Professional golf at a crossroads: what next for the PGA Tour & LIV Golf?

It’s been a year since the shocking announcement in June 2023 that the PGA Tour^[1] and LIV Golf^[2] had settled their antitrust litigation^[3] and, with the DP World Tour (the European Tour), had entered a Framework Agreement to create a “global golf partnership.”^[4]  Yet, unification still eludes the sport as negotiations toward a definitive agreement drag on and government concern about the consolidation has surfaced at both the U.S. Senate^[5] and the U.S. Department of Justice^[6] (DOJ).

Meanwhile, LIV Golf’s owner — the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund^[7] (PIF) — continues to pour its wealth into LIV while the PGA Tour strives^[8] to (1) generate revenue to compete with LIV and (2) empower and enrich its golfers sufficiently to keep them loyal.  This article examines how professional golf has evolved during this tentative truce, the legal shoals it still must navigate, and the prospects for the proposed PGA Tour-LIV Golf alliance:

• Breaking down the Framework Agreement
• Government concerns about the proposed partnership
• Negotiating a definitive agreement between the Tour and the PIF
• Moving forward: PGA Tour internal governance and product model
• If no deal, what next?