PGA and LIV are MERGING?!

Huge news today. I was sitting having a our normal Tuesday meeting with the Grand Poobah over in the office with the window and as we're wrapping up he goes hey the PGA Tour just merged with Liv and the DP World Tour and I said come on no he goes no this is a this is right from the PGA Tour's website.

Holy cow. Massive news. Brad Fritsch, I hate even saying this, I guess former PGA Tour player joins us on the Adam Gold Show.

My friend, I appreciate your time. Thoughts on what I think is a massive, massive announcement. Well first off you should never be afraid of the truth Adam. Former PGA Tour player is just fine.

Also the canes did get swept, unfortunately. Wow. Why are you trying to hurt a guy? I'm just angry today. This bothers me. This whole thing bothers me. Okay tell me why it bothers you. So for the obvious reasons of the PGA Tour Commissioner has largely sat on the sidelines this entire time and let players take the bullets as it were from journalists who are just trying to get the story but it's a contentious issue and guys like Rory McIlroy for 18 months has stood in front and kind of been the face of the PGA Tour, was very, very adamant, very emotional about it. A lot of guys were emotional. I guarantee you that there are 10 to 20 players who turned down high eight or low nine figure contracts and now they're sitting there and not that anyone needs to feel sorry for their financial status but they're sitting there thinking well why did I do that? I spent time defending the tour and took what I think is a principled stance largely and lost out on a lot of money and in the end it looks like I think at the end of 2023 there'll be there'll be guys coming back to the PGA Tour and the two tours will probably have some sort of cooperative agreement where they play against each other quite a bit and I think in the end it's just going to be one tour whatever they call it I don't know but in the end I think there there's going to be a an elite tour of 60 to 70 guys who are playing outside of the majors probably 10 to 12 events all over the world against each other and it's funded by the the PIF the saudi you know government fund and and he's now a member of the board of this entity which is just watch your back I mean like yeah it's just the whole thing just boggles my mind all right so maybe I'm wrong here but I saw the story on June 1st so where was I June 1st June 1st was I was off that was I guess Thursday of last week Thursday something like that I saw the story and I thought huh that doesn't sound real good if I'm a PGA Tour player and I know that I'm being sued I haven't there's an antitrust lawsuit against against our tour for you know conspiracy you know conspiring to make it you know against a competitor that Endeavor was willing to invest a billion dollars in live golf to for the most part replace the saudi investment fund or at least kind of be in addition to the saudi investment fund's funding and backing of this tour but according to the story according to the CEO of Endeavor the PGA Tour led by Jay Monahan discouraged them from doing so I mean I just I'm not a legal mind but that just seems like I've done exactly what I have claimed to not be doing which is actively conspiring against live right you pointed it out to me I remember seeing the story last week didn't really give it much thought it's a it's an interesting theory now this lawsuit you know there's two ways to look at it the tour doesn't really want their books open because they're a non-profit and I'm sure that there are some things that IRS agents will probably not like but I don't think the saudis wanted discovery at all to be to be to be had in this right in this lawsuit either so I think that both parties win here in terms of uh having this lawsuit dismissed and yeah I think this whole this whole merger I think speaks to the live tour isn't financially working no and the PGA Tour definitely has sponsors who are telling the commissioner we can't go any higher right like we we can't have these elevated events and paying 20 million for this purse where 12 months ago it was seven or eight million dollars like that's a that's I don't know if you know Adam but that's almost 200 increase and that's that's hard to digest if you're on the board of a public company and you're beholding the shareholders and and what value what added value are you getting out of it because I don't think golf's numbers are particularly good during the actual PGA Tour season the majors are good yeah and those provide value but outside of that it's just it's okay so this whole thing has been I think a lesson in harsh economics for both tours like the live tour what are what return are they getting on their investment right now no they're not getting any if anything it really is a business model that has no chance of surviving and but because the public investment fund at the time that this was born was worth six hundred and twenty trillion dollars which is of course a number that we can't even fathom that it didn't matter it didn't matter if they spent five billion dollars a year the money just that money just regenerates anyway it was like spending nothing to them it was it was it was monopoly was cartoon money and so they could sustain it but if they tried to run it like a sustainable business it had no chance of surviving and maybe at at some point the saudis were going to go well we're not just going to we're gonna light money on fire uh we want this but we don't want it at the expense of being stupid so we had to find a business model that works and now the business model uh can work look at that i think is the pga tour the biggest loser here and is the biggest winner the dp world tour which gets some players back and maybe gets more of these events yeah i think the dp world tour is probably the big winner because you know again they're doing okay they do what they do they have a whole bunch of events over the course of the course of the year all over the world and their purses uh you know aren't half as high as the pga tour even for the smallest pga tour event but you know players get by and they've got 10 cars to go to the pga tour and and and the good players make a pretty decent living albeit their travel expenses have to be you know two or three times that of any player in america but i do think they're the big winner here i don't know how it's going to work but in the end it sounds like the dp world tour will be getting back those kind of legacy players that you think about when it comes to european tour golf like the westwoods poulters and sergio garcias i think there are so many hard feelings on all sides of this adam though by by so many players the players who left behind a hundred two hundred million dollars like uh i'm sure like speith thomas mora coward rom yeah i like that and but then guys like westwood and poulter and who have been kind of eviscerated over the past year by people in europe you know they're no longer welcome on their tour same with sergio so i think on all sides and by all accounts no players knew about this now i think mcelroy probably did because he went silent the last couple weeks uh on this after being so vociferous for so long he all of a sudden just said i'm out no more commenting i don't know what the future holds okay i i'm more i'm more naive about it than i think i just think he was tired of talking about it and he was also frustrated with his own game that that that's very possible too uh but i think there's a ton of players i'll give you insight i got an email about a minute before an alert came up on my phone uh because i'm still a member of the corn ferry tour under the pga tour umbrella right notice from commissioner monahan the letter that you've probably seen on twitter already yeah um so everyone got this about a minute before the news comes and nobody checks their email probably as much as i do so a lot of players took to social media saying it's nice that i find out about this on twitter i don't think many if any players knew about this it sounds like greg norman didn't know about it yes good conspicuous yeah no kidding uh his name conspicuously absent from any of the relief and i think i saw on c-span that the uh the pif saudi arabian fellow said uh that that he called dormant after his interview on c-span so i think um i think all around this was this was very secret very hush hush hush i don't mind that part of it because the golf world is horrible at keeping secrets yeah players who know media members they'll they'll text them they'll they'll eat they'll forward emails right away to the to the media members so if nothing's ever kept secret in the golf world and this one i this might have been between legitimately two people uh j monahan and i don't know the guy's name i'm sorry i think his name's yasir yeah yes yeah al rameyen uh yes i i 100 agree and by the way um i do expect greg norman to be out of any future structure of this tour and if i'm greg norman i'm a winner too because ultimately i got i didn't get exactly what i set out to do but i got pretty much the the you know the the meaning of what i set out to do which is what he set out to do almost 30 years ago which was to create a super tour if you will the champions league of international soccer of european soccer that's what he set out to do was to really diminish the pga tour as an entity and create something of his own and that's kind of and that's kind of what's about to happen if they carry it through to that and if greg norman doesn't have to be a part of it he can still sit back on his couch with his feet up and his own billions and go i did what i set out to do each week we dive into the mind of the con artist uncovering the secrets behind the biggest ponzi schemes you've never heard about we're not talking about bernie madoff or charles ponzi that's right those guys have been covered to death the ponzi playbook will focus on those fraudsters who have swindled millions from unsuspecting investors subscribe to the ponzi playbook wherever you get your podcasts yeah i think that's that's largely correct i would i would wonder how far across the world they're going to go with these events because there's a lot of american players who really enjoy the comforts of you know west palm and florida and and you know a three or four hour flight after the west coast instead of a 15 to 17 hour day over to wherever it is singapore where they played or or a 19-hour flight to melbourne australia something like that that's yeah you know guys play the pga tour for a reason so i i wonder how that's gonna work as well i'm sure some guys will love it uh but but i would bet that a lot of american players who are somewhat insular um they would just appreciate having you know a chick fil a around the corner every week i know i would yes it is the comforts of home uh but you know we don't have chick fil a's yet in melbourne come on we gotta have a chick fil a in melbourne i i very much doubt it oh man i'm coming to got one coming to ottawa pretty soon oh yeah uh you're the man brad fridge a uh still a current member of the corn fairy tour because he gets the emails uh appreciate your time my friend hey i tried to qualify for the canadian open on sunday it was sunday wildfire and and in retrospect i really wish i had a qualified not to play in my national open but just to see the players meeting tonight oh my fantastic gosh rory mcelroy this is by the way we're coming up and i know we have to go we're coming up on the one year anniversary from when he won the canadian open and stuffed it in greg norman's face that's right oh my gosh rory god bless him uh all right brad i appreciate your time man okay take care you got it brad fridge you