The Company You Keep

Let’s not even get to the point of discussing whether you think kidnapping the family members of those who irritate you is permissible or not. Or if you’re okay with a little imprisonment and torture of critics. Let’s set aside where you fall on running up the execution rate of dissenters.

We don’t even need to get into all that! But Tuesday served as a concerning reminder of landmines that will go off when a sports league hands a sovereign wealth fund board seats, say in organizational structure, and immense power over pursestrings. When a league does that, it guarantees that country’s outside entanglements can and will become your league’s entanglements at some point.

The latest example arises from a report in The Athletic that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, aka Andrew Waterman aka the chairman of LIV Golf aka governor of the Saudi PIF who is trying to strike a deal with the PGA Tour, may face a lawsuit for carrying out the wishes of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with “the malicious intent” of “harming, silencing and ultimately destroying” the family of Saad Aljabri. Aljabri is a former Saudi intelligence chief who, if the bit about a six-man hit squad being sent to Canada to murder him happens to be true, MBS does not seem to like. Aljabri’s kids are imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, and the allegations — again this is just a court filing — include “wrongful kidnapping and detention”, “misappropriation of property” and the “expropriation” of companies valued at hundreds of millions directly into PIF control. Yasir is alleged to have carried all this out under the instruction of MBS. You can read the full report with all the specifics here. If you’re wondering why you’re reading about all this in a golf newsletter, well, Yasir is now or may soon be among the most powerful people in golf. Is this all now a golf subject? Which brings us back to the problems that go along with having a foreign power as part-owner of your league. No matter what you think of that country’s practices or beliefs, it adds major complications. That’s not a political or business opinion; it’s fact. If the PGA Tour ties itself so closely to a foreign nation, it will objectively make things uncomfortably complex. This is not just a simple sponsorship arrangement with an out clause, or adding an official PGA Tour event in Jeddah that can be dumped if necessary. It would be baked into the entire organization.

A surreal postscript: the Sports Business Journal report from a few hours later that Jay Monahan is currently in Saudi Arabia trying to “hammer out” (I would have gone with “lock up”) the deal with Yasir. Jay’s timing remains impeccable.

This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.