Leaders from the PIF and the Saudi PGA Tour are in the same place this week: Riyadh.
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If one pro-am is good, two might be better for the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, whose executives are said to be attending an event in Saudi Arabia this week.
This comes courtesy of Bunkeredwho reported Thursday morning (subsequently confirmed by other media outlets) that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan will be in close proximity again this weekend at a European Tour event of Ladies held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event comes as part of the visit of the Aramco Series to Riyadh – named for The Saudi oil giant — as well as the Future Investment Initiative, a series of conferences held in the Kingdom to promote future growth and investment opportunities.
Bunkered reports that Monahan and Al-Rumayyan will play in a pro-am together on Thursday evening, following in the footsteps of the pair’s pro-am experience at the DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship earlier this month.
Despite these public appearances, it remains unclear how close the two sides are to reaching a final deal that would reunite professional golf, even as the calendar reaches about 17 months removed from the shock.framework agreement“Notice and 10 months removed from the original of the two parties”the term of the agreement.However, the increasing number of meetings – public and private – indicate that there is at least progress in the negotiations between the two sides.
However, the news comes after PIF has announced its intentions for him reign in spending over the coming years. The Saudi government’s nearly trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund has been one of the most aggressive drivers of global capital investment over the past decade, but big-money domestic Saudi projects and international oil market headwinds have changed the Fund’s economic position. as he passes into the future.
It is not known what a deal between the two parties might look like, but indications are that it would involve PIF buying an equity stake in PGA Tour Enterprises – the Tour’s new, for-profit arm. Earlier this year, another group of institutional sports investors called Strategic Sports Group agreed to invest $1.5 billion (with the potential to grow to $3 billion) in PGA Tour Enterprises in a deal that valued the Tour’s for-profit arm to 12.3 billion dollars.
