The golf world got its first look Monday at the framework agreement that the PGA Tour and DP World Tour struck with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) to reshape the world of men’s professional golf. The documents were obtained by No Laying Up shortly after being provided to Congress as part of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations inquiry into the pending deal.
The framework agreement can be read in its entirety here.
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Here are a few things to know about the agreement.
There weren’t really any bombshells hiding in the written agreement.
Interviews done by Jimmy Dunne and others, like this one in Sports Illustrated, seemed to cover almost all of what was put on paper in the framework agreement. If you’d like an in-depth read about what happened (along with some of our analysis), here’s a piece we wrote when the news broke.
Now, it's worth mentioning up front how scant the document is on specifics. This was mentioned over and over in interviews the past few weeks, however now we can see it spelled out. The leadership doesn't appear to be withholding any details, there just don't seem to be many details.
There are still a thousand unanswered questions about nearly every section of the framework, which was signed by Commissioners Jay Monahan and Keith Pelley, as well as PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan. But as far as what has been put on paper, the agreement doesn’t seem to contain a big smoking gun that wasn’t already mentioned in the media.
Everything that follows is operating under the assumption that this deal goes through. If not, the framework is torn up and "the parties can revert to operating their respective businesses in the state that existed pre-agreement in their discretion."
The parties agreed to some sort of discipline for players returning to the PGA Tour.
While there are no specifics included in the framework, the document does include language stating that the parties will work together “to establish a fair and objective process for any players who desire to re-apply for membership with the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour following the completion of the 2023 season… consistent with each Tour's disciplinary policies.”
A lot of people will probably focus on the Official World Golf Rankings line.
The wording in the framework agreement is: “The Parties will cooperate in good faith and use best efforts to secure OWGR recognition for LIV events and players under OWGR's criteria for considering LIV's pending application.”
As a refresher: A big hesitation for players who chose not to jump to LIV (and a big complaint of those who did), is the lack of OWGR points available at LIV events. These points are used to determine who qualifies for major championships and, for some players, are also used to determine sponsor incentive bonuses. The fear (rightly so) for many players was that if they don’t get new OWGR points, their world rankings would plummet and they would not be eligible for major championships, which is exactly what happened for some this year. (Reminder: The majors mostly make up the OWGR board and can change how they fill their fields any time they choose to do so. Feel free to read more about this whole mess here.)
So, is this line in the framework agreement deserving of a LIV victory lap? It’s possible, but smart money would be on a “not exactly” for a few reasons.
Besides the fact that the phrase “best efforts” feels far from a guarantee…
We still don’t know what’s going to happen to LIV Golf.
The framework agreement spells out that the three golf entities will continue to co-exist. Let’s look at the exact language:
“NewCo will undertake a full and objective empirical data-driven evaluation of LIV and its prospects and potential and will make a good faith assessment of the benefits of team golf in general, and PIF, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour will work together in an effort to determine how best to integrate team golf into PGA Tour and DP World Tour events going forward.”
In our opinion, this could be taken three ways. After the 2023 LIV Golf season:
• The NewCo will evaluate the P&L of LIV Golf – an entity that pays for TV coverage, costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year and brings in almost zero revenue – and decide to kill it and fold the players back into the PGA Tour/DP World Tour.
• The NewCo will decide that the team golf model – now with all of the world’s best players at its disposal – would unlock untold amounts of new revenue and serves as a better way to run men’s professional golf. This would require totally blowing up the existing Tour system and all of its infrastructure, including the billions of dollars in committed contractual revenue from title sponsors and media partners, which stretches into the next decade. This seems unlikely.
• Due to the P&L exercise above, the NewCo decides to shutter LIV Golf and comes up with a totally different team concept. Picture a mini team event series in the fall (which has been talked about in the past), a reviving of the World Cup of Golf (which has been dormant since 2018), which in the past has seen the likes of Gary Woodland and Matt Kuchar as the players willing to travel to represent the
Source: https://nolayingup.com/blog/pga-tour-pif-framework-agreement-liv