The PGA Tour reported progress with out particulars from a face-to-face assembly between its negotiating committee and the Public Funding Fund of Saudi Arabia because it tries to work towards a deal.
“We need to get this proper, and we’re approaching discussions with cautious consideration for our gamers, our followers, our companions and the sport’s future,” the tour stated in a press release launched Saturday morning.
The assembly in New York on Friday night concerned the “transaction committee” of PGA Tour Enterprises and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund that pays for rival LIV Golf.
PGA Tour Enterprises is the industrial group that got here out of the framework settlement introduced a yr in the past among the many PGA Tour, PIF and the European tour.
PGA Tour Enterprises introduced on the Strategic Sports activities Group, which invested an preliminary $1.5 billion earlier this yr. Negotiations are ongoing to usher in PIF as a minority investor, and there was extra exercise than beforehand believed.
Rory McIlroy, who joined Tiger Woods and Adam Scott on the transaction committee, stated the committee has been assembly with PIF representatives each Monday, Wednesday and Friday the previous couple of weeks. The tour referred to negotiations as having “accelerated” in current months.
Friday’s assembly was the primary in-person dialogue since gamers and board members met with Al-Rumayyan within the Bahamas the day after the Gamers Championship in March.
The tour stated the committee and PIF have been assembly “a number of instances weekly to work via potential deal phrases and are available to a shared imaginative and prescient on the way forward for skilled golf.” It stated solely that “extra progress was made” in New York.
“We stay dedicated to those negotiations, which require working via advanced issues to finest place golf for world development,” the tour stated.
Woods and Scott are on the total PGA Tour Enterprises board, together with participant administrators Jordan Spieth, Webb Simpson, Patrick Cantlay and Peter Malnati.
McIlroy resigned from the PGA Tour board final November, and there was an unsuccessful try by Simpson to have McIlroy change him. McIlroy, the strongest voice who has gone from heavy criticism of LIV to being extra prepared to compromise, is a part of the transaction committee and finally doesn’t have a vote.
However he has relationships with each side of the desk. McIlroy had stated he could be extra in hear mode when the enterprise leaders — Al-Rumayyan and his workforce at PIF plus a PGA Tour Enterprises committee that features 4 SSG buyers — sorted via particulars.
“We’re there to possibly give a perspective from participant’s standpoint,” McIlroy had stated Thursday. “However, I imply, this can be a negotiation about an funding into PGA Tour Enterprises. That is ‘huge boy’ stuff, and I am going to actually be doing extra listening than I can be speaking.”