Someone who knows a lot about golf, on the latest PGA & LIV merge

So yesterday, of course, was just bananas, crazy, confusing at times. I thought the release from the PGA Tour at first, when my boss showed it to me, I thought it was a joke. I thought it was The Onion. And then we realized that, nope, this is from the PGA Tour. And the same, basically the same release was on the PIF Public Investment Fund's own website as well. And Rory McIlroy today, and that had to be a difficult 22 minutes that I'm still sifting through, but Rory McIlroy today emphasized that this has nothing to do with Liv.

Boy, if you listen to Bryson DeChambeau, I listened to him with you yesterday on PGA Tour Radio, or watched him on CNN last night, you'd like, you would think that Liv and the PGA Tour have just become one. All right, so what are we looking at here going forward? That's a great question. I'd say that's a million dollar question. It's probably more like a 10 billion dollar question, though, Adam. You know, a million. Who cares about a million?

I think that's like third place in these things. Look, I don't know exactly what it means going forward. I think reading the tea leaves right now, I don't believe there's going to be a Liv golf moving forward. I believe that they will all be under one umbrella. I don't know if that's even going to be called the PGA Tour moving forward.

It might be live with a terrible name, by the way, but they have merged. And so I do believe because it was mentioned both in the press release and by Jay Monahan in his conference call with us in the media yesterday, that there will be a team concept moving forward that seems something they're very intent on doing and taking from Liv. But I think it's going to look very much like golf did pre 2022, which is the best players in the world playing against the other best players in the world on a very regular basis for a whole lot more money than it was before, and probably a whole lot more money than it is even right now after they upped all the persons this year. It's so funny how as more information comes out, my initial reaction was this was entirely about avoidance of a lawsuit, of an antitrust lawsuit, which the PGA Tour, especially with the story that came out in the USA Today on the first about Endeavor being discouraged from investing a billion dollars in Liv golf, which I think is a no no when it comes to antitrust litigation. But the more I think about this, the more maybe the tour's ambitious restructuring might not have been financially viable.

And why maybe that's why they realized that they needed maybe the help of the public Public Investment Fund and Liv's business model was untenable. I mean, logically, and maybe this is the better move for the Public Investment Fund if they're going to invest heavily in golf. So I will start with this. I watch people play golf for a living.

I walk around golf course and talk to them afterward about their rounds. For me to sit here and talk about antitrust laws is not right to go with this because I ain't smart enough for that. So I don't know exactly the inner workings of everything that's taking place, but I think you're certainly on the right track where the PGA Tour was going to start hemorrhaging money with all the lawsuits, the litigation that was going on.

I think the P.I.S. realized, you know what? We wanted to disrupt golf. We wanted to stake our claim in the game, but we don't really want to run a golf league like, OK, we did this like, all right, now we've got all these great players. We've got some events, but we don't really want to be doing this anymore.

You know, we had our fun with it, but OK, now let's get rid of this thing. How are we going to keep a hand in golf? Well, we're going to give them lots of money and essentially we're going to have a hand in golf by being the majority investor in the professional game, whereas the PGA Tour essentially needed the money and said, OK, we can.

I've heard reports of doubling, tripling, quadrupling their own valuation based on this investment from the Public Investment Fund. You look, it's a business and I get that, especially based on everything we've been told by Jay Monahan and Rory McElroy, Tiger Woods over the past year and a half that this is about loyalty and devotion and integrity. It's business. And for the millionth time, we have been once again told that sports is big business and in big business, money talks and you know, those other words and integrity and devotion.

That's real nice. But the almighty dollar, the almighty real speaks a lot louder than than anything else does. And that's what's taking place here. And I don't think you're wrong about as far as the litigation going through the discovery phase. I think that there was a mutual acceptance from both parties that we don't really want all our dirty laundry hanging out to dry publicly, both from the PGA Tour and from the Public Investment Fund. And they both said, what can we do to ensure that there's no litigation moving forward? Hey, let's try this.

Let's get together. Jason Sobole, Action Network is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. All right. So Rory McElroy today, I thought was and I think he's always fascinating. And I know that over the last really 18 months, somebody said to me today, the PGA Tour is going to make Rory whole.

Right. Meaning that he obviously turned down. He said today he was not offered any money. I think he positioned himself to not be offered anything, but he would have been offered every every bit as much as Phil Mickelson was offered to start this if Rory was interested in it. And they said the PGA Tour is going to make him whole.

And I I've always said this. I think the PGA Tour and Jay Monahan specifically owes him an 18 month apology for as much as anything else. Rory kind of swallowed hard and looked at this pragmatically. Just your read on what he had to say today, kind of in a broad sense. Yeah, I thought it was very interesting. It seemed to me like Rory was trying to rationalize and reconcile in real time. Well, while receiving these questions from the media at the RBC Canadian Open exactly what was going on, because he said, I hate Liv.

I hope Liv goes away. But the public investment fund, which owned and operated live yet. No, I'm OK with them because, look, they're going to have a hand in golf. They're going to have a hand in sports.

And we might as well get a piece of the pie because everybody else is. Whether that's right or wrong. I think Rory is is starting to change his tune a little bit from where he was over the last 18 months. Is is Jay Monahan or anyone else from the PGA Tour going to apologize to Rory McElroy for, hey, we kind of hung out to dry.

And then we I don't know if they wait behind his back necessarily. But now all of a sudden we're going to negotiate with the very people that you said you were so adamantly against for the last year and a half. I don't know if an apology necessarily is an order, but boy, it's it's a bad look all the way around. Jay Monahan said it yesterday that, hey, I know I'm going to look like a hypocrite. That's probably a sound bite that's going to come back to bite him over the next couple of years anyway. It's already starting to I use that in a column yesterday because he's not wrong about that.

He was called that many times in the player meeting yesterday at the Canadian Open. And I you know, it's again, it comes down to the matter of this is business and business all about big money. Adam, I don't know if you watch Succession. I thought it was a fantastic show. I thought what's taking place in the world of professional golf right now mirrors a lot of what we saw in the final season of Succession, because behind closed doors is a whole lot of stuff going on that we don't know about. Well, there's there's no question.

I don't I don't watch the show, but like if and I talked about this yesterday. I mean, you can't be a fan of sports without understanding that the public investment fund and sovereign wealth funds from other nations, whether it's the UAE or Qatar, I mean, they've got their hands all over sports. Man City is public is is almost entirely owned by, I believe, the United Emirates. PSG is owned by Qatar. I mean, these are sovereign wealth states. So Newcastle United Formula One, the Saudi money is is invested in many of the companies that invest and spend money with the PGA Tour. This is why I've never used the source of the money as an argument against live, because there's bad money everywhere. And there are I mean, with this is a loose phrase, but there are people who have made their money in ill ways who own NFL franchises. So what complaining about that has always missed the point for me. I've always had a good I'm going to make an analogy for you because you know that I work in the sports betting industry. Yes.

Try to give people advice on a weekly basis on what's going on in the world of professional golf. Five years ago, before the Supreme Court passed the past law allowing states to regulate and legalize sports wagering. It was taboo. I mean, we all knew that.

Hey, if you go bet on a football game somewhere, not legally. And we knew there were point spreads, but it wasn't talked about on TV. They they certainly wouldn't mention it during a game.

There might be some subtle reference, whether it's a bread must burger. I'm referencing what was going on. But this is taboo.

It was behind closed doors. And over the past five years, what have we seen? Well, all of a sudden it's become mainstream and everyone talks about you turn on Sports Center. They've got odds on the screen. You watch the game. They're live odds. We know who the favorites are.

The underdogs are talking about prop plays and things like that. I see the Saudi Arabian investment in American sports. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is not the end game. There's a whole lot of money still left to be spent. And if you think that they're they're going to stop with the public investment fund just on investing in the PGA Tour. Well, just wait, because I think a few years from now we talk about this going mainstream, whether it's NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, NHL. I can see the public investment fund having a hand in all of that just because, again, it goes back to what I've been saying this entire conversation, which is the money talks. And if you've got more money than the other people and somebody wants to sell their product or somebody wants you to invest in their product, at some point you say we don't care where the money is coming from. We'll take the most money that we can infuse into our product.

Yeah, maybe they can buy the Oakland Athletics and keep them in Oakland since Vegas also doesn't want to build a stadium for them. Final thing for Jason Sobel of the Action Network at Jason Sobel, TAN. The McElroy referred to consequences. He says we're not just letting those players who left back in. McElroy is not saying that if he was not basically told that by Jay Monahan.

I cannot imagine he would do that off the cuff on his own. So what does that look like going forward? Is that a hefty fine? Is that time? Because if Liv dies, I mean, these players, I guess they can go to Europe. They play on the DP World Tour. They can play on the Asian tour. I don't know. Sunshine tour.

But what happens to the Kepka's, DJ's, DeChambeau's of the world? I can't imagine this is going to be a massive penalty. Again, I'm just guessing here.

But I think it's going to be enough to at least satisfy the appetite of the players like Lori McElroy who decided to stay with the PGA Tour and said, Hey, these guys should have to be penalized if they want to come back to our leading. But I just don't see it. I mean, if your company merges with my company, all of a sudden we're partners. We're co-workers.

Why would my company who's taking over this merger then penalize you for being a co-worker of mine? I understand that it's more than that, but I just don't see it. Maybe they're fines.

Maybe it's a small suspension or something like that. But they've got to reintegrate these players back into this umbrella league that they're going to have, whether it's called the PGA Tour or something else moving forward. And I honestly can't see a world where a year from now Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson aren't allowed to play in the biggest and best events that are non-major championships. Stroke and distance. How about we just do that? That's a great analogy. Stroke and distance. I don't know. I think we can do stroke and distance. We appreciate Jason Sobel from the Action Network.