Saudi Arabia

Subterms

    Latest story

    175 Shares119 Views

    PGA Tour Meets With Saudi Fund in New York to Discuss LIV Golf Deal

    by

    More than a year has passed since the tour agreed to a deal with LIV Golf, but there is some hope an in-person gathering in New York could create momentum.More than a year after the PGA Tour announced plans to combine forces with the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund’s upstart LIV Golf league, the two sides met in Manhattan on Tuesday in hopes of — finally — making headway on getting to a deal.Given a series of starts and stops in talks aimed at a proposed deal, an accord remains far from certain. But executives from the tour and the Saudi wealth fund, which backs LIV Golf, alongside their advisers, were focused on hammering out details of an agreement, three people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.Also involved in the talks is at least one executive from the consortium of U.S. investors that has already committed to investing in the tour, the people said. The meeting is expected to continue on Wednesday, and could also spill into additional days, they said.The flurry of activity demonstrated an eagerness by both sides to get a deal done. The standoff between the PGA Tour and its Saudi-backed rival has divided the sport, frustrating fans and players alike.No players attended the meeting, the people said, though several have been in other meetings about the deal. A report that Tiger Woods was New York spurred speculation about his presence, but one of the people said Woods was in town for a golf event supporting his foundation.Plans for the meeting came together within the past week, with the hope that an in-person gathering would generate some momentum, the people said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      This Soccer Player Wanted to Wear Her Hijab on the Field. France Wouldn’t Let Her.

      by

      Lina Boussaha joined a team in Saudi Arabia so she could wear her head scarf while playing the sport she calls “a part of my soul.”During Ramadan, as her family fasted and prayed, Lina Boussaha, a professional soccer player, eagerly tore open a package in her bedroom in France. Inside were two head scarves she had ordered, labeled Nike, and marketed as a symbol of empowerment for Muslim women in sports.Ms. Boussaha, 25, turned pro when she was 17. Her parents are Algerian, she grew up in one of Paris’s poorest suburbs, and until that Ramadan, in 2022, had never worn a hijab outside prayers. She usually wore her heavy curls in a high ponytail.But she had recently decided she wanted to wear a hijab regularly, even during games. And that decision put her on a journey that eventually took her from France to start her career anew in the Middle East.It also gave her a chance to unite her religious beliefs with her secular pursuit of soccer.“It is with great pride that I announce that I am wearing the veil (hijab),” Ms. Boussaha wrote on her Instagram account that night. “My religion, my inner peace, and my spirituality are my priorities, and these come before my worldly pleasures like football & my career as a professional player. Nothing prevents doing both, even if (here in France), it remains complicated.”As she recalled writing those words, she said in an interview in a cafe near her childhood home in Seine-Saint-Denis, a wave of relief washed over her.“Soccer is not just a game for me,” she said. “It’s a part of my soul.”Ms. Boussaha at a mosque in Khobar. France’s soccer federation has barred players from wearing conspicuous religious symbols or clothing like hijabs during matches.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      Saudi Arabia Is Set to Be Sole Bidder for 2034 World Cup

      by

      Australia announced it would not bid for the tournament, clearing the way for the Saudis to bring soccer’s biggest championship back to the Gulf.Saudi Arabia emerged as the likely winner in the abbreviated race to host soccer’s World Cup in 2034 on Tuesday after Australia’s soccer federation announced that it would not bid for the tournament. The decision most likely removed the only hurdle in the way of Saudi Arabia’s plan to bring the world’s most-watched sporting event back to the Gulf.Australia announced its decision hours before a deadline set by soccer’s governing body, FIFA, for nations to express an interest in hosting the World Cup. Saudi Arabia made clear its intent to bid weeks ago, and FIFA’s rules — and powerful allies — have all but assured it will prevail.In a sudden and surprising move earlier this month, FIFA announced a truncated bidding timeline for the tournament, telling interested nations that they had only 25 days to formally express their interest and provide extensive declarations of government backing for a 48-team, multicity event that usually requires billions of dollars and years of planning.The decision to shorten that timeline to only a matter of weeks was announced on the same day FIFA formally announced that its 2030 World Cup would be shared by countries in Europe, Africa and South America.FIFA’s move to speed up the bidding for 2034 surprised many, coming 11 years before the scheduled start of the tournament and a full three years before the 2034 host was supposed to be decided. FIFA also said only bidders from Asia and Oceania, two of soccer’s six regional confederations, could be considered for selection.Saudi Arabia, which had for years been public about its desire to host the World Cup, particularly after its neighbor Qatar won the rights to the 2022 championship, moved fast to secure the tournament after FIFA set the rules this month. Its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, declared the kingdom’s intent to bid within minutes of FIFA’s announcement of the official timeline, and within hours the Saudis had received the backing of Asian soccer leaders.Australia, widely considered an outsider, had said that after successfully staging this year’s Women’s World Cup it would explore the idea of push for the men’s tournament. But on Tuesday it announced that it had decided not to mount an official bid, saying it would instead concentrate on staging other events.“We wish FIFA and the eventual hosts of the FIFA World Cup 2034 the greatest success for the good of the game and for everyone who loves our sport,” the Australian federation said in a statement on its website.Australian officials may have concluded that they would have been overmatched if they challenged Saudi Arabia to secure the votes of the majority of FIFA’s 211 federations. Saudi Arabia has in the past year signed agreements with scores of FIFA’s member nations, and it also had locked up the crucial backing of the Asian soccer confederation, of which Australia is also a member.Almost as soon as Saudi Arabia declared its intention to bid, the president of the Asian confederation, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al Khalifa of Bahrain, announced that “the entire Asian football family will stand united in support” of the Saudi bid. More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      Selling Saudi Soccer, One Like at a Time

      by

      The standard of play in the Saudi Pro League doesn’t matter when no one’s watching the games.Neymar’s endorsement was not, perhaps, the most ringing. Back in Brazil to play for his national team this month, he had been asked — not for the first time — to address the lingering suspicion that, in leaving Paris St.-Germain for Saudi Arabia and Al-Hilal, one of the finest players of his generation might not have chosen the most challenging coda to his career.Neymar’s immediate instinct was to dismiss the premise. “I can assure you the game in Saudi Arabia is the same: The ball is round, we have goal posts,” he said with a slight smile and a nervous laugh. “For the names that have gone to Saudi Arabia, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Saudi league was better than the French,” he added. He was still smiling then, but it did not feel quite as warm.Clearly, the accusation — one thrown not just at Neymar, but at the dozens of players who have been enticed to the Saudi Pro League over the course of the summer — touches a nerve.That is no surprise. Nobody likes to be told that they have chosen the easy route. No athlete would tolerate the intimation that what they do, and where they play, does not really count. In general, soccer players fall philosophically somewhere between realism and cynicism, but even they tend to bristle when they are told their primary — their only — motivation is money. The early evidence, though, does not exactly play in Neymar’s favor.Neymar’s signing by Al-Hilal, like so many others this summer, was about attracting attention as much as talent.Associated PressEstablishing the comparative quality of different leagues is an inexact science. What makes one competition stronger than another? Is it the technical brilliance of the best teams? Is it incompetence of the worst? Or is it the cumulative accomplishment of the tournament’s constituents? Is it the peak, the trough, or the median?Or does it have nothing to do with the ability of the players at all? Is the best league the one that is most entertaining, or the most competitive, the one in which the greatest proportion of games are evenly balanced? (Other answers include: “The one in which you are most emotionally invested” and “The one with the highest production values and smartest marketing strategy.”)It is hard to believe, though, that the first installment of the new-and-improved Saudi Pro League outstrips France’s Ligue 1 — by common consensus the weakest of Europe’s five major leagues — on any of those criteria.(To be clear, it would be unreasonable to think it should. A whole competition cannot be transformed in a single summer, and even the Saudi authorities themselves accept it is an ongoing process. Those who have been working there for longer than Neymar regard the standard as hugely variable, still, with the strongest sides roughly on a par with mid-table Premier League teams, and the weakest some way below.)Still, Neymar — who missed more than 100 games through injury during his six seasons in France, a crude but not entirely irrelevant gauge of the intensity of that competition — cannot have failed to notice the difference.At Al-Nassr, Cristiano Ronaldo is the star even when he doesn’t score.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn Thursday, during Al-Ittihad’s win against Al-Okhdood, the Cameroonian striker Léandre Tawamba performed a nutmeg on another of the league’s high-profile recruits, the Brazilian midfielder Fabinho. The trick itself was neat, inventive, worthy of a ripple of applause. Fabinho’s reaction, though, was telling.He did not immediately snap at Tawamba’s ankles. He did not tussle with the forward, his brow furrowed in grim determination, as he surely would have done during his days at Monaco, or Liverpool. He chose, instead, just to stand and watch for a moment. So did the rest of Al-Ittihad’s midfield. The whole thing seemed to play out in slow motion.Any number of brief vignettes from the opening weeks of the Saudi season create the same impression. There are gifted players present, of course. There are moments of wonder. But for all the screaming headlines and the triumphalist spin that tends to greet another goal for Cristiano Ronaldo or another virtuoso improvisation from Karim Benzema, everything is undercut by quite how laissez-faire it all seems to be.That is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Soccer does not have to be played in the pell-mell style that is de rigueur in England and Germany. Intensity does not always equal beauty. Argentina, for example, has long had a tradition of a slightly more thoughtful playing style. And besides, there are extenuating circumstances: Saudi Arabia, even on a September evening, is still really quite hot.More important, as Neymar and those who have made the same career choice this summer reflect on and come to terms with their decisions, there is a very good chance that the quality of the league does not matter in the slightest.Saudi Arabia did not spend the summer just signing superstars. Through its media rights partners, its soccer authorities also reached agreements with a host of international broadcasters. This season, the league’s games will now be available in more than 130 territories, among them the United States (Fox), Britain, Germany and Canada (DAZN), and, eager to see what real soccer looks like, France (Canal+).But that is not how the vast majority of people will engage with the Saudi league, because it is not how the vast majority of people engage with any league.Does it even matter that Karim Benzema and Al-Ittihad entered Friday atop the Saudi Pro League table? Maybe not to Saudi Arabia.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere has always been a discrepancy between live soccer’s value as content and the number of people who actually watch it. Even the most mouthwatering Premier League games attract only a couple of million viewers in Britain, and roughly the same number in the United States. (Where there are, you may have noticed, significantly more people.)Instead, most fans consume the sport in either an abbreviated form — game highlights — or an abstract one, as a rolling, character-based drama that plays out across various strands of the media. In recent years, social media has allowed those to dovetail: You can follow the plot interspersed with brief clips of Ronaldo scoring a penalty or Neymar fooling a defender or Fabinho not really bothering to tackle someone.It seems unlikely that Saudi Arabia is ignorant of that. The country’s approach has been sufficiently considered that it is reasonable to assume it has been factored into its plans. The way to win hearts and minds, in the digital age, is not to construct a league and imbue it with a slow-burn dramatic tension. That is hard, and takes time.It is much quicker, and much easier, to use a competition to generate digestible, fun-size content, the sort that can be quickly and easily shared on Instagram and TikTok and whatever Twitter is called now, the kind that generates neither an emotional nor an intellectual response but one that can be encapsulated in an emoji. If people do not watch the games, the standard is irrelevant. All that matters is that you hit that like button.Quite what that means for the future of the sport itself — of all sports, in fact — is not clear. Soccer’s authorities, the various feuding bodies in charge of the most popular pastime the world has ever known, have spent a surprising amount of time in recent years considering that very issue.For Neymar and the others, though, as for Saudi Arabia, the answer is no more pressing than whether the average game in the Saudi Pro League is as good as the average game in Ligue 1. Nobody is judging Saudi Arabia on what its billion-dollar, oven-baked competition looks like over 90 minutes. All it takes is a few seconds.Destination: TajikistanThe Asian Champions League schedule will send Cristiano Ronaldo and Al-Nassr to Tajikistan, Qatar and Iran.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAll through the fall of 2009 and the spring of 2010, it seemed impossible that Barcelona would not retain the Champions League title. Pep Guardiola’s team was, by some distance, the best in Europe. Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernández, Andres Iniesta and their teammates breezed through the group. They blew past Stuttgart and then Arsenal in the knockout phase.There are two interpretations for what happened next. José Mourinho, the coach of the Inter Milan team that knocked Barcelona out in the semifinals, would tell you that his tactical acumen derailed his great philosophical counterpoint’s attempt to conquer the continent once again.Everyone else would suggest that the explosion of Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that sent an ash cloud over Europe and forced Barcelona to travel overland to the first leg of its semifinal with Inter in Milan, might have had something to do with it.All of which is a long-winded, self-indulgent way of saying that — from this vantage point — any serious rationale for Manchester City’s not winning a second straight Champions League needs to involve at least one volcano. It is hard, certainly, to see it losing to any of its supposed rivals over two legs. (A final, I will concede, can be a little more arbitrary.)Perhaps, then, it is time to concede that the UEFA Champions League is not the most interesting continental tournament this season. It is not even the most interesting tournament of that name. For intrigue, it cannot hope to compete with the Asian iteration of the competition.There are, as you might have read, pros and cons to Saudi Arabia’s sudden taste for soccer teams and players, but it is hard to argue that seeing an Al-Hilal team featuring Neymar play in Mumbai is not a benefit. That is not all. Karim Benzema’s Al-Ittihad is set to travel to Iran, while — a personal favorite — Cristiano Ronaldo and Al-Nassr will make the trip to Istiklol, in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.Partly, the pleasure is sincere: The prospect of welcoming Neymar, in the flesh, for a competitive game, is one that millions of fans in India will treasure. Partly, though, it is vicarious.Quite how Al-Nassr tempted Ronaldo to Saudi Arabia is not clear; precise details of the pitch remain private. It is hard to imagine, though, that at any point anyone mentioned the bit about a game in Tajikistan, an autocracy so repressive that even the Premier League might think twice before allowing it to buy one of its soccer teams.CorrespondenceNot really a correspondence section, this week, so much as a brief note to say thanks to all of you who have been in touch in the last few weeks to seek clarification on the future of this newsletter/my general whereabouts. Each message has been gratefully received, and hopefully this edition settles some of the more outré conspiracy theories. If not, I can happily provide a contemporaneous photograph with a copy of today’s newspaper for verification. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Golf

      LIV Golf Has Embraced Trump, but Others Are Keeping Their Distance

      by

      LIV Golf has embraced the former president. But much of golf’s establishment is keeping its distance, even as LIV and the PGA Tour seek a détente.Walking toward a tee box in Virginia in May, former President Donald J. Trump offered an awfully accurate assessment of the way many golf executives viewed him.“They love the courses,” he said, forever the salesman for his family company’s portfolio of properties, “but I think they probably consider me a little bit controversial right now.”As much as some leaders of men’s golf are trying to patch the rupture created by the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit, a tour Trump has championed, they seem to be in no rush to end the former president’s exile from their sport’s buttoned-up establishment. Even in an era of gaudy wealth and shifting alliances in golf, Trump remains, for now, a measure too much for many.The consequences have been conspicuous for a figure who had expected to host a men’s golf major tournament in 2022. Now, his ties to the sport’s elite ranks often appear limited to LIV events and periodic rounds with past and present professionals. Jack Nicklaus, the 18-time major champion, caused a stir in April when he publicly stopped short of again endorsing a Trump bid for the White House.Nevertheless, on Thursday, when he was playing a LIV pro-am event at his course in Bedminster, N.J., Trump insisted he was in regular conversations with golf executives about top-tier tournaments.“They think as long as you’re running for office or in office, you’re controversial,” he said.Golf has been a regular respite for Democratic and Republican commanders in chief. But no American president has had a more openly combustible history with the sport than Trump, and perhaps no president besides Dwight D. Eisenhower, who is thought to have averaged about 100 rounds annually when he was in the White House, has had so much of his public image linked to golf.In the years before Trump won the presidency, he had at last started to make significant headway into the rarefied realms of golf.Trump watched his shot from the fairway.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn 2012, the U.S. Golf Association picked the Bedminster property for the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open. Two years later, the P.G.A. of America said it planned to take the men’s P.G.A. Championship to the course in 2022. Also in 2014, Trump bought Turnberry, a mesmerizing Scottish property that had hosted four British Opens, and he imagined golf’s oldest major championship being contested there again.Once in the White House, Trump played with a parade of golf figures (though some of them appeared more attracted to the magic of the presidency than to Trump himself): Tiger Woods; Rory McIlroy; Ernie Els; Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour; and Fred S. Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club.Trump’s 2016 campaign and presidency had given some in golf heartburn. But it was the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol that most clearly chiseled away at his golf dreams. The P.G.A., which is distinct from the PGA Tour, which has dueled with LIV for supremacy over men’s professional golf, immediately moved its 2022 championship from Bedminster. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, made clear that it would not be bound for Turnberry anytime soon.LIV soon emerged as something of a life raft, an insurgent league with a craving for championship-quality courses and plenty of money to spend. It did not hurt that Trump had been strikingly cozy with the government in Riyadh whose wealth fund was ready to pour billions of dollars into LIV — and let some of those dollars, in turn, roll toward the Trump Organization for reasons that have been the subject of widespread speculation.Trump became a fixture at LIV events held at his courses, routinely jawing about the PGA Tour with variable accuracy. (He did, however, predict something like the planned transaction between the wealth fund and the PGA Tour.) This week’s event in New Jersey is his family’s fourth LIV tournament, and a fifth is planned for the Miami area in October.But the budding détente between the Saudis and the PGA Tour does not seem to be leading to an immediate one between Trump and the broader golf industry, which the Saudis could have enormous sway over in the years ahead.The PGA Tour has not publicly committed to maintaining the LIV brand if it reaches a conclusive deal with the wealth fund, and the tentative agreement says nothing about the future of men’s golf’s relationship with Trump. The PGA Tour has a history with Trump but ended its relationship with his company during the 2016 campaign. Tim Finchem, who was the tour’s commissioner then, denied at the time that the decision was “a political exercise” and instead called it “fundamentally a sponsorship issue.”To no one’s surprise, the tour’s 2024 schedule, which the circuit released on Monday, features no events at Trump properties. And although Trump said a few months ago that he thought the Irish Open might be interested in his Doonbeg course, the DP World Tour, which is also a part of the agreement with the Saudi wealth fund, has said the course is not under consideration.Other top golf figures who are not bound by any deal with the Saudis somehow appear even less interested.Trump Turnberry in Scotland won’t be hosting the British Open anytime soon, according to the chief executive of the R&A.Mary Turner for The New York Times“Until we’re confident that any coverage at Turnberry would be about golf, about the golf course and about the championship, until we’re confident about that, we will not return any of our championships there,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said on the same day last month when he signaled that the Open organizer might be willing to accept a Saudi investment.Seth Waugh, the P.G.A. of America’s chief executive, declined to comment this week, but the organization has given no signal that it is reconsidering its thinking about Trump courses. The U.S.G.A. said it did not have a comment.Some players, many of whom at least lean conservative, have suggested they would like to see Trump courses be in the mix for the majors.“There’s no reason you couldn’t host P.G.A.s, U.S. Opens out here,” said Patrick Reed, who won the Masters Tournament in 2018 and played with Trump on Thursday. “I mean, just look at it out here: The rough is brutal.”Even a sudden rapprochement, which would require executives setting aside the views of players like Reed that politics should not shape sports decisions, would almost certainly not lead to Trump’s strutting around a major tournament in the near future.The next U.S. Open in need of a venue is the one that will be played in 2036; Trump would turn 90 on the Saturday of that tournament. P.G.A. Championships are booked through 2030. Between last month’s announcement that the 2026 British Open will be held at Royal Birkdale and the R&A’s sustained public skepticism of Trump, the last major of the calendar year seems unlikely to head to a Trump property anytime soon. And the Masters, which is always played at Augusta National in Georgia, is not an option.Women’s golf offers a few more theoretical possibilities since its roster of venues is not as set, but Trump would face much of the same reluctance.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. A few months ago, he argued that avoiding his courses was “foolish because you make a lot of money with controversy.”He may be right.But it seems golf is reasoning that it is making plenty of money anyway. Its political bent, some figure, might be better managed outside the glare of its major tournaments — and, moreover, beyond the shadow of Trump.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. Doug Mills/The New York Times More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      Kylian Mbappé Is Target of Record Offer From Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal

      by

      Al Hilal of the Saudi Professional League made a bid to Paris St.-Germain to acquire the French striker in what would be the most expensive soccer transfer in history.Saudi Arabia’s turbocharged attempt to turn its domestic soccer league into one of the sport’s most glamorous has already attracted Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the greatest stars of his generation, and Karim Benzema, the reigning world player of the year. Those deals, though, pale into comparison with its most ambitious target yet: Kylian Mbappé.Over the weekend, one of the Saudi Professional League’s more prominent teams, Al Hilal, submitted an offer worth $332 million for the France striker to his current team, Paris St.-Germain. Should the deal go through, it would make Mbappé the most expensive player in the sport’s history by some distance, dwarfing the $263 million P.S.G. paid for the Brazilian forward Neymar six years ago.The official bid was sent to P.S.G.’s chief executive, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, on Saturday. It was signed by Al Hilal’s chief executive, and it confirmed the price the club was prepared to pay and requested permission to discuss salary and the length of a contract with Mbappé. On Monday, it was reported by some news outlets that P.S.G. had granted that request.Al Hilal was expecting to hold initial talks with Fayza Lamari, Mbappé’s agent and mother, early this week, according to three people with knowledge of the offer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the details. It is likely that the club will have to commit hundreds of millions of dollars more in salary to persuade Mbappé, 24, who is regarded as the likely heir to Ronaldo and Lionel Messi as the finest player on the planet, to leave P.S.G. for a team in what was most recently ranked as soccer’s 58th strongest domestic league.Mbappé is already lavishly remunerated at P.S.G., his hometown club. Last summer, he was handed a contract worth $36 million a year, complete with a $120 million golden handshake.Even the amount of money that P.S.G.’s ultimate owner — Qatar Sports Investment, drawing on the wealth of the Qatari state — can afford to pay him, though, may not prove off-putting to his prospective employer: Al Hilal is now one of four Saudi teams majority owned by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.There is an element of opportunism in Al Hilal’s approach. Mbappé’s future has been the subject of intense speculation since the start of June, when the player informed P.S.G. that he intended to see out the final year of his current deal and walk away as a free agent in 2024.P.S.G. has insisted that it will not contemplate losing such a prized asset for nothing, informing Mbappé that he must sign a new contract — one that would extend his stay beyond 2024 — or face an uncertain future: either being sold or having to spend the season on the substitutes’ bench.The club has sought legal advice to gauge the strength of its position. Mbappé has maintained that he intends to spend the coming season in Paris, although he was omitted from the squad for the club’s preseason tour of Asia last week as a result of the standoff.Al Hilal headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.Ahmed Yosri/ReutersAl Hilal is not the only team hoping to take advantage of the growing schism between P.S.G. and one of soccer’s most talented players and most marketable names.P.S.G. has received several inquiries about Mbappé’s theoretical price tag. Chelsea, now owned by a consortium that includes Clearlake Capital Group, the private equity firm, has asked P.S.G. how much the player would cost. Barcelona, the Spanish champion, has discussed a deal in which more than one of its own prime assets would arrive in Paris in an exchange.Real Madrid, long assumed to be Mbappé’s preferred destination, has yet to show its hand. Some executives at P.S.G. believe a deal is already in place in which Mbappé would move to the Spanish capital next summer.It is that expectation that Al Hilal — most likely not the sort of place that Mbappé, at this stage of his career, would ordinarily have considered as his natural next step — hopes may provide it with an advantage.It has been reported that, despite all the money it is prepared to spend to secure his arrival, the Saudi club would allow Mbappé to leave for Spain after just a season in the Middle East. More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in Golf

      Pressured by U.S., PGA Tour and Saudi Fund Drop Key Part of Golf Deal

      by

      The two parties had promised not to poach each other’s players. Their decision to abandon that clause removes one of the few binding provisions of the agreement that has rocked golf.The PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, facing pressure from the Justice Department about their ambitions for a new company to shape global golf, have in recent days abandoned a crucial provision of their tentative deal: a promise not to recruit each other’s players.The decision — and the Justice Department’s choice to raise concerns so early in a review that could lead to a government attempt to block the transaction — reflected the fragility, uncertainty and turbulence surrounding the deal.The framework agreement between the tour and the wealth fund included few binding provisions. But one of them was a nonsolicitation clause, which said the tour and wealth fund-backed LIV Golf league would not “enter into any contract, agreement or understanding with” any “players who are members of the other’s tour or organization.”The agreement also said the tour and LIV would not “solicit” or “recruit” players away from each other.Before the deal, LIV used norm-shattering prize funds and guaranteed contracts — some deals promised golfers at least $100 million — to entice some of the world’s top players away from the PGA Tour, which had spent decades as the premier, and largely unchallenged, circuit in men’s professional golf.Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Cameron Smith were among the players who ultimately joined LIV, depriving the PGA Tour of some of the star power on which it had relied to draw fans and sponsors.The nonsolicitation clause was a short-term way to stop the exodus while the tour and the wealth fund negotiated the final terms for their new company, which would bring the golf business ventures of the PGA Tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour, into a single entity.“My fear is if we don’t get to an agreement, they were already putting billions of dollars into golf,” James J. Dunne, a PGA Tour board member, said of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAfter the text of the agreement emerged late last month, though, antitrust experts warned that the clause could run afoul of federal law because it threatened the integrity of the labor market and promised to stifle competition for players, who have long been independent contractors.In recent days, people familiar with the change said, the tour and the wealth fund decided to abandon the provision in hopes of staving off an extraordinary intervention by the Justice Department. Golf officials disagreed with the department’s misgivings but acquiesced nevertheless.The original language appeared “to be right in the field of vision that the Department of Justice has staked out for its no-poaching enforcement program,” said William E. Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission chairman.“They haven’t had a great deal of success in their criminal cases yet,” he said. “But they have said, as a matter of policy, we regard no-poaching agreements as being as being a serious offense worthy of criminal prosecution.”The Justice Department and the wealth fund declined to comment on Thursday. In a statement on Thursday afternoon, the tour said it “chose to remove specific language” from the initial pact after it engaged with the Justice Department.“While we believe the language is lawful, we also consider it unnecessary in the spirit of cooperation and because all parties are negotiating in good faith,” the tour said.The tour formally notified its board of the decision on Thursday, after The New York Times asked the tour to comment on its reporting. A person familiar with the tour’s internal deliberations said the circuit’s leaders had already planned to inform the board on Thursday.Turmoil has enveloped the deal, which has not closed, since it was announced on June 6. On Tuesday, a Senate subcommittee questioned a pair of PGA Tour leaders during a lengthy hearing, part of at least two unfolding congressional inquiries. Tour executives have depicted the framework deal, and the final accord they hope to strike eventually, as necessary.Without some kind of truce, they have said, the wealth fund would assuredly pour more resources into the fight, diminishing the tour one year after another.“My fear is if we don’t get to an agreement, they were already putting billions of dollars into golf,” James J. Dunne III, a tour board member, said of the wealth fund when he addressed lawmakers on Tuesday. “They have a management team wanting to destroy the tour. Even though you can say take five or six players a year, they have an unlimited horizon and an unlimited amount of money.”The reviews on Capitol Hill could lead to damaging public revelations. But Justice Department scrutiny is seen as the more likely path for the government to try to derail the deal, if it chooses to try.Regulators and antitrust scholars have been watching the tour’s public statements with interest, such as when Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, said on June 6 that the deal would let the circuit “take the competitor off of the board.”“Those are sound bites that the Department of Justice would look at and say, ‘Is what occurred promoting competition, or is what occurred stifling competition insofar as an entity with a monopoly grip on the market has eliminated a competitor and solidified their grip on the market?’” said Gerald Maatman Jr., who chairs the workplace class-action group at the law firm Duane Morris.Not every binding provision of the framework agreement has caused such substantial alarm among antitrust regulators. The wealth fund and the tour, for instance, agreed to dismiss acrimonious litigation over their golf pursuits. And although Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who is leading one of the Senate inquiries into the deal, expressed concern this week about a nondisparagement pledge included in the agreement, experts said that kind of restriction was unlikely to draw concern inside the Justice Department. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Golf

      PGA Tour Wanted Greg Norman Ousted as Part of Saudi Deal

      by

      The American circuit’s efforts were made public in documents that Congress released on Tuesday.The PGA Tour sought the ouster of Greg Norman, the two-time British Open champion who became the commissioner of the insurgent LIV Golf league, as a condition of its alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to records that a Senate subcommittee released on Tuesday.The tour and the wealth fund did not ultimately agree to the proposal — crafted as a so-called side letter to a larger framework agreement — and, for now, Norman remains atop LIV. But the deliberations reflect an enmity forged over decades of hostilities between the tour and Norman, one of the most talented players in professional golf history who often chafed at the sport’s economic structure.And they underscore the tensions that could linger if the deal closes.The glimpse into the negotiations between the tour and the wealth fund came as the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations began its first hearing into the arrangement, which calls for the business ventures of the tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour to be brought into a new, for-profit company.The plan is facing significant scrutiny in Washington, where some lawmakers have castigated the tour, once willing to condemn Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, for abruptly growing cozy with an arm of a coercive government. Beyond any congressional misgivings about the wealth fund’s ties to the Saudi government, Justice Department officials are also interested in whether the deal violates federal antitrust laws and whether they should try to block it.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in his opening statement on Tuesday that his subcommittee’s hearing was about “much more than the game of golf.”“It is about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence — indeed even take over — a cherished American institution to cleanse its public image,” Blumenthal, the subcommittee’s chairman, added, citing the kingdom’s record of killing journalists, abusing dissidents and having “supported other terrorist activities, including the 9/11 attack on our nation.”“It is also about hypocrisy, how vast sums of money can induce individuals and institutions to betray their own values and supporters, or perhaps reveal a lack of values from the beginning,” he continued. “It’s about other sports and institutions that could fall prey, if their leaders let it be all about the money.”The proceeding, held in a crowded Capitol Hill room that previously hosted Supreme Court confirmation hearings and meetings of the 9/11 Commission, included two senior PGA Tour leaders: the chief operating officer, Ron Price, and a board member who was intimately involved in the negotiations that led to the tentative deal that was announced on June 6.In an opening statement, Price argued that the tour, faced with the threat of competing with one of the world’s mightiest sovereign wealth funds, had little choice but to seek some measure of coexistence after months of acrimony in court and in jockeying for the allegiances of the world’s best players.“It was very clear to us — and to all who love the PGA Tour and the game of golf as a whole — that the dispute was undermining growth of our sport and was threatening the very survival of the PGA Tour, and it was unsustainable,” Price said. “While we had significant wins in litigation, our players, our fans, our partners, our employees and the charities we support would lose.”Tour leaders have acknowledged that with negotiations for a final agreement still unfolding, board approval is no certainty. Over the weekend, one member of the board, the former AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson, resigned. In a letter about his exit, Stephenson said “the construct currently being negotiated by management is not one that I can objectively evaluate or in good conscience support.”Tour executives have been eager to show how the agreement leaves them positioned to run professional golf’s day-to-day operations. The tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, has been tabbed as the chief executive of the new company, expected to be called PGA Tour Enterprises, and the tour is expected to fill a majority of the company’s board seats.They have been far less keen to discuss how Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, will serve as the chairman of PGA Tour Enterprises and how the framework agreement envisions sweeping investment rights for a Riyadh-based fund whose power and value have swelled in recent years.Neither al-Rumayyan nor Norman agreed to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, citing scheduling conflicts. But documents released by the subcommittee suggest that both will be factors in an inquiry that could last months.The effort to remove Norman was underway by May 24, when the PGA Tour board’s chairman, Edward D. Herlihy, sent a proposed side letter to Michael Klein, a banker working with the wealth fund. The proposal called for Norman, as well as a British outfit central to developing LIV, to “cease” working on LIV within a month of “the management transition to the PGA Tour.”Although Norman’s long-term fate has been uncertain — he was not a part of the negotiations that led to the preliminary deal, stoking questions about his relevance — it was not until Tuesday that it became clear that his future had been a subject of the talks.LIV did not comment on Tuesday, but three people with knowledge of the negotiations, who requested anonymity to discuss private talks, said the wealth fund had rejected the tour’s proposal.The documents that the Senate released also detail the deliberations over when and how to announce the deal; Klein was among the figures who said the tour and the wealth fund should not wait for a final agreement to disclose their newfound peace.And the records show how a British businessman with ties to the wealth fund and its advisers reached out to James J. Dunne III, now a tour board member and one of Tuesday’s witnesses, in December. In an email, the businessman, Roger Devlin, suggested that there could be a pathway to an armistice between the tour and the wealth fund.Dunne, at least at first, declined to engage in a substantive way.Devlin re-emerged in April, warning Dunne that there was “a window of opportunity to unify the game over the next couple of months” before, he thought, “the Saudis will doubledown on their investment and golf will be split asunder in perpetuity.”Although committee investigators told senators in a briefing memorandum that they did not know for certain how Devlin’s April message influenced Dunne, the tour board member contacted al-Rumayyan within days.Dunne, al-Rumayyan and a handful of others met in Britain soon after, starting negotiations that included a number of ideas that did not make it into the five-page text of the framework agreement. Those concepts, outlined in a presentation titled “The Best of Both Worlds,” included Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who had pledged fealty to the tour, owning LIV teams and a “large-scale superstar” team golf event that would feature the world’s top men’s and women’s players.Although the initial deal between the tour and the wealth fund did not include some of those proposals, the final agreement is still being hammered out, a process that could take months.At least as of April, according to documents the Senate released, there was even talk of a deal including memberships for al-Rumayyan at Augusta National Golf Club and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews — two of the most prestigious golf clubs in the world, but ones that are not controlled by the PGA Tour. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Tennis

      Billie Jean King Supports Talks With Saudi Arabia on Women’s Tennis Events

      by

      The LatestBillie Jean King, the leading architect of women’s professional tennis who is widely regarded as the first female athlete-activist, said Friday that she supported talks between the women’s tour and Saudi Arabia on holding competitions in the kingdom, despite its abysmal record on human rights.“I’m a huge believer in engagement — I don’t think you change unless you engage,” King said Friday at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the WTA, the women’s professional tour. “I would probably go there and talk to them.”After King’s comments, Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said women’s tennis was seriously evaluating partnerships with Saudi Arabia. He suggested that potentially holding events there would be a way to support “progress” for women, while the country is trying to become a destination for major sports.“Sometimes when you are in the position we are in, you need to support the change,” Simon said, referring to the tour’s commitment to gender pay equity and its loss of revenue during the pandemic and an 18-month suspension of operations in China over Peng Shuai.He said Saudi Arabia had “a long way to go,” especially in its laws banning homosexuality, but that change was underway in the country. “You want them to do what they are doing” and support that, he added.“I’m a huge believer in engagement — I don’t think you change unless you engage,” Billie Jean King said Friday.Kin Cheung/Associated PressWhy It Matters: Saudi Arabia continues to expand its footprint in sports.The comments from King and Simon were the strongest signal yet that Saudi Arabia is expanding and accelerating its efforts to become a part of not just men’s tennis but also women’s, among other sports like soccer, Formula 1 and golf. The Saudi wealth fund’s LIV Golf circuit recently agreed to a merger with golf’s PGA Tour after an acrimonious rivalry that included litigation and the loss of a handful of the tour’s biggest stars to the upstart league.Looking to avoid that scenario and always on the hunt for new investors, tennis executives have spoken openly of their ongoing discussions with Saudi officials about holding tournaments there as soon as this year. Saudi Arabia is bidding to become the host of the Next Gen Finals, a men’s event for 21-and-under players scheduled for December. Saudi Arabia’s bid includes the option of holding a women’s Next Gen event there as well.Simon traveled to Riyadh in February with other WTA executives and players for meetings with Saudi officials.Background: Players have expressed concern for their safety.The issue is especially complicated for the women’s tennis tour in part because there are a number of openly gay players, including Daria Kasatkina of Russia, who is ranked No. 11 in the world and often travels with her partner. The men’s tour does not have any players who are openly gay.Sloane Stephens, a member of the WTA Tour Players’ Council, said it was important for L.G.B.T.Q. players to feel safe while competing in Saudi Arabia.“That is part of the evaluation,” Stephens said. “We want to make sure everyone is safe and comfortable and feels supported.”King is openly gay as well, but she cited the WTA’s decision to play in Doha beginning in 2008 as a precedent for supporting countries who say they want to become more progressive. Simon said that, during his visit to Riyadh, he had noticed some of the same changes that Doha had said it wanted to make 15 years ago when women had “zero rights” and there were concerns about whether the players would be safe wearing short, sleeveless tennis outfits.“It’s about celebrating the betterment of women, that there is change coming,” Simon said. “I’m not Saying Saudi Arabia is a place we should be doing business with. They have a long way to go, but they are making changes.”What’s Next: The timetable is uncertain.Simon said there was no timetable for making a decision about the WTA going to Saudi Arabia. However, the tour has yet to announce a location for its season-ending Tour Finals. The tour and the Chinese government are currently negotiating the future of that event. The WTA suspended its operations in China for 18 months after player Peng Shuai was seemingly silenced after she appeared to accuse a former top government official of sexually assaulting her and the tour was unable to contact her. More