![]() Russia bought a World Cup and an Olympics, and China bought two, and they both bought a host of influence in international sports, with all the problems that created. We just saw a men’s World Cup in Qatar where that tiny Arab state spent an estimated $220 billion to host the event, and the broken bits along the way were overshadowed by Messi and Argentina and France, by the spectacle of it all. The United Arab Emirates bought Manchester City in the EPL and are laying waste to international soccer. This isn’t Russian oligarchs, much less American ones. You’d probably be right on both, to a degree.īut the thing to learn here is the scale of money and the degree of moral flexibility in sports is different now. You can wonder whether a small cabal of executives might have struck this deal to avoid discovery in an antitrust lawsuit, which to be honest would be very American indeed. So what do we make of this? You can argue that the PGA Tour is run by a coven of craven, hypocritical, spineless khaki pants made flesh, that commissioner Jay Monahan betrayed every golfer under his care, that the sport has been inextricably tarred. Women’s golf may not be as natural an investment, paired with a country that didn’t let women drive cars until five years ago. The fund is estimated at over $600 billion, aiming for $2 trillion by 2030, which is how you can afford to pay a 48-year-old Bubba Watson $50 million to play half-ass golf.Īnd now Saudi Arabia - through the PIF, effectively controlled by MBS - owns most of an entire global sport. It toyed with buying pro wrestling’s WWE, but came up short. The kingdom’s Public Investment Fund already controls Newcastle United in the English Premier League, where some fans danced outside the stadium in masks of the Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman after the purchase. Real Madrid’s Karim Benzema was introduced Tuesday. There are more players on the shopping list to stock four teams at the top of the Saudi Pro League. They offered Lionel Messi an astonishing sum before Wednesday’s announcement that he plans to play for David Beckham’s Inter Miami. They already bought the 38-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo, who is ending his career making a reported $200 million (U.S.) per season for Al-Nassr FC in Riyadh. ![]() ![]() It’s not like Saudi Arabia - or rather, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund - was subtle. This elite American sport, with all its American traditions, is owned by the Middle East. ![]() It effectively transfers most of men’s professional golf to Saudi hands. Tuesday, the PGA Tour and DP Golf - formerly the European Tour - announced a merger with LIV Golf, owned by Saudi Arabia, in which the new Saudi partners can buy the whole shebang any time they like. All that fighting, all the PGA Tour’s moral dudgeon, all of golf’s pretensions of dignity and tradition, the invocation of the 9/11 victims’ families, of honour versus shame, washed away by a sea of oil money, helped along by litigation. They didn’t pile all their money up front, but they have the option and that’s good enough. ![]()
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