has insisted, though, that it remains on track as it heads toward a system in which its teams will act as franchises. In a statement to The Times last week, Jonathan Grella, a LIV spokesman, said that it “has repeatedly made clear that our stakeholders take a long-term approach to our business model.”“Despite the many obstacles put in our path by the PGA Tour, we’re delighted with the success of our beta test year,” Grella said. “And we’re confident that over the next few seasons, the remaining pieces of our business model will come to fruition as planned. Our business plan is built upon a path to profitability. We have a nice, long runway and we’re taking off.”One week later, word of Khosla’s departure became public.In his statement on Friday about Khosla’s resignation, Norman asserted that some of LIV’s “most trusted partners” were “supporting our structural transition and introduction of exciting new developments.” More
McKinsey documents suggest the Saudi league is far off-track for success. Experts say the analysis shows it was never just about profits.Early in 2021, consultants working for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund studied an audacious idea: The desert kingdom wanted to become the world leader in the hidebound realm of men’s professional golf.If the idea seemed unlikely, records show that the benchmarks for success bordered on the fantastical. A new Saudi league would need to sign each of the world’s top 12 golfers, attract sponsors to an unproven product and land television deals for a sport with declining viewership — all without significant retaliation from the PGA Tour it would be plundering.The proposal, code-named Project Wedge, came together as Saudi officials worked to repair the kingdom’s reputation abroad, which hit a low after the 2018 assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. The plan was the foundation for what became LIV Golf, the series whose debut this year provoked accusations that Saudi Arabia was trying to sanitize its human rights record with its deep pockets, former President Donald J. Trump’s country clubs and a handful of big-name golfers. Some of those golfers have publicly played down Saudi abuses, as has Mr. Trump.The league’s promoters say they are trying to revitalize the sport and build a profitable league. But hundreds of pages of confidential documents obtained by The New York Times show that Saudi officials were told that they faced steep challenges. They were breaking into a sport with a dwindling, aging fan base — if one with plenty of wealthy and influential members — and even if they succeeded, the profits would be a relative pittance for one of the world’s richest sovereign wealth funds. Experts say that these make clear that Saudi Arabia, with a golf investment of least $2 billion, has aspirations beyond the financial.An unidentified man trying to hold back the press as Saudi investigators arrived at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in April 2019 amid a growing international backlash to the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi.Chris Mcgrath/Getty Images“The margins might be thin, but that doesn’t really matter,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at Skema Business School in Paris. “Because subsequently you’re establishing the legitimacy of Saudi Arabia — not just as an event host or a sporting powerhouse, but legitimate in the eyes of decision makers and governments around the world.”The documents represent the most complete account to date of the financial assumptions underpinning LIV Golf. One of the most significant was prepared by consultants with McKinsey & Company, which has advised the kingdom’s leaders since the 1970s. McKinsey, which has worked to raise the stature of authoritarian governments around the world, was key to Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy and turn it into a powerful global investor. Worldwide sports have become a pillar in that plan, with Saudi officials even discussing the possibility of someday hosting the World Cup.McKinsey, which declined to comment, analyzed the finances of a potential golf league, but pointedly said in its report that it was not examining whether it was a strategically viable idea. And many of Saudi Arabia’s rosy assumptions, McKinsey added, “have been taken for granted and not been challenged in our assessment.”Indeed, LIV Golf appears far from meeting the goals that the Project Wedge documents laid out. After an inaugural season that cost in excess of $750 million, the league has not announced major broadcasting or sponsorship deals. And its hopes for a surrender by, or an armistice with, the PGA Tour have instead collapsed into an acrimonious court battle.Mr. Trump with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, right, at a LIV tournament at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in July.Seth Wenig/Associated PressMoreover, the league is nowhere near having signed all of the elite players who Saudi advisers said were required for success. In one presentation slide, as McKinsey projected one of its more optimistic financial forecasts, the participation of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy — who have combined to win 25 major championships — was included under the headline “What you need to believe.”Of those stars, only Mr. Mickelson joined LIV, with a deal that is reportedly worth at least $200 million.Mr. Woods, with his ability to attract fans and sponsors, was seen as essential. Even though the league offered Mr. Woods a long-term plan that could have made him “in the neighborhood” of $700 million to $800 million, according to Greg Norman, LIV’s chief executive, the league has found Mr. Woods to be one of its greatest public antagonists.“I don’t know what their end game is,” Mr. Woods said of LIV last month in the Bahamas, where he was hosting a tournament on the PGA Tour schedule. Mr. Woods acknowledged that the PGA Tour “can’t compete dollar for dollar” with the Saudis, but he said that “an endless pit of money” was not a surefire means to “create legacies.”Saudi soccer fans celebrating during a World Cup match against Argentina in Qatar last month. Worldwide sports have become a pillar in the plan to raise Saudi Arabia’s global stature.Tasneem Alsultan for The New York TimesNot long after Mr. Woods spoke, LIV announced details for several of the 14 tournaments it expects to be the proving grounds for $405 million in prize money next year, in addition to the guaranteed payouts it has promised players. It has said it will release its full schedule “in the coming weeks.”The season will unfold as LIV’s business evolves toward its planned franchise model. Although professional golf has some signature team events like the Ryder Cup, the PGA Tour generally relies on players competing for themselves. LIV, whose music-blasting gatherings feel little like traditional tournaments, is betting that fans will prefer to watch a dozen four-player teams competing against each other.“LIV has repeatedly made clear that our stakeholders take a long-term approach to our business model,” Jonathan Grella, a spokesman for LIV, said in a statement. “Despite the many obstacles put in our path by the PGA Tour, we’re delighted with the success of our beta test year. And we’re confident that over the next few seasons, the remaining pieces of our business model will come to fruition as planned. Our business plan is built upon a path to profitability. We have a nice, long runway and we’re taking off.”Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s 37-year-old de facto ruler, often gravitates toward splashy ventures and has repeatedly said that he sets sky-high targets in hopes of motivating officials to achieve a fraction of them. In its analysis, McKinsey called the golf league “a high-risk high-reward endeavor.”The consultants detailed three possible outcomes for a franchise-driven league: languishing as a start-up; realizing a “coexistence” with the PGA Tour; or, most ambitiously, seizing the mantle of dominance.In the most successful scenario, McKinsey predicted revenues of at least $1.4 billion a year in 2028, with earnings before interest and taxes of $320 million or more. (Federal records show that the PGA Tour, a tax-exempt nonprofit, logged about $1.5 billion in revenue and posted a net income of almost $73 million for 2019.)By contrast, a league mired in start-up status — defined as attracting less than half of the world’s top 12 players, navigating a “lack of excitement from fans,” reeling from limited sponsorships and confronting “severe response from golf society” — stood to lose $355 million, before interest and taxes, in 2028.The American golfer Phil Mickelson, right, at LIV Golf’s inaugural event in St. Albans, England, in June.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor now, LIV’s standing tilts sharply that way. Its tournaments have not commanded large crowds, and its broadcasts are largely limited to YouTube. The PGA Tour suspended players who defected, and it is not yet clear whether the organizers of the four major men’s tournaments will allow LIV golfers to participate.Of the top 12 players on a roster in the McKinsey report, LIV has attracted four: Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson, Mr. Mickelson and Henrik Stenson.McKinsey’s work on the golf project is part of a longstanding pattern of foreign consultants providing rationales for Gulf States’ multibillion-dollar projects, some of which become white elephants. When the crown prince announced plans to build a futuristic city called Neom, McKinsey was among the companies that helped envision proposals for robotic dinosaurs, flying taxis and a ski resort that officials say will host the Asian Winter Games in 2029.The Project Wedge analysis was conducted for Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, which is led day to day by its governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan. Mr. al-Rumayyan, a longtime golf enthusiast, is also chairman of the Saudi Arabian Golf Federation. In 2019, he hosted a “Golf Means Business” tournament at the crown prince’s annual investment conference in Riyadh. The PGA Tour describes Mr. al-Rumayyan in court documents as a micromanager whose “daily involvement and influence bears on everything from LIV’s global strategy to the tiniest detail.”Tiger Woods at the Hero World Challenge at Albany Golf Course in Nassau, Bahamas, this month.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesOne document obtained by The Times shows that LIV organizers considered assembling an all-star board of business, sports, legal and political titans. But nine of the people who were identified as possible board members, including Ginni Rometty, the former IBM chief executive, and Randall Stephenson, the former AT&T chairman, said they had never been approached about joining.“I didn’t know I was on the list, and I have never been approached,” Mr. Stephenson, who is a member of the PGA Tour’s board, said in an interview. If asked, he said, he would decline. “It would be a quick conversation,” he said.Most others listed in the document, including the basketball legend Michael Jordan; former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Mark Parker, the executive chairman of Nike, did not respond to requests for comment. McKinsey did not appear to prepare the document, which carries the logo of Golf Saudi, which Mr. al-Rumayyan leads.Mr. Grella, the LIV spokesman, did not answer inquiries about the current composition of a board, which a player handbook said would initially have up to 10 members, including Mr. al-Rumayyan and Mr. Norman.Despite its struggles, LIV is making plans for tournament venues years into the future and is trying to sign more stars. Mr. Norman said in November that a television deal was “a priority,” and as the new season nears, golf fans and executives alike have debated what boost the new league might get if one of its players captured a major championship in 2023.That, Mr. Norman has suggested, would be proof of “how we work within the ecosystem.”It would also be a sign that an outright ban of LIV players from the sport’s biggest stages, one of the gravest hazards that McKinsey flagged, had so far been avoided.Greg Norman, center, the chief executive of LIV Golf, has said that a television deal is “a priority.”Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKevin Draper More
After decades of failure and rejection in sports, the former president’s New Jersey course will host a LIV Golf tournament this weekend, but the event is not simply about the golf.Donald J. Trump has long toyed with becoming a sports baron.He tried for years to buy an N.F.L. franchise and was a face of a second-tier football league that collapsed. He backed a would-be rival to Major League Baseball that never materialized and briefly put his name on a race for elite cyclists.Now, after decades of failure and rejection in sports, the former president is embracing an athletic gambit with an urgent craving for credibility: LIV Golf, the invitational series that has upended professional golf and, flush with money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is seen as another Saudi effort to use sports as a reputation sanitizer.Coming as the former president weighs another White House campaign and as diplomats navigate a complex relationship strained by Saudi Arabia’s human rights record — including the 2018 murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a source of international outrage that Trump has repeatedly played down — the Trump family’s choice to welcome LIV Golf to two of its courses this year carries the starkest geopolitical overtones of any of Trump’s sports forays.It could also undermine the get-tough message that many Republicans have sounded on Saudi Arabia, and it is making some of the Trump family’s ties to the kingdom decidedly, and defiantly, public.They roared into view as Trump, who has long been associated with golf and who was critical of Saudi Arabia as a presidential candidate, publicly pressed top athletes to defect from the PGA Tour to the LIV series, which has lured top players with offers of millions of dollars in guaranteed money. They will be displayed again this weekend, when the Saudi-backed series will hold a tournament at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey. And they are expected to surface again in October, when a Trump course near Miami is scheduled to host the final event of the year.LIV Golf’s logo outside the club house at Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, N.J.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOutside the pro shop at Trump National in Doral, Fla., where LIV’s final event of the year will be held.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesLike much in Trump’s orbit, the deepening relationship, which could ultimately pose concerns about conflicts of interest if the former president ever returns to public office, is one of mutual convenience and murky provenance. It is not clear how much the Trump Organization will make from hosting the Saudi-financed events.Beyond any money, though, the company’s portfolio of courses is gaining fresh attention and, crucially to a former president who seeks adulation, a record of hosting some of the world’s finest golfers.And as Trump takes his place, for the moment, as a figure adjacent to big-time sports, the Saudi fund is picking up a former American president’s imprimatur on a strategy that has sometimes been condemned as “sportswashing.”“I think it’s money, it’s greed, it’s power,” said Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, which has raised questions about whether any Saudi officials had a role in the 2001 attacks.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More
Johnson’s resignation could help him avoid a suspension or a lifetime ban from the tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, who has indicated that punishment on that level was a possibility.Dustin Johnson, a two-time major golf champion, surrendered his PGA Tour status on Tuesday and said that for the immediate future he planned only to play in major tournaments and events sponsored by the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit.Appearing at a news conference in advance of the first of eight LIV Golf events in 2022 that will begin Thursday at the Centurion Club outside London, Johnson also occasionally used terms like “right now” and “for now” when describing his decision to bolt from the PGA Tour.“For right now, I’ve resigned my membership on the tour,” said Johnson, who joined the PGA Tour in 2008 and is ranked 15th in the world. He added that he would play the LIV tour, “for now, that’s the plan.”The breakaway tour headlined by Greg Norman has promised hefty appearance fees and a format that guarantees every entrant six-figure payouts, with 48 players competing for $25 million in prize money in a 54-hole format with no cut. A report last week in The Telegraph said Johnson was paid $125 million to join LIV Golf, whose major shareholder is the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia worth more than $600 billion.Johnson’s PGA Tour resignation could help him avoid a suspension or a lifetime ban from the tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, who has indicated that punishment on that level was a possibility. But so far, the United States-based PGA Tour has remained quiet as Johnson and others, such as Phil Mickelson, the six-time major champion who has earned more than $94 million at tour events, have signaled that they will play in this week’s LIV Golf tournament. Monahan’s lack of response may just be a bit of institutional timing. PGA Tour players are not in violation of any of the tour’s regulations until they actually play in a rival event without permission — and the tour has not given its consent for any players requesting to play this week in England.One thing is certain: Under current guidelines, if Johnson is not a member of the PGA Tour, he cannot play in the biennial Ryder Cup, a ballyhooed competition between top golfers from the United States and Europe with a history that dates to 1927. Johnson has played in the Ryder Cup five times, including last year when he was undefeated in five matches and helped lead the United States to a dominating victory.Golfers on the driving range Tuesday at the Centurion Club. They will play 54 holes, and there is no cut.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut on Tuesday, at least in his mind, the door was still open to play in the upcoming Ryder Cups.“Obviously all things are subject to change,” Johnson said. “Hopefully at some point, it will change and I’ll be able to participate. If it doesn’t, well, it was another thing I really had to think long and hard about. Ultimately, I decided to come to this and play out here.“The Ryder Cup is unbelievable and something that has definitely meant a lot to me. I’m proud to say I’ve represented my country, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to do that again. But I don’t make the rules.”Johnson’s eligibility for all the major golf championships is not a certainty, although on Tuesday the United States Golf Association released a statement that it would not bar any player who was eligible. “Our decision regarding our field for the 2022 U.S. Open should not be construed as the USGA supporting an alternative organizing entity, nor supportive of any individual player actions or comments,” the statement said. “Rather, it is simply a response to whether or not the USGA views playing in an alternative event, without the consent of their home tour, an offense that should disqualify them for the U.S. Open.” Johnson qualifies for a spot in the field in multiple ways, not the least of which being that he won the championship in 2016. The same is true for Mickelson, who already has a spot in the 2022 U.S. Open and in next month’s British Open.Johnson has also qualified for this year’s British Open because of his 2020 Masters victory. The Masters title would normally make him welcome at the Masters for many years to come, as well as at a fourth major, the P.G.A. Championship, for the next five years.But the Masters is run by Augusta National Golf Club, which has proved in the past that it would make decisions independently. The P.G.A. Championship is governed by the PGA of America. Before that event was held last month, the organization’s chief executive, Seth Waugh, pledged his loyalty to the established PGA Tour, which he referred to as part of golf’s existing ecosystem.“Our bylaws do say that you have to be a recognized member of a recognized tour in order to be a PGA member somewhere, and therefore eligible to play,” Waugh said, speaking of the P.G.A. Championship.Asked about the alternative LIV Golf tour, Waugh answered: “We think the structure of — I don’t know if it’s a league, it’s not a league at this point — but the league structure is somewhat flawed.”How easy it might be for players to try to jockey back and forth between the LIV Golf Invitational series and golf’s biggest events, including the PGA Tour, is not known. Professional golf is largely in uncharted territory, at least in modern times.The LIV Golf prize money and the reported upfront payments to Johnson, and to Mickelson who received a $200 million contract according to Golf Channel, are staggeringly large in comparison to payouts on the PGA Tour. Players scoring in the bottom half of the field after two rounds in most tour events typically earn nothing. And yet, the leading, young stars of the PGA Tour have nonetheless remained unwaveringly loyal.Louis Oosthuizen said on Tuesday that he planned to play only one more year on the PGA Tour.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJohnson is one of only two top 30 players to join LIV Golf. (Louis Oosthuizen, ranked 21st, is the other.) But the overwhelming majority of the rest in the top 30, who are both the vanguard overtaking the game and generally in their 20s or early 30s, have stood with the PGA Tour.Johnson is 37, and Oosthuizen is 39 and said on Tuesday that he only planned to play one more year on the PGA Tour. In fact, many of the golfers who have committed to this week’s LIV Golf event have seen a declining world ranking lately: Sergio Garcia, 42, was ranked 10th in the men’s world rankings five years ago is now 57th; Graeme McDowell, 42, was ranked 15th in 2012 and is currently No. 374; Ian Poulter, 46, was ranked 12th a decade ago and is now 92nd; Martin Kaymer, 37, the world’s top-ranked men’s golfer in 2011 is now ranked 215th.There is no inevitability that the PGA Tour’s young guard will maintain their solidarity, especially after next month’s British Open, the last major of the season, is contested. The PGA Tour schedule winds down in August when it turns toward the season-ending FedEx Cup playoffs, which awards the winner an ample $15 million. But some tour players who do not qualify for those playoffs might be enticed to enter some of the final, lucrative LIV Golf events in September and October.That might especially be true for golfers with lesser tour status, but they would most likely still face a suspension from the PGA Tour that could continue into next year. And perhaps beyond. Is that worth it?The situation, and the professional golf landscape, is evolving. Johnson, a prominent figure in golf, and Mickelson, a fading, aging — albeit popular — golf personality, have seemed to turn their backs on the status quo. At least temporarily, to hear some of Johnson’s words.Mickelson, it is worth noting, insisted on Tuesday that he planned to keep the lifetime PGA Tour membership he has earned in his long career.If it sounds knotty, keep in mind it could become more tangled. The next stage of golf’s burgeoning face-off may be in court. More
