Paul Lewis: Saudi merger with PGA Tour far exceeds sportswashing

Rory McIlroy says he feels like a "sacrificial lamb" after the PGA Tour-Saudi merger. Photo / AP

OPINION:

If I was Rory McIlroy, I’d be sending the PGA Tour an invoice – for about US$100 million, $50m for consultancy and front man fees; $25m for loss of form, reputation and friendships; and $25m for work undone by the Tour saying one thing and doing another.

McIlroy is the biggest casualty of the Tour’s flabbergasting volte-face on the merger with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which owns the rebel tour LIV Golf. Odious dangers to the sport of golf one minute; bosom buddies the next. It’s an embarrassing capitulation by the PGA to the mighty dollars of the Saudis. As Groucho Marx used to say: “These are my principles. And if you don’t like ‘em…I have others.”

McIlroy, the key players’ spokesman who defended the PGA and criticised LIV, was collateral damage. His form faded, at least partly due to the time spent on, and stress of, fronting the PGA resistance to LIV. He clashed with long-time friends who’d defected.

Now LIV golfers are seemingly able to rejoin the Tour, rewarded for taking the money and running (taking up to $325m for joining) while loyalists defended the status quo – and got nothing. To have his legs metaphorically chopped off like that must be galling. It speaks volumes for McIlroy’s resilience that he was able to say in one breath that he was a “sacrificial lamb” and in the next that the PGA-LIV merger will, in time, be good for golf. Maybe – but the world of sport has never seen such an abject surrender to the power of politicised money.

What the Saudis are doing far exceeds sportswashing or wallpapering over a human rights record which includes the much-denied murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Executions continue – 81 in one day last year, including what watchdogs claim were members of the minority Shiite Muslims, a warning against dissent.

Sport is only a part of the Saudis’ pro-active steps to address the day when oil no longer drives their wealth. Sportswashing means hosting events, attracting big names and buying big stakes in beloved sports – like owning English football’s Newcastle United. It’s all about laying a smooth path for big revenue earners like tourism.

Things don’t stop there. The Saudi PIF is worth about $1.05 trillion (New Zealand’s entire GDP is worth $634 billion). According to CNN, investment is also being channelled into video game and technology companies as Saudi Arabia attempts to rival Silicon Valley as a tech hub. It has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Live Nation, the concert promoter and owner of Ticketmaster, cruise operator Carnival Corp, Uber and Zoom.

Conspiracy theorists could have a field day with all that as the Saudis aim their petro-dollars at American business – like their $3.25 billion backing of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. The Washington Post has reported that the PIF invested about $3.25 billion into a private equity firm created by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law. While CNN said it was unable to confirm that report, some LIV golf tournaments had been held at Trump-owned golf courses.

The Saudis also own 60 per cent of US luxury electric car maker Lucid, worth about $13 billion, an investment paving the way for an EV factory in the kingdom; it wants to become a hub for new age car makers as it steers its economy away from oil.

There’s the irony. The oil kings feel their grasp on wealth slipping as global warming and climate change disrupt the old order. But there’s no evidence that their billion-dollar embrace of the new ways is for the good of the planet; it’s for the good of Saudi Arabia.

Imagine what might be achieved if the Saudis directed some, most or even all of the $1.05 trillion to help the battle against climate change – and not just set itself up as an EV hub and owners of Newcastle United. How kindly would the world look on them then?

Of course, their position as the world’s most powerful oil and gas entity predicates against that; even the Saudis couldn’t deal oil with one hand and push planet health on the other. So here they are, carving out a new platform for themselves in this warming world. It’s no wonder so many advocates of measures to blunt climate change also have to battle climate fatigue – a sense of apathy and hopelessness as they wonder what China and India and, yes, the US are doing about it. Self-interest rules; sport is just one card in the Saudi deck.

Some reports have it that the Saudis initiated the merger with the PGA because of the reciprocal lawsuits. The prospect of some of the kingdom’s leaders being questioned on the witness stand may have been a key element in the sudden rapprochement. Take our money – don’t question our practices.

Sports fans don’t mind in the slightest that pro sportspeople earn lots of money. It’s part of the fascination. But sport has never before been such a sock puppet of a regime trying to rebuild its place in the world, financing it with the fossil-fuelled rewards that helped get the world in a hot place in the first place.