DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

ESPN has been Disney’s financial engine for nearly 30 years, powering the company through recessions, box office wipeouts and the pandemic. With its dual revenue stream — fees from cable subscribers and advertising — the sports juggernaut continues to earn billions of dollars for Disney. In the first six months of the 2023 fiscal year, Disney’s cable networks division, which is anchored by ESPN and its spinoff channels, generated $14 billion in revenue and $3 billion in profit. Disney is now exploring a once-unthinkable sale of a stake in ESPN. Disney has held talks with the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball about taking a minority stake.

Persons: Century Fox, ESPN’s, Robert A, ” Organizations: ESPN, Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Century, CNBC, National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball

Infuriated after being blindsided by the PGA Tour’s pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, a band of leading golfers has won a series of concessions from the beleaguered circuit’s commissioner — including the elevation of Tiger Woods to the tour’s board — in a star-driven rebuke of the tour. The tour announced the changes on Tuesday, one day after dozens of top players wrote to Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, and insisted on significant overhauls. The demands detailed in the Monday letter amounted to a dramatic effort to reclaim power over a circuit that got its modern start after a player rebellion in the late 1960s. The addition of Woods to the board, one of several changes agreed to by Monahan with a signed acknowledgment, would allow the players to outnumber six to five the independent board members, who come from the worlds of business and law. In addition, the players want to change the board’s rules to avoid a repeat of the negotiations with the Saudis, in which a handful of independent board members acted without the backing of players on the board.

Persons: Tiger Woods, Jay Monahan, Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler, Monahan Organizations: PGA Locations: Saudi

☆ Jonas Vingegaard Wins Tour de France Again After Vanquishing His Rival
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-23 | by ( Kevin Draper | More About Kevin Draper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

When Tadej Pogacar slipped behind Jonas Vingegaard on the Col de la Loze mountain pass through the Alps on Wednesday, eight kilometers and a world away from the top of the hot, punishing climb, it was only briefly unclear why. Pogacar’s own voice, over his team’s radio and broadcast on television during the Tour de France’s 17th stage, provided an immediate explanation for the rare sight of him being left behind like a mere mortal. “I’m dead.”It was an astonishing bit of television, a moment that will be replayed on every Tour broadcast for decades. Most of Pogacar’s teammates did not wait for him. Pogacar, the 24-year-old from Slovenia who usually rides with a smile on his face, perpetually unbothered, tufts of hair peeking out of his helmet, was gone.

Persons: Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, “ I’m, ”, “, Pogacar’s Locations: la, Slovenia

ESPN has held talks with some of the most powerful leagues in professional sports, including the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball, about taking a minority stake in its business. Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, said in a CNBC interview last week that the company was “looking for strategic partners” that could help ESPN with either distribution or content. “But we want to stay in the sports business,” said Mr. Iger, whose contract with Disney was recently extended through 2026. Selling a stake in ESPN could give Disney a cash infusion as it faces pricey renewals with sports leagues including the N.B.A., which is sure to demand a premium for the rights to show its games in the coming years. Hearst, the owner of magazines like Cosmopolitan and information services like Fitch Group, owns a minority stake in ESPN.

Persons: Robert A, ”, Iger, Hearst Organizations: ESPN, National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, Walt Disney Company, Disney, CNBC, Cosmopolitan, Fitch Group

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

The PGA Tour sought the ouster of Greg Norman, the two-time British Open champion who became the commissioner of the insurgent LIV Golf league, as a condition of its alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to records that a Senate subcommittee released on Tuesday. The tour and the wealth fund did not ultimately agree to the proposal — crafted as a so-called side letter to a larger framework agreement — and, for now, Norman remains atop LIV. But the deliberations reflect an enmity forged over decades of hostilities between the tour and Norman, one of the most talented players in professional golf history who often chafed at the sport’s economic structure. And they underscore the tensions that could linger if the deal closes. The glimpse into the negotiations between the tour and the wealth fund came as the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations began its first hearing into the arrangement, which calls for the business ventures of the tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour to be brought into a new, for-profit company.

Persons: Greg Norman, LIV, Norman Organizations: LIV Golf, LIV, Investigations Locations: Saudi

Price and Dunne may also be asked about the weekend resignation of Randall Stephenson from the tour’s board after more than a decade. The sport’s leaders have often handled their business in Washington behind closed doors, relying on a fount of good will and gentility. The tour faced a significant threat in the 1990s, when the Federal Trade Commission examined antitrust issues in golf before its inquiry fizzled amid a pressure campaign from Capitol Hill. But baseball has drawn much of the attention from Congress, like when senators called a 1958 hearing on antitrust exemptions. (“Stengelese Is Baffling to Senators,” read a subsequent headline in The New York Times, which reported that Yankees Manager Casey Stengel had lawmakers “confused but laughing.”)

Persons: Price, Dunne, Randall Stephenson, Stephenson, Jamal Khashoggi, ”, Travis Tygart, Arnold Palmer, Dwight D, Eisenhower, Jack Nicklaus, Biden, Casey Stengel, “ Organizations: AT, Saudi, Washington Post, U.S, Doping Agency, Federal Trade Commission, Capitol, Lawmakers, football’s, ”, New York Times, Yankees Locations: Washington, Capitol Hill

☆ Tour de France: Vingegaard vs. Pogacar Is the Race to Watch
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Kevin Draper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Many teams are structured around a single rider who they believe can win the race’s overall title, known as the general classification. Other teams have more than one race contender, and will decide during the Tour which one has the best chance of victory. Then there is the pride in winning even a single day’s stage, which for many cyclists can rank as a career highlight. There are two overwhelming favorites: Jonas Vingegaard, a Danish cyclist on Team Jumbo-Visma who won last year, and Tadej Pogacar, the Slovene cyclist on UAE Team Emirates who won in 2020 and 2021. The overarching story line of this year’s race, and the battle that dictates much of the strategy, will be based around the assumption that Vingegaard and Pogacar will duke it out all the way to Paris.

Persons: Jonas Vingegaard, Visma, Tadej Pogacar, Pogacar, David Gaudu of, Jai Hindley, Richard Carapaz Organizations: UAE Team Emirates, Enric Mas Locations: Danish, Slovene, Paris, Spain, David Gaudu of France, Australia, Ecuador

Golf’s big deal — a planned partnership between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — is not how big deals are ordinarily done. There were almost no outside bankers or lawyers involved in negotiations that led to a five-page framework agreement, and only so much input from the PGA Tour board. The plan that would, as the PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, put it, “take the competitor off of the board” came as the tour faced a Justice Department investigation over antitrust matters. “The fact that they were willing to publicly announce it does mean that the parties are pretty committed to doing something,” Sreepada said. “But I guess that leaves us with a question of who holds the leverage at this point?

Persons: Jay Monahan, “, ”, Suni Sreepada, ” Sreepada Organizations: PGA Tour, Saudi, Justice Department, & Gray

☆ Pros Won’t Be Hitting Golf Balls This Far Forever, Whether They Like It or Not
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Alan Blinder | Kevin Draper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

is also concerned about the millions of golfers who are not professionals and neither he nor Perpall indicated plans for a wholesale surrender. The announcement that Monahan had stepped back followed seven days of turmoil in professional golf. Monahan, who helped to negotiate the deal, was criticized as a cash-hungry hypocrite, but he has retained at least some crucial allies inside the tour. “Jay is a human being,” Webb Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open winner and a member of the tour’s board, said in an interview on Wednesday. “Golf is a game, and oftentimes, we make golf into something so much bigger than it is and we dehumanize people.” Perhaps, he said, Tuesday’s announcement would give “people a little perspective.”

Persons: Mike Whan, ’, Perpall, ” Whan, “, Jay Monahan, Ron Price, Tyler Dennis, Monahan, “ Jay, ” Webb Simpson, ” Organizations: PGA Tour, U.S, LIV Golf Locations: Saudi

☆ First Came Golf’s Flash Grenade. Now, Here’s the U.S. Open.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Alan Blinder | Kevin Draper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

For the first time in generations, the PGA Tour was not the unrivaled signature show in American men’s golf. How might players who defected from the tour to LIV be allowed to return? And what about all of that money, said to be $100 million or more in some instances, that the wealth fund promised LIV golfers? Much about the framework agreement, though, is unclear, with bankers and lawyers still rushing to fill in blanks on matters as weighty as asset valuation. (“I don’t have enough information about the deal yet to have an unfavorable or favorable view about it,” Patrick Cantlay, a player who is on the PGA Tour’s board, said on Tuesday.)

Persons: Lyndon, Johnson’s, LIV, ” Patrick Cantlay Organizations: Torrey, PGA Locations: Torrey Pines, San Diego, Sea Pines, Hilton Head, Saudi, London, Venice, San Francisco, New York

☆ Golf’s Titanic Deal Stokes Anger on Capitol Hill
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Alan Blinder | Kevin Draper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The trouble for the wealth fund and the tour is that Washington also has a bipartisan affection for lawmakers imitating sports executives, and browbeating actual ones, in public and in private. The tour and the wealth fund can take some comfort in history, which suggests a successful congressional effort to thwart the deal directly is unlikely. The Hill, though, could still seek to make the transaction painful beyond a feisty public hearing or two. Groups like the PGA Tour have combated legislative headaches surrounding their tax-exempt status in the past, with one effort to end the practice for sports leagues vanishing from a 2017 tax bill at the last moment. In the past 18 months, years after the N.F.L.

Persons: Blumenthal, Ron Wyden, “, ” Organizations: Major League Baseball, Democrat, Senate Finance Committee Locations: Washington, Oregon

☆ Senate Opens Inquiry Into PGA Tour Deal with Saudi-Funded LIV Golf
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( Kevin Draper | Alan Blinder | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The PGA Tour and LIV Golf have not yet closed a stunning partnership agreement announced only last week, but vows from Washington to slow or stop the deal — or at least make it uncomfortable for golf executives — crystallized on Monday, when the Senate opened an inquiry into the arrangement. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and the chairman of the chamber’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said Monday that he had demanded that both the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian-funded LIV give up a wide array of documents and communications tied to the agreement. Blumenthal also asked for records related to the PGA Tour’s nonprofit status, suggesting an appetite to challenge the tour’s tax-exempt standing. In a statement issued three days before the start of the U.S. Open in Los Angeles, Blumenthal decried Saudi Arabia’s “deeply disturbing human rights record at home and abroad” and said the agreement raised concerns “about the Saudi government’s role in influencing this effort and the risks posed by a foreign government entity assuming control over a cherished American institution.”

Persons: LIV, Richard Blumenthal, Blumenthal, Saudi Arabia’s, ” Organizations: Senate, Investigations, PGA Tour, PGA, U.S, Saudi Locations: Washington, Connecticut, Saudi, Los Angeles, American

Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, had gone unnoticed in Venice last month. He was in town for the same wedding that had brought al-Rumayyan to Venice. If the motor sports executive spotted the PGA Tour’s leader, he would assuredly connect the presences of Monahan and al-Rumayyan, and golf’s greatest secret might get out. The civil war that had disrupted and defined the once genteel sport — for example, Monahan once publicly asked whether PGA Tour players had ever felt compelled to apologize for competing on the circuit — was abruptly suspended. The tour’s reputation was stained and many of its loyalists were furious, but its coffers were poised to overflow.

Persons: Jay Monahan, Yasir al, LIV, Stefano Domenicali, Monahan, Domenicali, — Organizations: PGA Tour, PGA, LIV Golf Locations: Venice, Italy, Saudi

☆ The Merger of LIV Golf and the PGA Tour: Here’s What to Know
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Kevin Draper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The PGA Tour and LIV announced Tuesday the creation of a new entity that would combine their assets, as well as those of the DP World Tour, and radically change golf’s governance. The PGA Tour would remain a nonprofit organization and would retain full control over how its tournaments are played. This is how Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, answered questions Tuesday about what golf might look like in the future. “I don’t want to make any statements or make any predictions.”Will LIV golfers go back to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour? Will PGA Tour players, many of whom spurned LIV and its huge paydays, receive compensation?

Persons: LIV, ” NewCo, Yasir al, Jay Monahan, Will LIV, ” Monahan Organizations: PGA, Public Investment Fund, LIV, PGA Tour

After two years of sniping, lawsuits and ill will, the major men’s golf tours agreed to merge on Tuesday. The PGA Tour, which runs golf in North America; the PGA European Tour, which is known as the DP World Tour and holds events in much of the rest of the world; and the upstart LIV Tour agreed to merge their operations. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which spent billions to launch the LIV Tour, will invest in the new company, and the governor of that fund will become its chairman. The LIV Tour started last year and offered big-name players from the other tours huge sums to jump ship. Many players and officials of the PGA Tour were sharply critical of LIV, both for dividing the golf world and for associating with the Saudi government and its poor human rights record.

Persons: Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, LIV, ” Organizations: PGA European, LIV, PGA Locations: North America, Saudi

PinnedThe PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the insurgent league bankrolled by billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said on Tuesday that they had agreed to a merger, ending a bitter and costly fight for supremacy of men’s professional golf that had divided top players, everyday fans and corporate sponsors. Now, by merging with the PGA Tour, it has gained a foothold that guarantees it outsize influence in the game’s future. The PIF also will have right of first refusal on new investments in the merged tour, according to the statement announcing the merger. “Going forward, PIF will have the exclusive right to further invest in the new entity, including a right of first refusal on any capital that may be invested in the new entity, including into the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and DP World Tour.” The PGA Tour will appoint a majority of the board, the statement said, and hold a majority voting interest in the combined entity. In a memorandum to PGA Tour players on Tuesday, Monahan said the wealth fund would have a minority position in the new for-profit company that will control men’s golf.

Persons: LIV Golf, bankrolling LIV, “, PIF, LIV, Jay Monahan, we’ve, LIV . Monahan, Yasir al, Monahan, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, LIV signees, Graeme McDowell, “ It’s, ” Organizations: PGA, Premier League soccer, Public Investment Fund, PGA Tour, ”, Public Investment, U.S Locations: Saudi, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

PITTSFORD, N.Y. — The Justice Department’s antitrust inquiry into men’s professional golf has included interviews with players, including the major tournament winners Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Sergio García, as the authorities examine whether the PGA Tour sought to manipulate the sport’s labor market. Although lawyers for the PGA Tour met with Justice Department officials in Washington this week, a timeline for the review’s completion — much less whether the government will try to force any changes in golf — is not clear. But the inquiry’s scope and persistence has deepened the turbulence in the sport, which has been grappling with the recent rise of LIV Golf, a league that used money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to lure top players away from the PGA Tour. Eight people with knowledge of the Justice Department’s inquiry described its breadth on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was pending. The department declined to comment.

rushed to embrace a lucrative line of business it had denounced for decades as bad for the sport. The league on Friday handed down some of the strictest penalties it has ever issued, banning three players for at least the 2023 season for betting on N.F.L. games and suspending two others for six games for other violations of the league’s betting policy. The scale of the latest scandal and the terse verdict from the league rekindles questions about the precarious line the N.F.L. This week’s investigation ended with two more Lions players, receivers Stanley Berryhill and Jameson Williams, suspended for six games for lesser gambling violations that did not include betting on N.F.L.

Public Investment Fund LIV Golf Trump World Performance54 LIV Golfers PLUS 45 OTHERS CONSULTANTS LAWYERS McKinsey & Company PwC Public Investment Fund Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan White & Case M. Klein & Company Teneo Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Majed al-Sorour Newcastle United Aramco Golf Saudi Benjamin Quayle Yasir al-Rumayyan Ari Fleischer Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LIV Golf Performance54 Trump World Greg Norman Donald J. Trump Gary Davidson Jed Moore Eric Trump Jared Kushner LIV Golfers Cameron Smith Phil Mickelson Dustin Johnson PLUS 45 OTHERSLIV Golf has cleaved men’s professional golf like no other force since the 1960s. Some of the world’s top players, including Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson, have become the faces of LIV Golf. The Public Investment FundDiagram of the major figures in LIV Golf that are connected to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Public Investment Fund Jared Kushner’s firm accepted a $2 billion investment from the Public Investment Fund. LIV Golf Trump World Eric Trump Jared Kushner Donald J. Trump Public Investment Fund Jared Kushner’s firm accepted a $2 billion investment from the Public Investment Fund.

☆ Inside the New York Times' heated union fight, where a potential strike looms and the biggest sticking point is pay
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Steven Perlberg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Will reporters at The New York Times really go on strike? The idea, unthinkable just a few months ago, is now on the lips of New York Times Guild members as the union's contract negotiations with management heat up. New York Times reporters have walked off the job before, like as part of a 1962-1963 citywide newspaper strike. But Robles said union members are upset that the Times' strong business footing has not translated into better pay. (The Times spokesperson countered that the paper was not seeing record profits).

☆ The possibility of a strike looms at The New York Times as its union battles management over wage hikes
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-27 | by ( Steven Perlberg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Will reporters at The New York Times really go on strike? The idea, unthinkable just a few months ago, is now on the lips of New York Times Guild members as the union's contract negotiations with management heat up. New York Times reporters have walked off the job before, like as part of a 1962-1963 citywide newspaper strike. The union at Wirecutter, the reviews site owned by the New York Times, walked off the job during the Black Friday shopping period last year, for instance. But Robles said union members are upset that the Times' strong business footing has not translated into better pay.

Search resuls for: "Kevin Draper"

22 mentions found