The PGA Tour provided progress updates, without providing details, on face-to-face talks between the tour’s negotiating committee and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as they work to reach an agreement.
“We want to do this right and are approaching these discussions with careful consideration of our players, fans, partners and the future of the game,” the tour said in a statement on Saturday morning.
The meeting in New York on Friday evening included a “transaction committee” for PGA Tour Enterprises and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, head of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund that funds rival LIV Golf.
Committee member Rory McIlroy said he was encouraged by the progress, describing the three-hour meeting as “very productive, very constructive, very collaborative.”
“Things are definitely heading in a good direction,” McIlroy said via video call after the third round of the Memorial. “We’ve made some great progress. I can’t say much more than that, but it’s really positive.”
PGA Tour Enterprises is the commercial group that emerged from a framework agreement announced a year ago between the PGA Tour, PIF and the European Tour.
PGA Tour Enterprises has hired Strategic Sports Group, which invested $1.5 billion in it earlier this year.
Negotiations to bring in PIF as a minority shareholder are underway and are proving to be more active than previously thought.
McIlroy, who sits on the deal committee with Tiger Woods and Adam Scott, said he has been meeting with representatives from the PIF every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in recent weeks. The tour has said negotiations have “accelerated” in recent months.
Friday’s meeting was the first face-to-face discussions since players and board members met with Al-Rumayyan in the Bahamas the day after the Players Championship in March.
The tour said the committee and PIF “have been meeting multiple times per week to consider potential terms of an agreement and reach a shared vision for the future of professional golf,” adding only that “further progress has been made” in New York.
“We remain committed to these negotiations, which require us to address complex considerations to best position golf for global growth,” the tour said.
McIlroy said the meetings focused on financial matters, including potential investments by PIF and SSG.
“But I think there was a lot of talk last night about the future and vision of the game and I think there’s been some great strides made there,” he said.
Woods and Scott serve on the PGA Tour Enterprises board of directors, along with player directors Jordan Spieth, Webb Simpson, Patrick Cantlay and Peter Malnati.
McIlroy resigned from the PGA Tour’s board of directors in November and Simpson tried unsuccessfully to appoint him as his successor.
McIlroy, who has been the most vocal voice in pivoting from fierce criticism of LIV to a stance in favor of compromise, sits on the transaction committee and ultimately has no voting power.
But he has relationships on both sides, and McIlroy has said he’s more open to listening as business leaders — namely Al Rumayyan of the PIF, the PGA Tour’s corporate committee that includes the four SSG investors — and his team sort out the details.
“We’re here to offer our opinions from a players’ perspective,” McIlroy said Thursday, “but this is a negotiation about an investment in PGA Tour Enterprises. This is ‘adult’ stuff. I’ll be doing more listening than talking.”
He said Saturday that he weighed himself from time to time.
“The mute button was turned off a few times to speak,” he said.
