PGA Tour Probes Relationship Between PIF and LIV Golf in Latest Courtroom Back-and-Forth

The PGA Tour is concerned that the PIF’s control over LIV Golf is more extensive than they’d let on, and in a recent hearing pushed for the January 2024 trial to be delayed to allow for further discovery.

LIV Golf and the PGA Tour are still at logger heads on discovery and the Tour is pushing for the man they believe is the puppeteer for LIV Golf to fess up.

The Tour contends that the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its Governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, essentially control LIV Golf, as outlined in a Subscription and Shareholders’ Agreement signed on Oct. 7, 2021. This document was supplied to the Tour as part of discovery on Dec. 21, 2022, more than a month after the deadline for completion of document production.

The agreement, according to the Tour in court documents filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, contradicts previous characterization by LIV Golf that they are in control.

Yasir Al-Rumayyan at the LIV season final at Trump National Doral last fall / USA Today

“This belatedly produced, critical document establishes that PIF and Mr. Al-Rumayyan misstated their central role in running LIV and making decisions related to this lawsuit, the Tour claimed in its filing on Tuesday. “And they strategically withheld the document that revels PIF’s extensive control over LIV until after the briefing was complete.”

The extent of the alleged control is unknown, as most mentions of the Shareholders’ Agreement in the PGA Tour’s Supplemental Memorandum in Support of its Motion to Compel were redacted.

But in previous court documents, the PGA Tour, according to an earlier motion, argued that Al-Rumayyan functions as LIV’s chief executive, meeting regularly with LIV CEO Greg Norman, approving LIV’s budget, making key strategic decisions, participating in player recruitment in the U.S., and micro-managing LIV’s day-to-day operations.

“PIF and Mr. Al-Rumayyan are central figures,” the PGA Tour stated in an earlier court filing. “They are the wizards behind the curtain: they call the shots, they approve the expenditures, and they supply the money.”

The Tour in its filing on Tuesday argued that the truth of these statements about PIF’s control of LIV support some of the Tour defenses in the anti-trust case, and the Tour’s tortious interference counterclaims.

In a hearing on Dec. 16, the Tour said it is so concerned about the withholding of documents regarding the PIF’s and Al-Rumayyan’s control over LIV, they asked for the court to consider changing the schedule that ultimately leads to a trial on Jan. 8, 2024. The Tour wants to fully flesh out the LIV/PIF control issue.

Such a schedule change could affect when the case would eventually go to trial.

“I don’t want to do this, I’m not even saying I would agree to it,” Judge Beth Labson Freemen said in the Dec. 16 hearing. “I just want to generally say that I could move the trial to April of ’24, but it’s not something I particularly want to do.”