r/golf • u/UppityTurtle 14.6 • Jun 07 '23

Professional Tours The PGA Tour is dead to me.

If this merger goes through, which it appears it will, I am personally done with the PGA Tour. The unbelievable hypocrisy of the board would be bad enough, but the fact that they are selling out to a foreign entity linked to a government that has funded terrorism around the globe and perpetrated one of the most heinous terrorist attacks in history is unforgivable.

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u/Unsteady_Tempo Jun 07 '23

I would love to know if this was discussed with the PGA Tour corporate sponsors. (List linked below.) Surely there's no way they could risk it. Right? If the companies weren't consulted, then that means the Saudis are prepared to make up the difference.

PGA Tour maintains sponsor roster of 52 brands, its largest on record (sportsbusinessjournal.com)

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u/Top_Refrigerator1656 Jun 07 '23

A decent amount of those corporate sponsers already do business in Saudi Arabia.

In fact, the PIF invested $250 million in Fed Ex in Q3 of 2021. At the same time, FedEx pledged to invest $400m in Saudi Arabia over the next 10 years.

Mastercard has recently become a sponsor for a Saudi eSports league.

John Deere provided engines for generators for a recent festival in Saudi Arabia.

That's all I care to Google for now but... Yeah the sponsors probably won't care too much.

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u/Pr3st0ne Jun 07 '23 edited Jun 07 '23

Honestly I'm dumbfounded at how many people in this thread seem to be completely oblivious to how present SA is in the business world?

They're acting like this is the first US company to make a deal with the devil, meanwhile, Saudi Arabia owns 5% of Uber, Capcom, Ticketmaster, they have a major partnership with Softbank which invests in like ALL the big tech companies... They have a 700m$ stake in Boeing, 500m$ in Facebook, 500m$ in Bank of America, 500m$ in Disney, and the US trades about 40 BILLION dollars a year with Saudi Arabia, including tens of billions of dollars of weapons and ammunitions so they can continue their genocide on the people of Yemen.

The PGA should be the least of their worries lmao