Tiger Woods wipes his driver grip on the 18th tee field through the first spherical of the PGA TOUR Champions PNC Championship at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club on December 17, 2022 in Orlando, Florida.
Ben Jared | PGA Tour | Getty Images
A coalition of U.S. sports activities buyers led by Fenway Sports Group have entered the final spherical of negotiations to change into co-investors in a possible deal between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, in accordance to an inside memo obtained by CNBC.
The Fenway-led consortium, named Strategic Sports Group, contains quite a lot of investor and personal fairness names like Celtics majority stake proprietor Wyc Grousbeck, Chicago Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts and Cohen Private Ventures, a enterprise capital agency of New York Mets proprietor Steve Cohen.
The investor checklist additionally contains, in accordance to the memo, Milwaukee Brewers proprietor Mark Attanasio, Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank, Liverpool Football Club proprietor John Henry and Boston Red Sox proprietor Tom Werner amongst others.
The memo famous that Strategic Sports Group had been chosen after a rigorous assessment of different outdoors investor gives. The PGA Tour had beforehand turned down a proposal from TKO majority proprietor Endeavor Group Holdings.
As it narrows down its investor pool, the PGA Tour mentioned it will goal to additional negotiations with the Saudi PIF in the approaching weeks.
The information comes as time is operating out for the PGA Tour to safe the long-awaited deal with the PIF, which owns the DP World Tour and LIV Golf. PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan beforehand mentioned that the events would goal to end the deal by Dec. 31.
The PGA Tour and the PIF agreed to the merger in June however have gone backwards and forwards on the precise deal phrases due partially to resistance from big-name PGA Tour gamers like Rory McIlroy. The deal additionally confronted probing from lawmakers who’re skeptical of Saudi Arabia’s intentions, claiming that the nation may be making an attempt to achieve affect in the U.S. through sports activities funding.
– CNBC’s Jessica Golden contributed to this report.