The PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, facing pressure from the Justice Department about their ambitions for a new company to shape global golf, have in recent days abandoned a crucial provision of their tentative deal: a promise not to recruit each other’s players.
Three people familiar with the change, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential negotiations, signaled that the decision was an early casualty of an antitrust review by Justice Department regulators, who are expected to decide in the coming months whether to try to block the transaction.
The tour moved to notify its board of the decision only on Thursday, after The New York Times asked the tour to comment on its reporting.
The framework agreement between the tour and the wealth fund included few binding provisions.
But one of them was a nonsolicitation clause, which said the tour and wealth fund-backed LIV Golf league would not “enter into any contract, agreement or understanding with” any “players who are members of the other’s tour or organization.”
Persons:
LIV, ”
Organizations:
Tour, Saudi, Justice Department, The New York Times, LIV Golf