Recently, Jon Rahm, the current world No. 3 golfer, announced his switch to LIV golf.
LIV Golf was founded in 2021 by LIV Golf Investments, led by Australian golfer Greg Norman, who held the World Golf Rankings for 331 consecutive weeks. LIV's shareholder is one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF). It is reported that Jon Rahm's contract amount is more than 300 million US dollars, and he is expected to surpass all world sports superstars in one fell swoop, including Ronaldo, Messi, Mbappe, LeBron and other high-income celebrities, to become the highest-paid athlete in the year.
Since LIV's inception, PIF has taken a monetary approach. Over the past two seasons, the Saudi Public Investment Fund has spent more than $3 billion to fund the LIV Golf League. Former world No. 1 Dustin Johnson, six-time major champion Phil Mickelson and new world champion Cameron Smith have all announced their arrival at LIV. A large number of players have been poached, and the traditional giants of golf, PGA and LIV, have been brought to the fore.
Rahm has been the face of the PGA in recent years, winning 11 tournaments on the PGA Tour and earning more than $51.5 million in tournament prize money. Last season, he won four tournaments with a prize fund of about $16.5 million. Rahm won his second major at the PGA Masters in April and has been expressing his dislike of the LIV format for more than a year, claiming that he remains loyal to the PGA because it has produced legends like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods. All the signs, combined with his thick eyebrows and big eyes, have always made people think that Rahm will be completely committed to the PGA Tour...
But in the end, the Saudis played to their strengths, and the 29-year-old Spaniard couldn't resist the temptation of a contract worth more than $300 million, which is also reportedly to include partial ownership of Lahm's new LIV golf team (LIV has individual and team competitions), and LIV is recruiting other PGA Tour players to join Lahm's team.
In fact, the deep-pocketed LIV once offered a sky-high price of $800 million to sign golf legend Tiger Woods, but in the end it failed to materialize. In order to counter the sudden rise of LIV, the PGA has made a decision to ban a number of players who have joined LIV events. PGA President Jay Monaghan has publicly stated: "Golfers who participate in LIV will be disqualified from the PGA TOUR and they will no longer be able to participate in the PGA Tour." ”
But in June of this year, things took a turn for the worse. Saudi Arabia has announced that it will inject billions of dollars into the world's largest professional golf organization to complete the merger between LIV and PGA. Under the agreement, PIF's golf-related commercial business and rights, including LIV, will be merged with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour commercial business and rights into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity. So far, there has been no breakthrough in this merger. However, according to ESPN, December 31 will become the deadline for the two sides to discuss cooperation. And Ram's "job hopping" may have a big impact on the final result.
After the announcement, Rahm said he hopes that one day golfers can play on multiple tours without having to choose sides: "I sincerely hope that in the future we can continue to work hard to make decisions that make golf better." That's where I stand. My position is to play golf. It's something I've been doing since the beginning, playing golf at the best level. ”
Saudi Arabia has become an active participant in international sports events, from spending huge sums of money to buy football clubs, to successfully bidding to host multi-sport events such as the 2029 Winter Asian Games and the 2034 Asian Games, to hosting top-level events in single sports such as F1 and golf, and even planning to host the Esports World Cup.
Since 2021, Saudi Arabia's public investment fund has spent more than US$6.3 billion (about 44 billion yuan) on sports stars and events, covering football, golf, F1, tennis, wrestling, boxing, cricket, horse racing, esports and other fields.
If you add in the investment in sports of Saudi Aramco, the sovereign oil giant of Saudi Arabia, which is also the "national team", Saudi Arabia has so far spent at least $10 billion on major sports such as football and tennis.
In December this year, the 2023 FIFA Club World Cup (Club World Cup) will be hosted by Saudi Arabia, and the hosting rights of the 2034 World Cup are already in Saudi Arabia's pocket. The traditional Middle East's oil-producing powerhouse is spending money on its Vision 2030, which aims to diversify its economy away from oil dependence.