I told all of you! Anatomy of a failed deal On August 1. 2023 less than two months after the framework agreement between the Saudi Arabian PIF and the PGA Tour, the PGA Tour announced the arrival of Tiger Woods to the Policy Board for the first time since he became a Tour member in 1996 (27 years). What the Tour didn’t inform us until recently is that Tiger Woods was named the “Lead Player Director” and that unlike any other Player Director on the board he has no end of service term. We also did not know at the time the real reason for Tiger Woods getting involved. Was it related to payday (contract, equity in league, etc.) to protect his ego or both? At the Tour Championship on August 22 the BBC reported: “PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan is confident the proposed deal with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund will be completed before the end of the year. There's an intensity and an urgency [to complete the deal]. “There's a lot of good work being done," said Monahan. "If you saw the amount of conversation and time that the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF are spending working forward from a framework to a definitive agreement, I think would you see the sincerity of the efforts there.” Why was he worried about a sincerity appearance in the deal so early? So, what happened, why a deal was not reached before the deadline if they were working so hard on it? Was Jay Monahan lying to the press? Once Tiger Woods joined the Tour board, we knew something was up and it did not take long for changes to happen. Tiger Woods and Patrick Cantlay at first (then Jordan Spieth joined them) were running the show along with Player Advisor Colin Neville and of course Tiger’s agent Mark Steinberg was advising him too. On September 27 Bloomberg reported that the Tour was considering US investors to help finance the Tour’s transaction with the PIF “in an effort to ease political opposition to the deal”. They also reported that the Tour received UNSOLICITED INTEREST from those investors. On September 28 this account posted that the political excuse to bring private equity investors to the deal was “total BS” and the real reason was to dilute the PIF investment (Dilute PIF presence and control in NewCo.). The DOJ Antitrust Division can intervene if there are antitrust issues even if a deal is made with a US investor. So, why worry so early and before getting a deal done that the DOJ and the US Senate can revise? After deciding they were going the private equity way with a US investor, the game of which one to pick started. A total joke, since we all knew that SSG (Fenway Sports Group) was going to be the chosen one because Jay Monahan used to work for Fenway Sports Group and that group are partners of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in the TGL, their golf simulator league. Those two members of the board had obvious conflicts of interest! On December 10 the PGA Tour made the announcement that they chose SSG. While all this was going on, the PGA Tour, Jay Monahan and even Tiger Woods at his tournament in the Bahamas continued to tell us that the framework agreement with the PIF was still going to get done by December 31. On the night of December 31, the PGA Tour announced in a carefully worded memo: “we are working to extend our negotiations into next year…” No formal confirmation that negotiations were officially extended were given and much less a document produced even though at the time of the framework agreement the document was made public. To this day there has been no press release from the PIF acknowledging an official extension of the framework agreement. On that same night this account posted the following comment in another X account thread: “I’ll tell you a secret, they want to convince SSG to sign a deal with them before they sign any deal with PIF. Once they get SSG 3.5 billion they will do everything to not reach a deal with PIF…” (shout-out to the three sources at PGA Tour HQ). If there is no official extension of the framework agreement then legally that contract is finished, its term has ended, and its parties are no longer bound by the terms of that contract. Thus, opening the door for the PGA Tour to do a deal with whomever they please. Now you know why they kept delaying the deal. The PGA Tour intentions were clear and bold, no deal with the PIF or at least no deal until after we sign a deal with SSG. Yesterday in the afternoon Golf Channel reported that the PGA Tour had reached a deal with SSG for 1.5 billion dollars with another amount dependent on contingencies. The PGA Tour reached a deal with SSG who they say was selected on December 10 in just 51 days. But the PGA Tour couldn’t reach a deal in 10 months with the PIF with whom they have “supposedly” been negotiating since April of 2023 and already had a framework agreement outlining the work, simply not credible! In that deal with SSG the players will get equity in the newly formed enterprise in the form of grants with the top players getting a bigger amount of equity based on career accomplishments, etc. Who are the top players in that category? Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. Yes, they both will get the payday they were looking for and will be the bigger equity owners among the players. A bonus at least for Tiger Woods ego is the fact that they stopped the deal from happening. The Tour in their announcement said: “The transaction announced today allows for a co-investment from the Public Investment Fund (PIF) in the future (who knows when is that?), subject to all necessary regulatory approvals.” As the PGA Tour intended, the PIF would need to co-invest now with less seats on the board available, less equity percentage available, less control and most likely without Yasir Al Rumayyan as the chairman of that newly created business as was detailed in the framework agreement. What can the PGA Tour offer now to the Governor of the PIF to soften that blow? Apart from a resemblance of the original framework agreement, NOTHING. On top of that, the PGA Tour has said in every news release that any deal would be subject to regulatory approvals and reviews. From whom, the government? Coincidentally this past Monday a “friend” of the Tour, US Senator Blumenthal who opened an inquiry into the matter just days after the framework agreement, sent a letter to Yasir Al Rumayyan asking for documents from PIF consulting firms. The Tour will do everything possible to avoid making a deal with the PIF and that includes using their lobbyists to influence the US Department of Justice too. The PGA Tour never wanted this deal, they just wanted as they have openly said to get rid of the court legal proceedings and I find it hard to believe that the PIF still wants to make a deal, hopefully I’m wrong and sometime soon golf can be united again. Today was another step back in that department because of egos. Sadly, Golf is still at war and the fans are the bigger losers in all of this. I guess is time for Yasir to implement Plan B. The Video below is just a preview of what's to come.