A top senator on Monday opened the first inquiry into the controversial deal between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf, raising the alarm about “a foreign government entity assuming control over a cherished American institution.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote to the heads of the two sports organizations requesting a slew of records related to the deal. Blumenthal highlighted documents that could shed light on the behavior of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which owns LIV Golf, as well as the PGA Tour’s tax-exempt status and any law enforcement investigations regarding the agreement or the previously contentious relationship between the two entities.
The Public Investment Fund “has announced that it intends to use investments in sports to further the Saudi government’s strategic objectives,” Blumenthal wrote in the letters, which he sent in his capacity as the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on investigations.
“Critics have cast such Saudi investments in sports as a means of ‘sportswashing’ — an attempt to soften the country’s image around the world — given Saudi Arabia’s deeply disturbing human rights record at home and abroad,” the senator continued.
The PGA Tour battled LIV after the latter’s inception last year, including in federal court, and many top golfers decried the Saudi gambit. The two agreed to drop their legal disputes after they announced their shocking plan for a merger last week.
The PGA Tour claimed that it would have ultimate power over the new golf behemoth. But many observers say that is extremely unlikely given the proposed organization’s reliance on a promised infusion of funding from the Saudi state.
LIV Golf declined to comment on Blumenthal’s investigation. A representative for the PGA Tour did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Congress has limited influence to block the deal between the two bodies, but Blumenthal and other skeptics could spur public uproar making it harder to achieve.
U.S. officials’ appetite for challenging Saudi Arabia has sharply plummeted in recent years after many policymakers pledged to press the kingdom over its close cooperation with Russia and actions like the state-sponsored assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to rethink U.S.-Saudi ties led to few policy changes. And Republicans have shown little interest in questioning the golf organizations’ moves. Former President Donald Trump ― a pro-Saudi voice who is the GOP’s 2024 presidential front-runner ― has praised LIV, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Blumenthal’s counterpart on the Senate investigative panel, argued Capitol Hill has no role in the deal.
