Merging of PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV!!

They are all in love with each other again 😃

Thought this was a joke when i first seen it but the PGA have their own article

https://www.pgatour.com/article/news/latest/2023/06/06/pga-tour-dp-world-tour-and-pif-announce-newly-formed--commercial-entity-to-unify-golf

Quite a bizarre turn of events but if it puts an end to all this litigation, ensures that the best players are playing against each other more often, and develops the game at the grass-roots level, its a good thing.

This feels so slimy, I don't like it. Seems quite vague as to what this actually means for the players, are they going to have 200 players at each event now they've combined 3 tours?

Great move for Thomas pieters, just moved over and now gets paid out and straight back into all your events.

Ryder cup will be a shitshow, so many dynamics between the players

Saudi win wow 😮😮

Don't think it's that easy. LIV wasn't going to last, but pga didn't have the pockets to drag it out long term. Of course, won't know for sure until more details emerge, like how season is structured or if there's any other changes

This is what I'm thinking aswell, wonder did Koepka winning the PGA have an impact on the top players' perception of LIV

One thing for sure is European tour will be even less as a result of it

This pretty much sums it up. I'd say PGA will be heralded as the "face" but behind the scenes it'll be LIV & Co running the show.

PGA have the history.

LIV have the world class investing.

That's what I take out of this. A load of players made truck loads of cash signing for LIV. Were minority inconvenienced for a year and now get to carry on like nothing ever happened. Win-win for them.

Bet he feels like a F'ing idiot now. Should be fun when/if he meets up with Phil or Sergio next.

Just shows though, all the same, money trumps everything these days and if you've enough of it, a way will be found for you. Honestly I've no strong feelings either way on LIV golf or the Saudi angle, but its kinda sickening to read that statement from Monahan, given all that's been said before.

Weren't Phil and Rory at a champions dinner at the USPGA? Lot of that will be overblown. I think he'll have more of a bone to pick with Jay though, the man constantly hid behind the players and has now sold them down a river.

My take would be different.

Although I'm aware LIV was shaped as one big sportswash for the Saudi techno-royals, I suspect its complete lack of any commercial traction has demonstrated that even the Sheiks won't throw good money after bad.

I think this "merger" is just a mechanism to get some of the bigger names back under the main Tours' umbrella while saving a bit of face for them and dispensing with any major circus around the readmission process. It also means the Ryder Cup headache can be mostly avoided, apart from damage already done obviously.

If LIV had any real merits to the game, to the demands of golf fans, it would have caught on. And it did not.

My prediction would be that by next Spring, the PGA and DP calendars will be back more or less as they always were; almost entirely singles stroke-play events for the main men's tours, with a traditional sprinkling of matchplay and team competitions.

Well they were/are on the right side either way. And I'm sure they'll survive with the pittance they've earned. Wonder will the players who signed up be eligible for the big sign on fees....would assume so once it wasn't based off future earnings for them.

Comparison to other sports doesn't quite work, Saudis just invested in them, didn't start up competing ventures

LIV failed to get a competitive TV broadcast deal in the United States. That was the ballgame.

Jay Monahan of the PGA is going to be the boss of this new entity. That means LIV is being absorbed, nothing less. It lasted less that the length of Greg Norman's first morning fart.

I think sports organisations generally do underestimate the extent to which sports washing matters to ordinary people. And if it wasn't a high profile issue until recent times, well all the towel heads can thank UEFA and Qatar '22 for shining the shame lamp right in their faces. And that included the model behind LIV.

The Saudis are saying today that they look forward to investing much more into golf, but what hasn't been picked up on yet, is that if the new joint commercial body is registered in the US or UK or EU, which it will, then the regulatory environment will greatly affect the ability to freely move large sums through it from outside those territories.

Initial reaction is that Monahan struggles to survive in post for longer than a few months. Either he goes for getting into bed with the Saudis or he goes because so many PGA players turned down millions to join them only for him to screw them over.

I think he probably knows that but he doesn't care now because he'll have been paid so much to agree to this that he can just collect his millions and retire.

Are all the people on here who were against liv and refused to watch now going to have to stop watching all golf as the Saudi money is now behind everything

Obviously need to see the details though first impression it seems incredibly impressive from the Saudi Arabia government, in essence they bought a sport today.

Next stop a soccer league in financial difficulty that cannot complete with the Premier League, hmmmm lets buy La Liga tomorrow and then cut oil output for the rest of the year:)

Man I'm beyond shocked. Didn't see this coming. Would presume the top brass in the PGA/ET have made out like absolute bandits from this.

Hard to see how some posters are painting this as a win for the PGA. Its a complete sell out. The Saudis have bought joint ownership of the PGA Tour.

It's a win for the pga in as much as their product was clearly better. LIV is gone, it wasn't the LIV top dogs who did it, it was the PIF who stepped in to get it done. Players meeting in Canada today could be fun. Pga top brass won't be getting much respect from the players.

Trump was right so

He was only saying last week that Koepka and the other LIV guys should be on the US Ryder cup team but he didnt want any Liv guys on the European team, complete clown.

I dont think he will be the boss, Yasir Al-Rumayyan will chair the new commercial entity between the PGA tour and LIV Golf.