The PGA Tour/LIV Golf merger may not be a smooth drive down the fairway after all.
Though the two rival golf organizations stunningly announced their intention to combine forces in June, other potential big-money bidders for the PGA Tour are reportedly emerging.
Endeavor and Fenway Sports Group are “exploring” the idea of investing in the PGA Tour, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Endeavor, the Hollywood talent agency led by Ari Emanuel, controls TKO Group, the new holding company that includes UFC and WWE.
Fenway Sports Group, led by John Henry, owns the Red Sox and Liverpool FC, has invested in TMRW Sports, the group led by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy that plans to launch the virtual golf league, TGL.
Fenway also has a sports management arm that has worked on the PGA Tour’s Deutsche Bank Championship and signed a deal last month to work with the LPGA.
LIV Golf is backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and lured a number of high-profile golfers, including Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson, away from the PGA Tour with deals approaching and in some cases exceeding $100 million apiece.
“Throughout 2023, the PGA Tour has demonstrated its strength, reach and value as an enterprise. Our focus continues to be on finalizing an agreement with the Public Investment Fund and the DP World Tour, however, our negotiations have resulted in unsolicited interest from other investors,” a PGA spokesperson told Bloomberg in a statement.
Fenway and Endeavor declined to comment to the outlet.
The report broached the possibility of investors outbidding the PIF, or also investing alongside the sovereign wealth fund.
The news that LIV Golf and the PGA Tour planned to merge was a stunning reversal of public rhetoric.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan was asked last year by CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz if he had spoken to players about playing for the Saudi-backed LIV in conjunction with how a 9/11 survivors group would perceive it.
“I think you’d have to be living under a rock to not know that there are significant implications,” Monahan told Nantz. “And as it relates to the families of 9/11, I have two families that are close to me that lost loved ones, and so my heart goes out to them.
“I would ask any player that has left or any player that would ever consider leaving: Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”
After the merger, PGA Tour board member Jimmy Dunne, who lost 66 of his co-workers at investment bank Sandler O’Neill in the attacks, said he was confident that no one involved in the LIV deal was responsible for 9/11 and promised to “kill” anyone that he found out was “unequivocally was involved with it.”
A merger between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour faces potential regulatory hurdles.
In July, the U.S. Department of Justice told the PGA Tour that it planned to investigate the planned merger on antitrust grounds as the combined entity would have a monopoly with virtually no competition.