Saudi Arabia PIF – Syndication Server

LIV Golf’s Greg Norman talks about his ‘legacy,’ sidesteps sportswashing, calls for resolution with PGA Tour and DP World Tour

“My legacy of what I’m doing with LIV will be my legacy because it’s the right thing to do,” said Norman.

LIV Golf officials like to refer to 2022 as its beta season and 2023 as its true first season.

However you want to differentiate between the two years so far, LIV Golf CEO and Commissioner Greg Norman hasn’t been nearly as vocal this year compared to last. That changed on Thursday when the two-time major champion was joined by Cam Smith and South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas for a press conference ahead of LIV Golf Adelaide, the upstart circuit’s first event in Australia.

Norman doubled down on previous comments and claims that the rebranded LIV Golf League will be around for the long haul and that, despite ongoing legal struggles with both the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, that the entity financially backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund wants to “coexist within the golf ecosystem.”

“I do hope there gets to a position where there is resolution to this, because the game of golf doesn’t need to suffer,” said Norman on Thursday at the Grange Golf Club, the site of his first professional win. “These guys don’t need to suffer.”

“PGA Tour has got a great tour. We’re happy for them. I’m happy for them. I grew up on the PGA Tour. So did Cam. We grew up playing on the European Tour,” said Norman. “I hope they exist and keep existing, but it’s their choice of what they want to do, and if they want to keep putting up road blocks, we’re not going to go anywhere. We’ve got a great product. We’ve got investment dollars there today, investment dollars into the future that will continue to be there because of guys like this.”

To the point of those investment dollars, LIV Golf is financially backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and has long been criticized as a way for the Kingdom to sportswash its controversial human rights record. Saudi Arabia has been accused of politically motivated killings, torture, forced disappearances and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Members of the royal family and Saudi government were accused of involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist.

Asked about sportswashing on Wednesday, Bryson DeChambeau said he thought that topic was “kicked that to the curb” after answering questions on the subject last year. When asked why he’s never had a conversation with anyone from the PIF about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, Norman rolled out the company line: Golf is a force for good.

“Because I’m the chairman and CEO of LIV Golf Investments, and that’s where I focus. I focus on golf. I stay focused on golf. My job is to build out LIV and the product we have on a global front,” said a perturbed Norman. “I’ve been involved with golf, like I said, as a player, as well as golf course design.

“I’ve built some golf courses in third-world countries. I’ve built golf courses in Communist countries. Golf is a force for good,” he continued. “It goes everywhere with the right platform because it delivers the right message, from education to hospitality to employment to tourism. Everywhere you go, golf is a force for good.”

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Malinauskas defended Australia’s decision to host LIV based on the potential economic impact the event may have on the region and touted how Australia and Saudi Arabia share a $3 billion trading partnership.

“But LIV is not a representative of Saudi Arabia. LIV is a golf tournament. LIV is a golf tour, and it’s shaking things up, and I think that’s a good thing,” said Malinauskas, who insinuated sportswashing is only mentioned as a last line of defense to LIV’s market disruption.

“LIV Golf is here exclusively in its capacity putting on a high-quality and elite golf tournament.”

The phrase “elite golf tournament” could be challenged, especially after Smith, who was seated next to Malinauskas, said at the Masters that LIV’s fields “aren’t as strong” as those on the PGA Tour. After acquiring some of professional golf’s biggest, boldest characters, the offseason additions for this season left something to be desired as just two top-50 players (at the time) made the move in Thomas Pieters (No. 35) and Mito Pereira (No. 50).

Norman boasted that a number of players are still waiting to join LIV, but as for those who didn’t make the 2023 cut over the likes of Pieters, Pereira, Sebastian Munoz and Brendan Steele, those players may add depth to LIV’s 48-player fields, but wouldn’t move the needle.

“There is an incredible amount of interest. We’re full,” said Norman. “Our goal is to build those franchise values out.”

Norman and those at LIV truly believe in its franchise model and that its 12 teams can be profitable, so long as the league is given time to grow and establish its place in golf.

“My legacy of what I’m doing with LIV will be my legacy,” added Norman, “because it’s the right thing to do.”

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LIV Golf takes yet another legal blow in United States court, must comply with documents and witnesses for depositions

Last month a judge ruled that depositions could be conducted in Riyadh, but the new ruling sets them in New York.

After suffering a major setback via a United Kingdom arbitration panel on Thursday, the legal hits kept coming for LIV Golf on Friday, this time with regard to its antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour.

Judge Beth Labson Freeman ruled in the U.S. Northern District of California court that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund – as well as its governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan are both subject to discovery and depositions, a major blow to LIV’s legal team.

Last month U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen ruled that PIF and Al-Rumayyan’s depositions could be conducted at a place of the Tour’s choosing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but Freeman’s order overrules the previous decision made by van Keulen. The first deposition subpoenas served to PIF and Al-Rumayyan established a location in New York City.

LIV’s lawyers have appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in order to delay the discovery process.

The original lawsuit was filed in August of 2022 by Phil Mickelson and went on to include 10 other players, but has since been taken over by LIV Golf, which is almost exclusively financed by the PIF (aside from its newly announced first global partner). The wealth fund, organized in 1971 as a means for the Saudi Arabian government to invest in various projects and companies, has been estimated to be worth over $650 billion.

The Tour then filed a countersuit against LIV. In February, the court ruled the Tour could add the PIF and Al-Rumayyan as defendants in its countersuit, dragging the financiers deeper into the judicial weeds.

So, what comes next? Antitrust cases involve not just investigating a company, but rather an entire industry. For that reason, the discovery process can be voluminous and exhausting, and the case – currently set for a Jan. 8, 2024 trial date – is just now entering the pre-trial discovery phase.

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PIF and Al-Rumayyan could comply and provide depositions and documents, though LIV lawyers have previously claimed that taking part in depositions would violate Saudi Arabian law. If they were to comply, the ramifications could have adverse effects on the PIF’s other investments in the states. Does Al-Rumayyan want to answer questions about the PIF’s motives given that LIV Golf has long been criticized as a way for Saudi Arabia to sportswash its human rights record? It’s unlikely.

They could also refuse to comply by not submitting documents or failing to meet deadlines, but that opens the door for the court to issue a ruling of contempt, which may lead to sanctions and fines that could totally upend LIV’s case.

The court hasn’t extended deadlines just yet, but previous comments in filings state that if the discovery process is delayed, the case may be, too.

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Lynch: Saudis have Greg Norman to thank for their U.S. legal nightmare

Norman opens LIV’s second season with his trademark delusional enthusiasm masquerading as unstoppable momentum.

While traveling to LIV Golf’s season-opening event in Mexico, Greg Norman posted to social media two photos of himself on a private jet, one as he read, the other while gazing meditatively through the window. The accompanying caption read: “Books are the training weights of the mind — Epictetus.”

In keeping with the custom of his every waking hour, it was carefully staged image-building, suggesting a swashbuckling captain of industry on another successful sortie. With the time spent curating selfies, Norman could have scrolled to another quote from Epictetus — or, more accurately, from his transcribing student Arrian, since the Greek Stoic himself left no writings: “Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.”

Norman’s LIV Golf has a solitary anchor that prevents it from being dashed on the rocks of commercial reality, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. When it comes to an ability to throw good money after bad, the PIF is an enviable ally to have. But as Norman opens LIV’s second season with his trademark delusional enthusiasm masquerading as unstoppable momentum, he must worry that legal developments in California’s Northern District might prompt that affluent anchor to cast him adrift.

The past week brought disappointments that the flaxen-haired finger puppet has seldom experienced outside of Augusta National.

On Feb. 16, the court rejected arguments by the Saudi investment fund and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, that they should not have to comply with discovery requests in LIV’s antitrust action against the PGA Tour. Producing documents or submitting to a deposition, Saudi lawyers argued, would violate sovereign immunity and endanger Al-Rumayyan, who is under no illusions about the mercurial brutality of the Crown Prince for whom he functions as bagman (hey, caveat emptor!). But because Al-Rumayyan is involved in decision-making and the Fund owns 93% of LIV (while paying 100% of its costs), the pretense of being a mere investor was dismissed and the court compelled them to comply.

Then, on Feb. 21 Judge Beth Labson Freeman granted the Tour’s request to add Al-Rumayyan and the Fund as co-defendants in its countersuit against LIV that alleges interference with player contracts. Now a party in the litigation, the Saudi Fund and its chief can no longer rebuff the jurisdiction of the very court whose protection they sought. Within hours, the Kingdom signaled that it would file an amicus brief in support of, well, itself, about how intolerable this whole justice concept is proving to be.

The Saudi reluctance to submit to America’s permissive discovery process hardly requires explanation. Even if the court placed strict parameters on discovery, the process carries huge risk as PIF investments — known and stealth, commercial and political — are subjected to scrutiny and potential exposure. That might strike Al-Rumayyan as an awfully high price to continue underwriting Norman’s folly.

This litigation exists for one reason: to make real the fantasy that Norman sold his players — the PGA Tour had no right to ban them (it does), and that they would be permitted to play LIV events and whatever Tour stops they wish to cherry pick (they won’t). Players who bought his bill of goods must by now realize that Norman’s vows dissolve quicker than those of Zsa Zsa Gabor (Google her, kids).

The promised major broadcast rights deal became a giveaway to a little-watched network whose affiliates prefer Judge Judy reruns to tournament action. The promised stampede of blue-chip sponsors yielded one low-profile shipping outfit. The promised signings of seven star players delivered Dean Burmester and Danny Lee, who wouldn’t be considered top-drawer in a one-drawer world. Instead, the promised frenzy of off-season trading among teams with names like RangeGoats and Majesticks produced only the sobering realization that an enterprise aimed at the young is hostage to middle-aged marketing dorks.

No wonder Norman has taken to quoting a Stoic who believed that events are beyond our control and that we ought to calmly accept whatever comes our way.

Deadlines now loom by which the Saudis must show a good faith effort to meet their legal obligations, but the likelihood of the Public Investment Fund or Al-Rumayyan submitting to probing by PGA Tour lawyers is about the same as Norman finally getting that green jacket. That raises the prospect of LIV’s antitrust claim being withdrawn or dismissed, which would strand players as castaways on Greg’s Gilligan’s Island and force a reckoning on the Saudi commitment to a product that can’t gain traction in the only market that can confer serious commercial viability.

Sharks have a blind spot right in front of their snouts, so it’s unsurprising that Norman swaggered into federal court and declared victory before the ink was dry on his specious claims. But even he must by now grasp the predicament in which he has placed his employer. Thanks to Norman, Al-Rumayyan is learning that the U.S. judicial system doesn’t grant MBS’s agents the kind of untrammeled latitude they are accustomed to at home, or for that matter in Turkish consulates.

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LIV Golf’s anti-trust lawsuit against PGA Tour handed severe blow in federal court

The ruling could radically change the fledgling circuit’s anti-trust lawsuit against the PGA Tour.

With a second season of LIV Golf just days from the starting line, a federal judge has dealt a blow to the group that financially supports the upstart league, one that could radically change the fledgling circuit’s anti-trust lawsuit against the PGA Tour.

Although LIV Golf attorneys have been attempting to shed light on the PGA Tour’s organizational structure and financial dealings, the head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund tried to avoid the same fate, claiming “sovereign immunity” during a November filing.

But a federal judge ruled on Thursday that the PIF and its governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan must provide the same information, a move that’s expected to slow the aggressiveness of any suit, and might even halt it completely. It’s uncertain if Saudi officials will want to divulge such information.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen, in the U.S. District Court of Northern District of California, rejected the argument in an order that was made Feb. 9, but which remained under seal as LIV and the PGA Tour fought over proposed redactions of confidential information. A redacted copy of the order was included in a filing released late Thursday.

The original suit, which was filed back in August by Phil Mickelson and 10 other golfers, was taken over by LIV Golf, which is under the PIF umbrella.

However, officials for the Saudi-run firm have insisted they only have high-level oversight over LIV Golf and don’t deal with day-to-day operations. The request also stated the move could set a “dangerous precedent” if PIF had to reveal its books, as the company has investments in major corporations like Walmart and Starbucks and could be ripe for similar requests over any suits filed against companies it holds.

The wealth fund, which was organized in 1971 as a means for the Saudi Arabian government to invest in various projects and companies, has been estimated to be worth over $650 billion.

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But Thursday’s filing stated that PIF and LIV are too entangled to separate them for legal purposes.

“The Court DENIES the motion of PIF to quash the subpoena directed to PIF on the grounds of sovereign immunity because it finds that PIF’s conduct falls within the commercial activity exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act,” the order read. “It is plain that PIF is not a mere investor in LIV; it is the moving force behind the founding, funding, oversight and operation of LIV … PIF’s actions are indisputably the type of actions by which a private party engages in trade and traffic or commerce.”

LIV attorneys have claimed that the PGA Tour is using monopoly power, illegally suspending players and hanging the possibility of those players to play in future major tournaments, but the Tour filed a countersuit, claiming LIV is using players, “and the game of golf to sportswash the recent history of Saudi atrocities and to further the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s Vision 2030 initiatives.”

PGA Tour lawyers highlighted a text exchange between Al-Rumayyan and Bryson DeChambeau as a shining example of the official’s depth of involvement, noting that Al-Rumayyan reached out to a TV executive in an attempt to secure a media agreement.

“This isn’t what a government does. This is what somebody that is running a golf league does, LIV is pretty much a shell and the financial consequences, be they good or bad of the investment, flow through to PIF,” Tour lawyer Elliot Peters said during a January hearing.

LIV Golf attorneys have already filed an appeal to Thursday’s ruling.

LIV Golf has long been criticized as a way for the Kingdom to sportswash its human rights record with guaranteed money and multi-million dollar deals. Saudi Arabia has been accused of wide-ranging human rights abuses, including politically motivated killings, torture, forced disappearances and inhumane treatment of prisoners. And members of the royal family and Saudi government were accused of involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist.

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Vocal sportswashing critic Meghan MacLaren explains why she’s playing in Saudi Arabia, where the purse is one of the highest in women’s golf

Abstaining from events backed by the PIF would cripple an LET player’s chance to make a living.

Three years ago, Meghan MacLaren took a rare and bold stance against playing in the first women’s professional golf event ever held in Saudi Arabia, saying that competing in the Kingdom didn’t fit with her values. The 28-year-old Englishwoman withdrew over concerns that the country was “sportswashing” its human rights record.

As the presence of Saudi Arabia money continues to grow in women’s golf, however, MacLaren’s stance has evolved.

This week the three-time winner on the Ladies European Tour is one of 120 players who will tee it up in the Aramco Saudi Ladies International, which features a $5 million purse, the highest prize fund in women’s golf outside of the majors and the LPGA’s season-ending CME Group Tour Championship.

Considering that nearly a dozen events on the LET schedule last year featured purses below 300,000 euros, a non-major purse at $5 million offers a life-changing opportunity for many in the field, which features 60 Ladies European Tour players, 50 from the top 300 in the Rolex Rankings and 10 sponsor invites.

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The winner at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club in King Abdullah Economic City will receive $750,000.

“At some point, you have to reconcile,” said MacLaren. “This is my competitive nature and my profession versus how do I want to live my life? What do I want to stand up for?

“You have a voice to a certain point, but also, the better golfer I am and the more recognizable golfer I am, the louder I can use that voice.”

As things currently stand, abstaining from competing in events backed by the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund would cripple an LET player’s chance to make a living and keep her card on that tour.

In addition to this week’s Saudi Ladies International, which features the same size purse the men played for earlier this month in Saudi, there are five stops around the world in the LET’s Aramco Team Series. Total prize money for all six Saudi-backed events on the LET is $10 million.

With two majors accounting for $13.8 million in prize money, Saudi money represents more than 40 percent of what remains.

“At the end of the day, money is power,” said MacLaren. “We live in a world where that is the truth, and you can’t get around that. How you choose to use that money will say a lot about who you are as a person.”

World No. 1 Lydia Ko won the 2021 Aramco Saudi Ladies International (courtesy Aramco)

The Saudi Ladies International field will feature 15 of the top 30 players in the world, including No. 1 Lydia Ko and Lexi Thompson, who won an Aramco event last fall in New York. Thompson will not play in the LPGA events in Thailand and Singapore the following two weeks.

Three-time major winner Anna Nordqvist was one of several female professionals personally sponsored by Golf Saudi. She recently told the Swedish news agency TT that she had ended her sponsorship deal with the Saudis. Nordqvist wore an Aramco Team Series hat when she won the 2021 AIG Women’s British Open at Carnoustie and had the Golf Saudi logo on her sleeve.

Her decision to part ways, however, had to do with the backlash she received rather than any moral conflict.

“It didn’t really turn out the way I thought it would,” Nordqvist told TT in an interview.

“I need to think about myself and I haven’t felt good about this,” she said, adding: “I wasn’t really prepared to get such an incredible amount of hatred and mean comments from people who don’t even know me.”

Nordqvist still plans to compete in this week’s event in Saudi Arabia and others on the LET schedule, citing her need to get in four LET events before August to be eligible for the Solheim Cup.

“It was never about money for me,” she continued. “I wanted to do something for ladies’ golf and especially for the European Tour.”

Nordqvist released a follow-up statement to those comments on Monday, noting that the Aramco team was fully supportive of her decision.

“I will always fight for women’s golf,” she wrote on Instagram. “This decision doesn’t change the respect I have for what the Aramco Team Series has done for the women’s game.”

AIG Women's British Open — Anna Nordqvist of Sweden poses with the trophy after winning the 2021 AIG Women’s British Open at Carnoustie. Photo by Ian Rutherford/PA Wire

MacLaren, one of the most thoughtful players in the game, has been “hyperaware” of the moral complications of playing for Saudi money since the beginning and still wrestles with how she feels.

“For some people,” she said, “it’s a lot easier to just not ask those questions in the first place.”

MacLaren has since taken a closer look at how other sports have dealt with similar issues, noting that she still backs her favorite British football team, even though they’ve been bought by the Saudis.

“Everywhere you look there’s red lines and conflict of interest,” she said, later adding: “For me, every decision that I make feels like it has a lot of complications attached to it, but not everybody thinks as introspectively as that.”

Alex Morgan, a popular forward on the U.S. women’s national soccer team, recently told reporters at the SheBelieves Cup that she found it “bizarre” that FIFA was considering bringing on Visit Saudi as a sponsor for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

“I think it’s bizarre that FIFA has looked to have a Visit Saudi sponsorship for the Women’s World Cup when I, myself, Alex Morgan, would not even be supported and accepted in that country,” she said. “I just don’t understand it.”

Teammate Taylor Kornieck added that U.S. Soccer believes in partnering “with people who align with our values best.”

In recent years, the laws in Saudi Arabia have changed to allow women to travel abroad and drive a car. However, the male guardian system that’s still in place requires a male relative’s permission to marry, divorce or leave a prison.

A student (R) and instructor practice driving at the Jeddah Advanced Driving School at King Abdulaziz University the day after women are once again allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia on June 25, 2018, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Saudi activist Omaima Al Najjar, now a surgical doctor living in Ireland, was a prominent blogger who took part in the right-to-drive campaign in Saudi and fled when she felt the risks were too great. It’s still too dangerous for her to return now.

“It’s important to remind the women who are participating in this tour,” Al Najjar told Golfweek by phone last year, “that the Saudi women activists who made those changes happen are still on trial, being prosecuted, banned from activism and banned from traveling.”

Al Najjar wants players to speak out not only about the activists, but the conditions of many migrant workers in Saudi Arabia. Women come from developing countries to work in the kingdom as maids and often have their passports confiscated as they are made to work seven days a week with no set schedule, “which is a sort of slavery,” Al Najjar said.

Meanwhile, Saudi-born women are fleeing the country, she continued, despite recent reforms because there are no safe houses in the Kingdom for victims of domestic violence.

“There’s an issue of killing women in Saudi,” said Al Najjar, “and a lot of husbands kill their wives or a lot of fathers kill their daughters and the Saudi authorities do not do much about it.”

These are the issues Al Najjar hopes that LET and LPGA players who compete in Saudi Arabia will speak out against, even it means financial loss.

To this point, female golfers who compete for Saudi money have received far less attention and criticism than what male players who joined LIV have faced. MacLaren said her honest answer to that disparity is that people don’t care as much. The profile of women’s golf is so much smaller compared to men’s golf, she continued, noting that there aren’t 15 journalists at press conferences asking tough questions.

“In terms of how golf is covered,” she said, “I don’t think the exposure is the same, and therefore, the criticism isn’t to the same level.”

Meghan MacLaren of England tees off on the 18th hole during Day Three of the ISPS Handa World Invitational presented by AVIV Clinics at Galgorm Castle and Massereene Golf Clubs on August 13, 2022, in Co Antrim, Northern Ireland. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

MacLaren, an eloquent and frequent blogger, recently posted about her decision to compete in Saudi Arabia on Twitter, and said the public response to her decision, which was mostly positive, caught her by surprise.

“I will always believe it is better to look rather than to look away,” she wrote, “but the world is more powerful than single individuals with limited scope for change. Using these competitive opportunities and doing what is necessary to be the best golfer I can be is quite probably my best route to increasing my platform voice, and financial status.

“What I then choose to do with that platform, voice and financial status will hopefully make this world a better place in the long run … and that will always be my aim.”

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Lynch: The Saudis are dodging a U.S. court, and the impact on LIV Golf could be huge

Another risk to LIV is playing out in a Northern District of California courtroom

Positives aren’t plentiful in Greg Norman’s world these days, unless you count the commensurate savings in Kool-Aid orders every time another of his hapless executives bolts for the exit. The LIV Golf schedule remains incomplete just weeks ahead of its start, no new star player signings have materialized, and the offseason brought none of the promised trading frenzy between teams. And those aren’t even the most pressing issues that imperil LIV’s long-term viability.

More acute difficulties include: the failure to sign enough quality players; the failure to attract corporate sponsors; the failure to garner fan support that isn’t manufactured in a bot farm; the failure to retain senior executives, three of whom have unceremoniously quit; and the crippling failure to secure a broadcast deal, which has reduced LIV to discussing paying The CW to air its events after even Fox Sports passed.

It demands a particularly potent Kool-Aid to recast all of that as something other than humiliating.

For those minded to think beyond the confines of golf, another risk to LIV — perhaps its most formidable — is playing out in a Northern District of California courtroom. That’s where LIV filed an antitrust suit against the PGA Tour and where the Tour countersued. The proceedings have detoured into an intriguing cul-de-sac as the Tour seeks to compel discovery from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, which is bankrolling LIV, and the Fund’s governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

The Tour argues that LIV is owned by the Saudi fund and that Al-Rumayyan is the league’s ultimate authority, making discovery from those parties key to its case. The Saudis have been frantically trying to evade any discovery. The Fund is claiming foreign sovereign immunity as an organ of the Saudi state, while Al-Rumayyan submitted to the court an affidavit saying that he would be exposed to a possible 20-year prison term under Saudi law if he were to disclose classified information. Somewhere Salma al-Shehab is crying him a river. She’s the Saudi student given a 34-year sentence in August for tweets critical of Al-Rumayyan’s pals in the regime.

The PIF arguments are piffle. Having directed LIV to file an antitrust suit—initially through 11 patsy players before later joining the litigation itself—the Saudis now claim they’re not subject to the jurisdiction of the very courts whose protection they sought. As noted by Professor Jodi Balsam of Brooklyn Law School, there is a “commercial activities” exception to sovereign immunity claims that grants the court authority based on the Fund’s control of LIV. That control is indisputable: in a January 13 hearing it was revealed that the Fund owns 93 percent of LIV and pays 100 percent of the costs associated with its events, rendering laughable any defense that it’s a mere bystander to the antitrust litigation.

Since LIV requested an expedited court process and promised Saudi co-operation, it’s likely the judge will compel discovery from Al-Rumayyan and his Fund, a ruling that would have unappetizing implications for LIV players who might hope to avoid having their affairs spreadeagled for lawyers. The court may also draw negative inferences from a Saudi refusal to comply — potentially ruinous for LIV’s antitrust lawsuit. But co-operating with discovery — even if the court sets strict parameters — is a considerably worse option for the Fund and Al-Rumayyan.

In the U.S. legal system, discovery can be permissive to the point of invasive, and comes with crossfire risks. Former Raiders coach Jon Gruden was fired for racist and homophobic emails unearthed during discovery in a workplace suit involving the Washington Commanders. In this case, discovery could expose to unwanted scrutiny both known and stealth investments by the Saudi fund. Even if discovery is confined to the golf sphere, tugging at threads could unravel things the Saudis would much rather protect.

For example, LIV has become explicitly politicized with its attachment to Donald Trump, staging events at the former president’s golf courses as he publicly urged PGA Tour players to “take the money” from his Saudi partners. Scrutiny of the relationship between the Fund and Trump would be unwelcome in Riyadh and Palm Beach. Federal law prohibits foreign governments from attempting to influence U.S. domestic politics, and discovery risks highlighting how inherently political the Saudi fund’s investments are.

The Public Investment Fund — which is ultimately controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — invested $2 billion in a private equity company owned by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, over the objections of its own advisors. The LIV project was thought inviable by the Fund’s consultants, McKinsey and Company, yet another couple of billion dollars has been torched there. If the Saudi fund is making investments that are economically irrational, discovery might unearth motives that are grounded not in profit nor sportswashing, but in politics.

The concept of “buyer’s remorse” is often tossed around in reference to LIV players who might miss legitimate competition or regret the reputational damage that came with signing. It might now be more appropriate in relation to LIV’s financiers, who find themselves in a legal quagmire of their own making.

The extent to which Al-Rumayyan and his Fund co-operate with the proceedings in California’s Northern District will have an enormous impact on LIV’s lawsuit against the PGA Tour. The degree to which they fear scrutiny could have a decisive impact on LIV’s entire existence. Judge Beth Labson Freeman set a trial date of January 2024 for the antitrust case. It was always a wildly optimistic schedule, but the delay tactics of the Saudis — and their determination not to have the dealings of their wealth fund made public — raise the question of just what will be left to litigate one year from now.

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