The PGA Tour Shamelessly Sells Out for Saudi Blood Money
After spending months insisting that the infusion of billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund would compromise the integrity of golf itself, the venerable PGA Tour reversed course and decided their ethics had a price tag after all.
As first reported by CNBC, LIV Golf, the upstart golf tour backed by an infusion of seemingly untold petrodollars used to lure away a slew of high-profile golfers, has merged with the PGA tour, thus putting an end to months of legal squabbling.
Now that everyone’s decided to play nice, the PGA can add its name to many of the leagues and sports federations that have rubber-stamped the Saudi Kingdom’s ongoing sports washing efforts: trying to obscure or at least distract from their decades-long history of human rights violations by putting athletes front and center and hoping they’ll be who fans associate with Saudi Arabia, and not all their documented atrocities.