WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has one main concern when it comes to the deal between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed Public Investment Fund: maintaining what he calls the “purity” of golf.
Ahead of a Senate hearing scheduled for Tuesday on the tentative deal, Johnson suggested he sees the agreement between the major golf organizations as necessary to preserve competition of play in the sport. He acknowledged concerns over PIF and LIV Golf’s ties to Saudi Arabia but said he wants to play a “constructive” role in bridging the gap between the two groups.
“The fact of the matter is the Public Investment Fund … if they want to invest in global sports, they’re going to invest in global sports, and you have to recognize and react to that reality,” Johnson said of Saudi Arabia in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Thursday. “I think that’s what the PGA in the end was faced with.”
“You may not like that reality. I hated to see what happened with the split, with the players at each other’s throats,” he added, referencing the creation of LIV in 2021 as a direct competitor to the PGA Tour that caused a rift in the golf community. “And I’m hoping to play a constructive role in helping bridge that gap, repair the breach.”
Two PGA Tour officials — Ron Price, the tour’s chief operating officer, and Jimmy Dunne, a PGA board member who helped broker the deal — will testify Tuesday before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, on which Johnson is the top Republican.
More:PGA Tour says deal with LIV Golf is not a merger. So what is it? Here’s what we know
It’s expected to be a closely watched hearing, with lawmakers in recent weeks raising antitrust concerns and worries over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.
Here’s what Johnson is saying about the deal ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.
Johnson wants to see ‘purity of competition’ preserved
Johnson said he initially felt that “Congress at this point shouldn’t get involved” in the merger.
But since U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut who is the subcommittee’s chairman, initiated the inquiry, Johnson said he wants to make sure the “purity of the competition” is maintained in the new for-profit entity that would be created after the planned merger.
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