A pair of U.S. senators want the attorney general to look into the PGA Tour agreement to join with the DP World Tour and Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia to determine whether it violates federal antitrust laws, ESPN reported Wednesday.
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and to Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general, asking them to oppose the agreement if laws are broken, ESPN reported citing a copy of the letter.
The two senators said that the PIF’s investment into professional golf under the alliance allows the Saudi Arabian government to further “sportswash” its record on human rights but also “raises an array of potential legal and regulatory issues, including relating to the PGA Tour’s non-profit tax status and antitrust law,” ESPN reported.
Already, the proposed alliance between the PIF and the golf tours has raised the concern of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Its chairman, Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), has asked for documentation of events that led up to last week’s announcement that the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi-funded LIV Golf would work together under one umbrella.
In their letter to Garland, Warren and Wyden argue that the alliance could be flagged under the Clayton Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act and result in a monopoly.
“The PGA-LIV deal, as described in the June 6 announcement, would be a clear violation if it is a joint venture,” Warren and Wyden wrote, per ESPN. “It would give the PGA Tour and PIF control over all significant aspects of U.S. commercial golf operations, including contracts with U.S. golfers and their opportunities to compete, television rights, cost of attendance to elite golf events, and merchandise.”
They continued: “The PGA-LIV deal would make a U.S. organization complicit — and force American golfers and their fans to join this complicity — in the Saudi regime’s latest attempt to sanitize its abuses by pouring funds into major sports leagues.”
–Field Level Media