The PGA is looking for money from U.S. investors in case its merger with LIV Golf doesn’t get approved by its players or politicians.

In June, the two entities signed an agreement that would combine the PGA Tour’s and LIV Golf’s commercial businesses and rights into a new, yet-to-be-named for-profit company. The agreement includes DP World Tour, also known as the PGA European Tour. PGA players were furious over the deal, which is reminiscent of a shotgun wedding.

In June 9, 2022, the first LIV Golf event teed off outside of London. The new tour offered players larger prizes, more flexibility, and ambitions to attract new fans to the sport, including new 54-hole, shotgun start format, promised to be different. It even got a TV deal. Immediately following the official start of that tournament, the PGA Tour announced that all 17 PGA Tour players participating in the LIV Golf event were suspended and ineligible to compete in PGA Tour events.

Tensions between the two golf entities continued to rise, as more players defected to LIV, including Phil Mickelson. Eventually LIV Golf filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the PGA Tour of anticompetitive practices, and the Department of Justice launched an investigation. Then, in a dramatic turn of events, LIV Golf and the PGA Tour announced that they were merging.

Politicians are probing the merger because Liv Golf is financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and some view the deal as a takeover of an American institution by dirty, foreign money. In July the Senate Homeland Security Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a three-hour hearing on PGA Tour's planned merger with Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf. Senator. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chaired the panel, was most critical of the deal, repeatedly urging PGA Tour officials not to go through with it. Republicans, led by Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, were more supportive. If green lighted by politician, PGA tour players would still have to approve the merger.

Now the PGA is looking at taking on U.S, investors. Bloomberg reported yesterday that “High-profile US investors are being considered to help finance the PGA Tour’s transaction with Saudi-backed LIV Golf in an effort to ease political opposition to the deal.” The article said the interest from U.S. investors was unsolicited. But a U.S. investor with interests in a few sports teams tells Forbes that the PGA is seeking U.S. money in case the PGA players vote down the merger with LIV golf. “The PGA needs the money,” he said.

As I wrote a year ago, the PGA has behaved like a stale monopoly for many years. It has caused some of its players to grumble about a lack of financial disclosure, paid its executives too much and failed to deliver for its customers, who often don’t even know where their favorite golfers are going to play. In short, LIV golf exposed the PGA is an undervalued asset that could significantly more valuable if it were run properly.

Money, of course, is fungible and it will flow to an undervalued asset one way or another. As another person with multiple investments in top-tier sports teams told Forbes, “The Saudi’s use money in sports to clean their reputation. Now they need U.S. sports investors to clean up that investment.”