--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- [Discussion continues with a brief introduction]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Earlier this week, I called up my colleague Chad Munn, who, with Vox Media Studios, produces a documentary series about golf called Full Swing for Netflix. Headed to Los Angeles Country Club, where they are hosting the U.S. Open this year. It's a dramatic year for golf. It's gotten a lot more dramatic in the last week. The U.S. Open kicks off today, but that is not the biggest news in the golf world.
--:-- Rick Maese: Yeah, I've been covering this nasty feud between the PGA Tour and Live Golf since the inception about 18 months ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I remember we talked to Netflix. They're like, where's the drama in golf? And I was like, I don't know. Sometimes people play slowly and it annoys other players.
--:-- Rick Maese: That was literally I was grasping the straws, you know, and then we get this. The PGA and European Tours have agreed to merge with Saudi-backed rival, Liv Golf.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I had almost 300 text messages and my first reaction when I saw the news, I actually thought that maybe CNBC and the PGA Tour's website had been hacked.
--:-- Rick Maese: I mean, that's how acrimonious things have been and I don't think anything will ever be the same again kind of going forward. How the Saudis bought pro golf. Coming up on Today Explained.
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--:-- Rick Maese: Yeah, I've been covering this nasty feud between the PGA Tour and Live Golf since the inception about 18 months ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And presumably people know what the PGA is, but what is Live Golf?
--:-- Rick Maese: Yeah, the PGA Tour has been around for decades, and it's been the preeminent golf tour on the planet. And really, there's not been a lot of challengers until the past couple of years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our mission was simple, to evolve the game we love, to bring it across the globe, to show how loud it can be.
--:-- Rick Maese: LiveGolf was a Saudi-funded startup that really wanted to change the game and give both players and fans another option. And they did it by recruiting some of the top players from the PGA Tour to kind of jump ships.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They dangled huge contracts in front of some of these players and really fractured the world of golf and divided the sport and created this huge civil war that has kind of hung over the game of golf for the past year and a half.
--:-- Rick Maese: What Live Golf did was they came on and they said, we are a different product. We're going to go after a younger audience. We are going to look different. We're going to feel different.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you go to a live event, and I've been to a few of them now, there's music playing. It's not like that quiet, hush-hush, respectful game of golf that maybe you're used to.
--:-- Rick Maese: You know, you hear concerts at the end of tournaments. Okay. Players are allowed to wear shorts. And the format of the golf is different. Live builds itself as kind of a team event.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's individual winner at each tournament, but there's also a team winner.
--:-- Rick Maese: In it goes! after three days of scintillating golf in Miami, your inaugural Live Golf Team Champions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then the format itself is a little bit different. PGA Tour has largely been 72 holes over four days.
--:-- Rick Maese: Midway through the tournament, half the field is cut and they go home. And then everyone kind of starts, you know, in the first tee and they go on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Live has a little bit more action-packed event. It's only three days long. There's no cut so everyone gets to play the entire tournament and therefore everyone gets to make money even the player who finishes last will pocket 120 000 and it's a shotgun start so all the players are on the course at the same time going through and the leaderboard's constantly changing and they think it's a more exciting game of golf that way.
--:-- Rick Maese: Yeah, you're making the Saudi Arabian version of golf sound way more fun.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, I've seen it a few times it's a lot more confusing.
--:-- Rick Maese: It is almost like a party atmosphere. It's a lot of younger people and maybe the drinks are flowing a little bit more heavily.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it could be more fun for the traditional golf fan.
--:-- Rick Maese: I think people are having a hard time warming up to it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who are the golfers that they recruited? Would our listeners have heard of them?
--:-- Rick Maese: I think so. I mean, Liv knew that they needed some big names in order to get this tour off the ground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they went after some of PGA's biggest stars, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Cam Smith. These are all guys that won major championships.
--:-- Rick Maese: Probably the biggest name is Phil Mickelson, you know, one of the biggest golfers of the past quarter century.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there's plenty of guys they didn't get. You know, there were reports that they tried to get Tiger Woods and they offered him upwards of $700 million and Tiger still said no.
--:-- Rick Maese: So they were going after every big name because they knew that's going to make their product as legitimate as possible.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And maybe worth asking here, why would Tiger Woods say no to $700 million to play golf?
--:-- Rick Maese: Well, for starters, I mean, Tiger Woods already has a pretty comfortable bank account, I assume.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So maybe that's not as life-changing for him.
--:-- Rick Maese: But there's several other reasons. I mean, the PGA Tour is the game of professional golf for many people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And golfers care about the history and the legacy and the connections to Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and all these legends of the game.
--:-- Rick Maese: And that certainly matters to guys like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The players who have chosen to go to live and to play there, I disagree with it.
--:-- Rick Maese: I think that what they've done is they've turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But also a lot of guys had issues with some of the leaders at the top. Greg Norman, who was this really kind of legendary PGA Tour golfer that has sworn for years that he wanted to shake up the game, that he wanted to challenge the tour.
--:-- Rick Maese: And he created a lot of enemies along the way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so a lot of players didn't want to go and be a part of that for that reason.
--:-- Rick Maese: You go back into Saudi Arabia, they're making a cultural change within.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They don't want that stigma going into that next generation and their kids' kids.
--:-- Rick Maese: They want to change their culture and they are changing the culture.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you know how they're doing it?
--:-- Rick Maese: Golf. Sports washing is what you're talking about there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, I'm not talking about sports washing.
--:-- Rick Maese: They're changing their culture within their country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So maybe they didn't like the guy at the top, but what was the beef with the funding?
--:-- Rick Maese: Live Golf's major allure is that they had almost unlimited money behind them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The sovereign wealth fund that Saudi Arabia has really turned to to diversify the nation's economic interests.
--:-- Rick Maese: And a lot of guys had issues with Saudi Arabia in general.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They had concerns about some of the human rights abuses that we've heard and read so much about.
--:-- Rick Maese: I would ask, you know, any player that has left or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Obviously, some players were overcome it.
--:-- Rick Maese: Some players, you know, put their heels in the sand and said, no, there's no amount of money that would make me want to go and be a part of that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, it was just raw emotion almost every turn.
--:-- Rick Maese: And you had star players like Rory McIlroy. They just had visceral reactions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I still hate live. Like, I hate live. Like, I hope it goes away.
--:-- Rick Maese: And I would fully expect that it does.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It fractured relationships with some of their fellow PGA Tour pros.
--:-- Rick Maese: Guys like Phil Mickelson, guys like Sergio Garcia, people that jumped ship and really trash talk the PGA Tour on the way out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I see Live Golf trending upwards. I see PGA Tour trending downwards.
--:-- Rick Maese: And I love the side that I'm on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I love how I feel.
--:-- Rick Maese: I love how I'm reinvigorated and excited to play golf and compete.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The PGA Tour was adamant that they wanted nothing to do with Live Golf.
--:-- Rick Maese: They told their players, if you go play with Live Golf, you're done with us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll take away your tour membership card. You know, you would face fines, penalties, suspensions if there were ever a day to come back.
--:-- Rick Maese: And in fact, they made clear there might not ever be a day you come back if you leave your persona non grata on the PGA Tour going forward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're not going to allow players to free ride off of our loyal members, the best players in the world.
--:-- Rick Maese: They went to Congress and urged lawmakers, don't let this happen. Do what you can to help save us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it really was. It was a fight for life because with so much money behind Live Golf, it was an existential crisis for the PGA Tour, and really the first one the tour has ever seen.
--:-- Rick Maese: If they lost their top players, what are they? People tune in because they want to see the best golfers on the planet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if all these best golfers weren't showing up on the course, then why would they tune in?
--:-- Rick Maese: So Live launched last spring, and there were basically protesters at most of its U.S.-based events.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the first one in the U.S. was in Oregon, and there were protests there.
--:-- Rick Maese: I'd love to play around the golf with my father, but I can't because of what the Saudis did, murdering him on 9-11.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I would ask Americans who are thinking about going to this tournament to instead spend time with their families, maybe play around the golf with their father, something I wish I could do.
--:-- Rick Maese: But because of the Saudis, I'm not able to. They came to Bedminster, where Donald Trump has a golf club.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There were protesters there.
--:-- Rick Maese: These protesters say instead the former president is picking profit over justice by hosting a contentious golf tournament at his golf course, one with ties to Saudi Arabia and just 50 miles from ground zero.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This adds insult to injury.
--:-- Rick Maese: He is not just allowing them, but welcoming the Saudi-involved golf league.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they wanted to say, don't get distracted by these great golfers and by this beautiful, shiny new toy.
--:-- Rick Maese: Remember where the money's coming from. It's coming from many of the same people that they think were behind 9-11 and that some law enforcement officials have found over the years where we're behind 9-11.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People around the world are going to see that unfortunately Saudi money trumps morals and murder.
--:-- Rick Maese: How do we go from a civil war to the news last week that these two entities would be partnering up?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of this stuff happened behind closed doors and total secrecy.
--:-- Rick Maese: And in fact, I think only a handful of people really know how we got to this point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what happened over the course of a year, Live Golf sued the PGA Tour and said there's all kinds of antitrust violations.
--:-- Rick Maese: The PGA Tour tried to quash us and kill our business from day one.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The PGA Tour countersued and said, you know, you were meddling in our contracts and recruiting players that had commitments.
--:-- Rick Maese: And really what that meant was for the past year, both sides have been pouring millions and millions of dollars into this litigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And on the other end, their business operations were also bleeding all kinds of money because the PGA Tour had to ramp up its cost to compete with the Live Tour.
--:-- Rick Maese: They had to offer players more money, and they had to stage bigger events.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the Live Tour, meanwhile, was staging its huge mega events, but it had very little income.
--:-- Rick Maese: They didn't have the corporate sponsors. They didn't have the big TV deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So both sides were really on loose economic footing.
--:-- Rick Maese: And I think it finally hit a point where they said, hey, we got to find some common ground here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The U.S.-based PGA Tour, the European-based DP World Tour, and the Saudi-backed Live Golf Tour have announced a landmark agreement to unify their sport on a global basis.
--:-- Rick Maese: What it really is, at least on paper, is a little bit of an alliance and a combining of resources.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're creating a new entity that's going to be a for-profit commercial entity where they're going to work together and strategically share resources and figure out a path to make money.
--:-- Rick Maese: And then they're going to figure out how the tours can function differently.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's very possible that in the future, Live Golf doesn't exist the way we know it today.
--:-- Rick Maese: I don't think the PGA Tour is going to change that much.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But they're going to figure out a path where players can compete on all three tours.
--:-- Rick Maese: We don't know what that's going to look like or how it's going to be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there is a day, and that day is not today or tomorrow, where we could see all these players again competing on the same tour week to week.
--:-- Rick Maese: Is this a done deal?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It doesn't sound like it.
--:-- Rick Maese: Yeah, I'd say it's far from a done deal at this point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What they've agreed to is the basic framework, but the details all still have to be ironed out.
--:-- Rick Maese: And even when that happens, the whole deal has to go before one of the boards that includes some players, and they have to sign off on it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then from there, as with any kind of merger or alliance, it's subject to some scrutiny from the government.
--:-- Rick Maese: So I think there's still many more hurdles to come.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's hard to say exactly how serious those hurdles are until we know what some of the details of the deal are.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was Rick Maese. He writes about sports for The Washington Post.
--:-- [Wall Street Journal news break]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Shortly before we hit publish on the show today, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the Department of Justice had notified the PGA Tour that it indeed would be investigating this deal over antitrust concerns, so Rick kind of called it there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Looks like this deal is a ways away, but if it goes through, the biggest winner hands down will be Saudi Arabia and a guy in charge over there who people call MBS.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More on why when we are back on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You like that, old man? You want a piece of me?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't want a piece of you. I want Today Explained.
--:-- [Discussion continues with a new guest]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sean Ramos from back with Jonathan Geyer, senior foreign policy writer at Vox.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Yeah, and I would say you and me, probably the golf course wasn't the first thing you think of when you're talking about MBS, the Saudi crown prince, but major play for American and international golf.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why do MBS and Saudi Arabia care so much about golf, Jonathan?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: It is a great question. You've probably heard the term sports washing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, this happened with the World Cup. This happened with the Olympics.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: It's a really great way to bring people together and have them forget about heinous human rights violations and wars and brutal strongmen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think MBS has picked the most low-key sport that brings together a lot of wealthy people, a lot of influential people, and we'll have them not talking about the Saudi crown prince, but we'll have them talking about a lot of fun on the course.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I spoke with a Saudi expert who I often call, who said that this is a preview of how MBS is going to be taking over lots of industries.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sports, yes, but this has been happening with Silicon Valley. He's been having plays for media, for Hollywood, for other really important things that you and I consume almost every day.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: So while we may not be golfers, a lot of the country is. It's a ton of money. It's a ton of influence. And it's a great way to change the conversation and give MBS and his friends a lot of power, soft power in America and across the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Saudi Arabia, through this thing called the Public Investment Fund, which is the sovereign wealth vehicle, you might call it a half trillion dollar piggy bank of the Saudi crown prince, has just been investing majorly.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Especially in Silicon Valley, stuff like Postmates, Reddit, Credit Karma, those on sneaker shoes, running shoes you see everywhere, are indirectly or directly getting a huge amount of money that's basically, I don't want to say laundered because it's not illegal, but it's kind of washed through different investment vehicles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's not like those on sneakers are going to say MBS on the side.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: But at the end of the day, a lot of that money is traveling through different investment vehicles and ending up being consumed by just about everybody we know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you're saying there's this massive slush fund and that the Saudi government is funneling money to Hollywood, to Silicon Valley and now to golf.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: This is a tremendously large fund. Based on the reporting I've seen, it's about $650 billion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's going to grow to $1 trillion by 2025.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And when the head of the fund was speaking earlier this spring, he predicted $3 trillion by 2030.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, of course, Saudi Arabia isn't the only country that has a sovereign wealth fund that's doing this stuff.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: It's just that this is a particularly large fund. And I think the reputation of MBS really merits more scrutiny.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul that Jamal Khashoggi met his brutal end.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: He was strangled as soon as he entered the building by a team of Saudi assassins who then dismembered his body.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The damning conclusion of the declassified intelligence report is that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul to capture or kill the Saudi journalist.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: MBS has engaged in some pretty violent activities during his relatively short reign as Crown Prince.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He basically blackmailed many members of his royal family at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: He is largely responsible for an incredibly destructive war in Yemen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Countless amount of civilians have died.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And, you know, it might be noted that some of the weapons being used come from the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's largely been a kind of rogue foreign policy that he's run.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And President Biden himself, when he was candidate Biden, on the campaign trail, described Saudi Arabia as a pariah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So these criticisms you know were very much front and center in U policy.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And now it kind of a major about-face for a lot of these industries for the Biden administration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, the knock-on effect is Saudi Arabian dollars are kind of entering the public sphere in full force.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Joe Biden infamously went over and fist-bumped MBS and asked him to— Fist-bump diplomacy, yeah. Fist-bump diplomacy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Asked him to pump the brakes on oil prices back when they were soaring last year, I believe.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: This fist bumping with MBS when he arrived after vowing to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan called it, quote, worse than a handshake and, quote, shameful.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Are we holding professional golf in Silicon Valley and Hollywood to a higher standard than the president of the United States who who sort of failed in his effort to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is a tough question, Sean.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I mean, no, no, no. I think it is the question because human rights is tough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, what, do we boycott everything? Do we not engage in any country that's doing bad stuff?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I mean, I don't think we should hold President Biden to account for the reason that PGA Tour and Live Golf are likely to merge.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it does show a sign of the times that when the president is willing to make a compromise with someone who the CIA said ordered the killing of a journalist without getting some kind of guardrails or some kind of something in return that shows that Saudi Arabia is going to take these criticisms seriously.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: It really sets everything down a much worse path.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: To me, the worst thing is that it encourages a ruler like MBS to say, well, I can kill a journalist and I can still make major inroads in American culture.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: Of course, that happened during the former president's tenure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that guy apparently, I believe, is a known golfer, though I hear a cheater.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: I'm not even sure you'd call it golf, because he takes mulligans whenever he wants them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One time he made a six and made me write down a four.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: He plays really fast. He doesn't putt out. He's in his own cart and just flies off and you sort of try to just hang on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's kind of like he's the tornado and you're the trailer.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: President Trump, as the New York Times has reported very thoroughly, stands to benefit from this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he's definitely someone who's been photographed with the head of the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And that gentleman was wearing a MAGA hat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So clearly there's some political jostling here and much to be gained by the Trump family and its conglomerate of golf resorts.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: So it sounds like Saudi money is already basically everywhere, but not yet fully everywhere because this deal is a big deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what does this look like in five or 10 years if, you know, MBS and this massive slush fund of money really goes everywhere?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: What came to mind immediately, Sean, is the Houston Rockets and China.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Houston Rockets went from one of China's favorite basketball teams to essentially non-existent.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: It all started with a now-deleted tweet from General Manager Daryl Morey saying, Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That statement of support for pro-democracy protesters was seen as an affront to the team's Chinese fan base.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: So what happens if golfers, if this deal goes through, criticize human rights violations in Saudi Arabia?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what happens if MBS takes over more industries and players and actors and cultural figures feel like they can't criticize this country because they are writing paychecks, underwriting prizes?
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: It's a frightening reality because we've seen it play out with China's repressive reach in a lot of sports.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've seen it in the way that the Olympics has played out and the World Cup has played out where certain criticisms, certain protests were just not allowed.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And that's not very American.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jonathan Geyer writes about the world for Vox.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: You can read him at Vox.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One thing Jonathan discloses in his writing that I'll also disclose here and now is that the Penske Media Corporation became a minority shareholder in Vox Media earlier this year.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: And guess who's invested in Penske Media?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mm-hmm.
--:-- Jonathan Geyer: That Saudi money really is everywhere.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks to Jack Hirsch and Caitlin Burla for their help with today's show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We were produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Michael Raphael, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- [Closing credits continue]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is also made by Victoria Chamberlain, Abishai Artsy, Amanda Lou Ellen, Siona Petros, Miles Bryan, and Hadi Mawagdi.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our supervising producer is Amina Alsadi.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My co-host is Noelle King, and we get lots of help from Patrick Boyd.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're on the radio in partnership with WNYC, and we are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- [Closing music plays]
