LIV Golf opposes Senate request for Greg Norman’s testimony on Saudi deal

The conference room on Capitol Hill is booked, the senators’ agendas have been wiped. But less than two weeks before a Senate subcommittee is set to hold a hearing on the PGA Tour’s planned partnership with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the panel’s ambitions for high-profile witnesses are meeting significant resistance.

There is almost no chance that the wealth fund governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, will voluntarily appear before Congress on July 11 or ever. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan is on medical leave. And LIV Golf, a Saudi Arabian-funded league, is hesitant to send Greg Norman, who won two British Opens in the decades before he became commissioner and lightning rod of the circuit, to the Senate’s permanent subcommittee for investigation.

The dispute over witnesses, just weeks after the panel’s examination of the deal, suggests the investigation could be turbulent. Lawmakers have been particularly frustrated by LIV’s offer to send Gary Davidson, the acting chief operating officer, to the hearing instead of Norman.

“We’ve asked Greg Norman for testimony, and unless there’s a reasonable explanation for his absence — which we haven’t gotten yet — Greg Norman is the one we expect to appear,” said Maria McElwain, Senator Richard’s communications director. Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, said in a statement.

LIV declined to comment Friday, but a person familiar with circuit thinking who asked for anonymity to discuss private negotiations with Congress said the league believed Davidson was more steeped in his day-to-day activities and the possible consequences of the deal. that has turned golf on its head since its announcement on June 6. Norman and Davidson were not involved in the secret talks that led to the deal.

Under the intended structure a five-page framework agreement signed behind closed doors on May 30, the business activities of the PGA Tour, LIV and the European Tour known as the DP World Tour – such as television rights and sponsorships – would be merged into a new for-profit company. The plan calls for the PGA Tour to control a majority of board seats, for Monahan to become the company’s CEO, and for the tour to retain control of many professional golf tournaments.

But Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund would have extensive investment rights, and al-Rumayyan is positioned to become the company’s chairman, assuring the Saudis significant clout in men’s professional golf if the deal closes.

The planned venture has sparked weeks of scorn and skepticism in Washington, where lawmakers are furious about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, much as the tour did before it appeared to do business with the wealth fund. Some lawmakers have threatened to strip the tour of its tax-exempt status, and Justice Department antitrust regulators could spend months investigating the deal before deciding whether to try to block it.

And building on the congressional pastime of publicly harassing sports executives over issues like steroids and college athlete rights, the senate quickly scheduled a hearing to examine the deal, though the most substantial details, such as asset valuation, may not months to be resolved.

However, in letters last week, Blumenthal and Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin senator who is the senior Republican on the subcommittee, invited Norman, Monahan and al-Rumayyan to appear and be willing to review “the circumstances and terms” of the agreement. discuss. as well as “the expected role” of the wealth fund in professional golf in the United States.

The senators, who have not subpoenaed executives, had hoped to solidify the witness list by the middle of this week, but on Friday their panel was still negotiating with the tour, the wealth fund and LIV.

The hearing, if it takes place, will be one of the most important opportunities yet for golf managers to allay concerns about the planned transaction. But the proceedings, like any Congressional performance, carry risks. A single misstep could amplify the public firestorm or, perhaps more alarmingly for the deal’s supporters, prompt government officials to take an even closer look at the pact. (For example, antitrust experts have predicted that Monahan’s claim on June 6 that the deal will “take the competitor off the board” will intensify the Justice Department’s investigation.)

Norman in particular has a history of criticism. For example, last year he downplayed Saudi responsibility for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by saying, “Look, we’ve all made mistakes.” He has made relatively few public comments in recent months, and he and his representatives have declined interview requests from The New York Times.

But when Blumenthal and Johnson wrote to him on June 21, they said the subcommittee “respectfully requests that you appear in person to testify.” LIV executives said Norman would be traveling abroad at the time, and they privately objected to the commissioner being subjected to a congressional investigation without his PGA Tour counterpart undergoing the same investigation, which seems likely given Monahan’s medical leave.

Monahan’s indefinite absence has complicated the tour’s representation at the hearing. The two executives assigned to run the tour on an interim basis, Tyler Dennis and Ron Price, were not involved in the deal talks.

Al-Rumayyan, however, was. But his appearance on Capitol Hill was never considered likely. As one of Saudi Arabia’s most influential figures, he rarely gives interviews outside of tightly controlled environments, and lawyers representing him and the Saudi government waged an aggressive fight to avoid impeachment in golf-related lawsuits in the United States. (The lawsuit was dropped as part of the tentative deal — one of the few binding components of the framework agreement — and al-Rumayyan never gave sworn testimony.)

The wealth fund declined to comment Friday. The tour said in a statement that it was “cooperating with the subcommittee’s requests for information and having productive discussions with them about who will represent the PGA Tour on July 11.”

It added: “We look forward to answering their questions about the framework agreement that will ensure the PGA Tour continues to lead the future of professional golf and benefit our players, our fans and our sport.”

The wealth fund and tour deploy armies of lobbyists, lawyers and political fixers to try and smooth the path of the deal. Before going on leave to recuperate from a “medical situation” the tour failed to detail, Monahan wrote to lawmakers defending the agreement. He also complained that Congress had not given the tour enough support to resist a Saudi “attempt to take over the game of golf in the United States,” as he put it.

“We were largely left to fend off the attacks, ostensibly due to the complex geopolitical alliance of the United States with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Monahan said. wrote.

It’s not clear if the Senate panel will step up its efforts to obtain testimony from Norman or any of the other witnesses they’ve requested, especially ahead of the July 11 hearing. Most lawmakers are away from Washington for the Senate Independence Day recess, with few expected to return to Capitol Hill until the week of the hearing.

However, the current timing of the hearing may be coincidental for wave leaders. Public attention will turn to the British Open next week, to be played at Royal Liverpool. Cameron Smith, who joined LIV not long after his victory at the Old Course in St Andrews last July, will be looking to defend his title in the last major golf tournament of the year.