In a significant legal move, the PGA Tour is pivoting the focus of its countersuit against LIV Golf to the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan. According to court documents filed Tuesday, the Tour is moving to add Al-Rumayyan and the PIF itself as counter-defendants in the case.
Why? The Tour argues that instead of LIV Golf and Greg Norman having autonomy, it’s Al-Rumayyan and the PIF that have ultimate power over LIV’s business, inclusive of recruiting players, approving contracts, determining payout structures and even promising to indemnify them from financial responsibility in lawsuits. (LIV Golf is a subsidiary of LIV Golf Investments, which is funded entirely by the PIF, which owns 93% of LIV.)
All of these alleged actions, the Tour argues, are tortuous interference of the contracts the defecting players signed with the PGA Tour, as well as the contracts between the Tour and players who stayed (but LIV actively recruited).
The lawsuit at hand is a countersuit waged by the PGA Tour against LIV Golf in response to a separate antitrust suit LIV filed against the Tour for anticompetitive practices. In short, everyone is suing everyone and we’ve reached the point where other industry leaders are being pulled into it. (On Monday, both sides filed a joint statement on whether or not LIV can gain access to communications between PGA Tour policy board directors and dozens of Augusta National members.)
As for this suit, the main point remains: The PGA Tour believes that Norman is simply an acting CEO and must retain approval for all meaningful decisions from Al-Rumayyan and the PIF. “It is Al-Rumayyan who functions as LIV’s chief executive,” the Tour alleges, adding that LIV’s leadership understands Al-Rumayyan to be “de facto CEO,” and that Al-Rumayyan micromanages “LIV’s day-to-day operations both while in the United State and abroad.”
“And even once contracts are signed and debts accrued,” the Tour alleges, “PIF holds the purse strings: none of LIV’s partners or golfers gets paid until PIF and Mr. Al-Rumayyan agree to distribute the money.”
The Tour has recently worked hard to subpoena Al-Rumayyan and the PIF for various documents about its actions toward players and agents in its efforts to get a golf league off the ground. Al-Rumayyan’s text messages and emails — with the likes of Bryson DeChambeau and sports agent Casey Wasserman, among others — were included in the Tour’s presentation during a discovery hearing on Jan. 13. Presumably, those documents were acquired via discovery with players and agents, not Al-Rumayyan himself, who has evaded the discovery process to this point. Also presented during the three-hour hearing was a key document referred to as the Shareholders’ Agreement.
The agreement, as it has been shared with the Tour, was signed by Al-Rumayyan. In it, the Tour states, the PIF is “required to approve” the reported nine-figure contracts signed by the likes of DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson. During the Jan. 13 hearing LIV argued that the Tour was misinterpreting the agreement, but what’s clear is the Tour has quickly doubled down on what it believes to be the truth.
