0:05

Be the right club,

0:07

be the right club today. Yeah. Johnny,

0:10

that's better than most. How about him? That

0:12

is better than most. Better than most. Expect

0:14

anything different. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show.

0:16

Brought to you by the public investment fund of

0:19

Saudi Arabia.

0:28

And

0:35

there's a drive in a deep left field by Casiano.

0:37

So that's a home run and that'll make it a four

0:39

Oh ball game. Solly here. Pie

0:42

man is here. Hello. Hello. What

0:45

a heck of a day.

0:46

TC is here. Hello, TC. Hello.

0:49

Can you guys explain to my wife tonight that why

0:52

we're why our anniversary dinner is being postponed?

0:56

I believe you could blame Mr. Monahan for that. And I believe you'll

0:58

find a way to do that before tonight's show is over. Neil

1:00

Schuster is here. Hello, Neil. Oh,

1:02

good being with you. It was a thrill watching TC

1:04

work the phones, fucking phones. I

1:07

need phones, baby. TC

1:09

had two phones on his ear all day just with

1:11

just with his sources. Unbelievable. Our

1:14

resident journalist was all over the telly today

1:16

doing some big J journalism. Kevin Van Valkenburg

1:18

is here.

1:19

Hello, KVV. Hi, Solly. I've

1:21

never gotten to go on tour. So I'm so excited. The

1:23

first one I get to go on might be a Neom. So thank

1:25

you for that. For the record, this show is presented

1:28

by our friends at high noon. As you all know, the

1:30

moment everyone has been waiting for the high noon pool

1:32

pack is back. You can grab a case, text

1:34

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2:05

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calling. Listen, Matt. Boom, solid.

3:16

That was smooth. That was a smooth transition,

3:19

baby. You ready to talk Ludwig? Well, I

3:21

was going to say, until the pips

3:23

wants to sponsor us, we got to run a lot of ads on this

3:25

show, guys. I'm sorry. We are the new PGA Tour

3:27

here. DJ, what do you got for us? Well,

3:29

we also had to work today. So, you know,

3:32

someone's got to pay when we actually have to work. I

3:34

feel like it was a true,

3:37

I went to the coffee shop this morning, minding

3:38

my own business, had just, I'd say, four

3:41

things on my to-do list today. It was going

3:43

to be a really easy day. It was,

3:45

Neil, you know that scene in The Usual

3:47

Suspects when our guy, he takes

3:49

a sip of coffee and he realizes the Kaiser-Sosé thing,

3:51

he drops it on the floor and just shivers everywhere? Barbershop

3:54

quartet. Are you freaking kidding

3:56

me? That was essentially me today. I'm

3:58

just like phone melting. out

4:00

of my hand, just unbelievable,

4:03

like

4:04

very surreal day. I thought I was having a stroke. I'm

4:06

not sure about you guys. I thought I was getting punked. I

4:08

thought it was, that's a fake account. Like that's a fake

4:10

account. CNBC. For sure. AI

4:12

has gone too far. I saw this in a Slack note

4:15

around like 10. He was like, Hey guys,

4:17

I'm going to a doctor's appointment. Somebody

4:19

told me there's a big news from the DP world

4:22

tour. And I kind of

4:23

in my head did the Michael Keaton wanking Jeff

4:25

like only a big new year. Okay. Okay.

4:29

And then it's

4:31

just, you know,

4:32

things started to blow up. I think there's

4:34

some, our doctor is probably sending somebody a

4:37

child protective services, a message of like, this dude

4:39

came to an appointment today and didn't pay

4:41

any attention to any of the stuff about the birth of his child. It's

4:43

about to happen here in a few weeks. So best

4:45

tweet up. Maybe the day the max mayor said, uh,

4:48

live golf just pulled off the Michael Scott paper company

4:50

in real life. I don't know. As someone who doesn't watch

4:52

the wire. What, what does that mean? That's from the

4:55

office. Sorry. Or the office. I did

4:57

watch the wire. So in Dunder Mifflin paper

4:59

company, Michael Scott quit it and was running

5:01

a business that was just the Michael Scott

5:03

paper company. It was just as basically to sabotage

5:06

Dunder Mifflin. They were undercutting their clients, basically

5:08

giving away paper for free. And it was killing

5:10

Dunder Mifflin, but they had no room to run. The

5:12

company was going to run out of money. And they just

5:14

like came back to the negotiating table and like called

5:17

the bluff of the other company and they bought

5:19

them out and it's, it's not perfect

5:21

analogy, but it was really, really good. Uh, and I

5:23

greatly enjoyed

5:23

that one today. It wasn't funny how much easier

5:26

to understand today was because I've been watching so

5:28

much succession. It's totally agree. I totally,

5:30

totally agree. I was like, Oh, okay. This makes sense. I've seen

5:32

this one before. I what they're doing. Yeah.

5:35

This makes total sense. I'm wondering if the people

5:37

involved in this have been watching too much succession and

5:39

we're like, we got to do it. We got to do a deal like this guys. We

5:41

got to do some. Yeah. Not

5:44

a merger. It's not a merger guys. Can

5:46

we start there TC? Let's start there. Let's

5:48

let's start there. So we're going to just run bear with

5:50

me just for a second. I'm trying to bullet point this out. I'm

5:52

probably going to stumble. I'm probably

5:53

going to trip all over the place, but let me just

5:56

kind of a true like, what do we know?

5:58

And when did we know it situation?

5:59

This comes from truly

6:02

like from the moment I dropped my coffee on the ground

6:04

until right now. I think we've been on the phone the whole

6:06

time, calling, texting,

6:08

whatever with anybody who will kind

6:10

of pick up the phone and feel like we're in a pretty good

6:12

spot. And so kind of here's what we know.

6:15

First of all, TC, you said merger.

6:18

CNBC said merger. Golf Channel said merger

6:20

all day. I said not a merger. You're right. You're right.

6:22

I'm sorry. Let me correct the record there. I apologize.

6:25

You're not the merger. I

6:28

don't think this is a merger. I think that was the big thing

6:30

that like as soon as that was

6:32

the first red flag that went off for me. That's what blew

6:34

my mind. It was like, no way. Why? It's

6:37

not gas. It's not gas. And

6:40

so I think the reason to point

6:42

that out is merger. Maybe this is just me,

6:44

but that really infers like a 50 50 like

6:47

your skills plus

6:48

my skills coming together. We

6:50

can really dominate what I think this was

6:52

instead is kind of a live

6:55

bots are not going to like this kind of a snuffing out

6:57

of of live. I think that the

7:00

PIF wanted to see it at the table for a really long time.

7:02

They wanted a way into the ecosystem of golf.

7:05

They started live kind of as like a Trojan

7:07

horse way to do that. And that's what they ended up

7:09

getting today. But what I conjecture

7:11

it's it's a new entity. It is. It's

7:13

a new entity. So what's going to really end up happening

7:16

is that the PGA tour is splitting into two entities. You're

7:18

keeping the classic 501 C six, which

7:21

sounds like it's going to be kind of merger,

7:23

but louder is really good. 501 C

7:25

six is going to remain intact, which is going

7:27

to handle kind of all the boring stuff. I

7:29

think tour

7:29

operations, retirement plans,

7:32

administrative stuff, things like that. And

7:34

then we're also going to be starting a new

7:37

for profit entity. Let's refer

7:39

to that as new Co as the PGA

7:41

tour likes the hundreds, the hundred.

7:43

Well, actually, let's refer to that as the hundred. Sorry

7:46

if you don't watch succession. So what's going to

7:48

happen with the hundred, Neil? Here's what's going to happen. The

7:50

PGA tour is going to put all of its commercial

7:53

business interests into the hundred. The

7:56

DP world tour is going to put all of its commercial

7:58

interests into the hundred.

7:59

Golf Saudi, the PIF

8:02

is going to put all of its commercial interests into

8:04

the hundred. Of which include live? Which

8:07

includes live, which probably includes

8:09

the Meena tour, the Asian tour,

8:12

the Meena tour, all that big

8:14

investment in Asian golf. The Meena Sing

8:16

What tour?

8:17

I got to imagine all that. Jane Smokers.

8:20

Jane Smokers were kind of part of parcel with

8:22

all of those. They had already merged.

8:25

The Aramco stuff?

8:27

Probably. I think

8:30

it's all their golf entities get

8:32

thrown into this new company. I'm not going to keep

8:34

calling it the hundred. That's very confusing. It all gets

8:36

thrown into this new company. What

8:38

they're going to basically do over the next,

8:40

Yasser said three weeks on CNBC.

8:43

That sounds impossibly fast. I

8:45

would imagine it's going to take a lot longer than that. Get

8:48

layered on the deal. They're

8:51

going to try to come up with a valuation for what

8:53

that new company is worth. Let's

8:56

just use big round numbers. Let's say it's worth $10

8:58

billion. They're

9:00

going to basically let the PIF not

9:02

live, the PIF buy into

9:05

that new company as an equity stake. If

9:07

it's worth $10 billion, and they want to buy 20%, that's going

9:09

to cost them $2 billion.

9:14

That's what's going on. That

9:16

money is essentially like

9:19

walking around money for the

9:21

PGA tour now. It's

9:23

basically on top of what's already being funded on

9:25

top of how the business already runs. It's

9:28

basically pulling a new company out

9:30

of nowhere and giving it like,

9:32

I'm saying $2 billion as an example, but I would

9:34

imagine it's going to be a fuckload of money

9:37

as just a supercharged way to

9:39

go do a lot of things that we're going to get into.

9:42

PJ, you want to hit the mission? The mission. What

9:45

this really does is it allows

9:47

the PGA tour to take on private

9:50

equity investors for the first time. You've

9:52

heard on this podcast hundreds and hundreds

9:54

and hundreds of times. Of times that

9:57

the tour is a 501c6, it's a membership

9:59

run organization.

9:59

that limits the amount of things that they can do.

10:02

It means they can't just

10:03

write Rory McIlroy a $20 million

10:05

check. It means they gotta handle fields

10:08

certain ways. It means they gotta treat the mules humanely.

10:10

It means they've gotta do like a lot of

10:12

different things that membership organizations have

10:15

to do. But

10:16

as part of this, Neil, there's a couple of very

10:18

important things.

10:20

Yasser Al-Ruma'yan, the

10:22

guy you saw on CNBC, the guy who is the

10:24

chairman of, chairman of the PIF, I believe this is

10:26

his title. He is gonna be the chair of this

10:29

new company whereas Jay Monahan

10:31

is gonna be the CEO. But the PJ

10:33

Tour is going to retain the majority

10:35

voting rights. So essentially the PJ Tour controls

10:38

what's going on here. So I would just throw

10:40

a little bit of cold water upfront on like

10:43

the Saudis bought golf, the Saudis run the

10:45

PGA Tour, the Saudis

10:48

basically took over everything. Yasser is Jay's

10:50

boss, all of that stuff. I think we're

10:53

gonna have to get a little deeper into it and it

10:55

might be just a little misguided.

10:57

And we will, but let's keep hitting the

10:59

finer points and then we can

11:00

break it down. So Neil, your next question probably

11:03

is what happens to these existing tours,

11:05

right? What happens to the PJ Tour? What happens to the DP World

11:07

Tour? What happens to the live tour? All of these things,

11:10

great question, Neil. By all accounts, the

11:12

PJ Tour is gonna stay pretty much exactly

11:14

how it is now. They're getting ready

11:16

to release their schedule for 24. That

11:18

schedule is probably gonna look very similar. Maybe

11:21

a couple changes in who knows, right?

11:23

Who knows what will happen over the next couple of weeks

11:25

before that schedule kind of comes out. But I

11:27

think they're gonna stick to their same designated

11:30

events schedule. They're gonna stick to kind of all

11:33

the changes that they've made over the last couple

11:35

of years will probably stay

11:38

intact at least through 23 and

11:40

probably into 24. What's gonna happen,

11:42

and I think Ditto for the DP World Tour. What's

11:45

gonna happen to the live tour is very interesting in

11:47

that I think things are, by all

11:49

accounts, going to just finish throughout 2023. They

11:52

obviously have their schedule. They've

11:55

got their whole list of events that they're playing.

11:57

They're gonna finish out 2023, and then they- They

12:00

kept using this phrase, like empirical

12:02

evaluation, they're going to really,

12:05

once that season finishes, they're going to take a hard

12:07

look. They kept saying empirical, which is

12:09

really funny to me. They're getting some credits, baby.

12:11

Because they're just going to look at like, let's really

12:13

give this live thing a shot. I

12:15

don't know anything about it, but I want to learn about it.

12:18

Let's check out their profit margins. Are the iron

12:20

heads worth $750 million? Yeah,

12:24

or $2 billion. I mean, the ACEs with the last valuation

12:26

I saw was $2 billion. Who knows? So

12:29

they're going to bring in some people to investigate

12:31

that, figure out what these things are worth, and

12:33

then

12:34

make a decision, my words here, if

12:38

or how team golf fits

12:41

into the future of elite professional

12:43

golf. My interpretation of that simply

12:45

is just like, we're going to let you down easy here. But

12:48

hey, we need to live to go away. And we're

12:50

not going to stunt on you on TV right

12:52

here. And we're not going to squash this thing right away.

12:54

But we want your money. But

12:57

your concept is not what we're looking for here. Not

12:59

going to work here anymore. All right, let's keep

13:01

it rolling on specifics so we can

13:03

pontificate and

13:04

blow vie it on

13:07

our personal opinions on it. Sure.

13:10

So Neil, I'm sure next question is probably

13:12

what happens to these live guys, right? So you've got the iron

13:14

heads and the cliques. All these guys really

13:17

just trying to finish high in

13:19

that team championship, rounding out 23.

13:22

What happens when they want to now come back to

13:24

the PJ Tour, starting in 24? Not

13:28

a lot of clarity around that. As

13:31

best we can understand from all

13:33

the people and players and everybody

13:35

that we talk to is that there's going to be

13:37

a reapplication process. So everyone

13:39

from Phil DeBryson to Brooks to Cam

13:42

to Siwan Kim can

13:44

go through that process. I think it's

13:46

going to be really interesting in that there's probably a

13:48

little bit of discretion as far as how

13:51

that reapplication process goes. I

13:53

don't think it's just fill out a form. I think there's

13:55

probably going to be a committee set up

13:59

way cases and kind of see like, Hey,

14:02

a trial, I

14:05

would call it a death panel, but I don't think you want to

14:07

use those terms. Uh, I think it's probably

14:09

some combination of like Ed Hurley,

14:12

some players, maybe Jimmy

14:14

Dunn and a few others just swinging

14:16

the hammer. Yes or no. Yeah. And I think

14:19

that just makes it really messy

14:21

and really interesting and really fascinating.

14:23

And it's going to give us a million things to laugh about

14:25

and joke about and think about, uh, over

14:27

the next year or so here, when we're,

14:29

you know, so early in this when

14:32

that so early that committee is looking

14:34

at things like, you know, Hey, did you perhaps

14:36

tweet this on a March 6th?

14:39

Hey, did you perhaps write up bylaws for

14:41

a new league? Uh, you know, Stan's

14:44

like, did you tweet this this morning

14:46

and then delete it? And yeah. And also,

14:48

I mean,

14:49

in the case of someone like Dustin Johnson or something

14:51

like, Hey, were you just like

14:53

kind of pretty normal and cool, uh, throughout

14:55

the whole time? Like, all right, sweet.

14:57

So what, it's the scene

15:00

of fuck you, fuck you. You're cool. But

15:02

that's exactly what's going to happen here. It's

15:04

truly what's going to happen. So

15:06

I think again,

15:07

this is kind of speculation,

15:10

but informed speculation based on a lot

15:12

of the people that we talked to is as that

15:15

application process goes, I have to imagine there's going to

15:17

be like a pretty significant and

15:19

case by case fine for all of those people

15:21

who want to come back. So for all of the people

15:23

who are like, man, these guys like cash,

15:25

big checks, the game, the system, all

15:28

of that, I got to imagine

15:30

me speaking here,

15:32

I got to imagine that that is not going

15:34

to quite be that simple. And it's going to be like, if

15:36

you'd like to come back to the PJ tour, you can

15:38

write us a big fucking check. Give me one

15:40

of those big ones. Neil, I don't care. I'll take one of the big ones.

15:43

And if not, if you don't want to do that, then

15:45

you're welcome to play on whatever tours are left.

15:47

Oh wait, by the way, we just fucking gobbled

15:49

up all of them, which brings us to a whole

15:52

monopoly DOJ thing. We'll get into

15:54

it. We'll get there. Let me, there's a few other

15:56

bullet points I want to hit. That was a

15:58

tease. All pending.

15:59

litigation ends. Yeah. I repeat

16:02

a billable hours. Hate that.

16:04

Lawyer's or our lawyers hate that.

16:06

But they probably going to be useful when we

16:08

have to

16:09

get all these details out, which Yasser

16:11

and Jay had no answers for on any interview

16:13

today. And then so we

16:16

said there's a process to be established for players

16:18

to reapply to the PGA tour or the

16:20

DP world tour for membership at

16:22

the end of the season. And what

16:24

else do we miss? The tour retains administrative

16:27

oversight of the PGA tour, including

16:29

sanctioning of events. Yeah. That

16:31

I think is the key that

16:33

you were talking about earlier, DJ. It's basically

16:35

like the the PIF getting a

16:38

seat inside of the PGA tour ecosystem.

16:40

It is not like a tour going

16:42

to live golf. It's not the cliques

16:45

taking over. It's not any of that stuff. It's it's

16:47

basically taking the PGA tour structure,

16:50

essentially turning it into a private

16:53

company and allowing people

16:55

to

16:56

become exactly what was

16:59

that's been proposed. That was proposed by Andy Gardner.

17:01

And Jay wouldn't even take the fucking conversation. We'll

17:03

get there and we'll get there. Last thing I

17:05

want to say, last thing I want to say, all of this,

17:07

because, Neil, I'm sure you're ripping your

17:10

hair out about this part. Isn't this supposed to

17:12

be a player run organization? Where are the

17:14

players? Why did nobody know about this, which

17:16

is a whole other thing we can talk about are the parents to

17:18

where the parents. All of this is a framework

17:21

agreement, right? So all of this

17:23

is Jay and Yasser have

17:26

agreed to like kind of handshake terms

17:28

like here's what the framework is going to look like, drop

17:30

the litigation and we'll move this thing forward. So the lawsuits

17:32

have gone away. But all

17:35

of this still needs to go through and be approved

17:37

by the PGA Tour policy board, which has players

17:40

from the pack that sit on it, which has a lot of other people that

17:42

sit on it, all of those things. So like while

17:45

it's it seemed pretty fucking

17:47

official today and the terms that they were talking about

17:49

it, it's not official yet. The policy

17:52

board still has to push it through, which now

17:55

Jay's next, you know, 40,

17:57

I don't know, 24 hours. are

18:00

even tougher because as everybody knows,

18:02

he just had a player meeting, which we'll get into.

18:04

We've got some insight from that. Then

18:07

he had to do, he had to meet with the media, take a bunch of questions.

18:10

Then he had, I think they've got a pack meeting

18:12

tonight that got moved. And then I think they're

18:14

doing another meeting after that with like

18:17

what I'll call the

18:18

Delaware group, basically like the players

18:20

that were in the room, but kind of the big dick players.

18:23

So he's interesting. The play is not the players.

18:26

And so he's going to have to kind of a... Maybe not Joaquin

18:28

Neiman in that group, but yeah. The

18:30

horses, not the wheels. He's going to have to get yelled at

18:33

by many, many, many, many people today. What

18:35

do we miss? Does that all make sense? I think that makes sense.

18:38

Let's go around the horn. Salih, I'm going to kick it to you. What's

18:41

your take? Have a take. Don't suck. I want

18:44

to just first, it's been like eight hours, nine hours,

18:46

maybe the craziest day of my

18:48

career, easily doing this. But now you

18:50

just like roll off the tongue. It rolls off the

18:52

tongue like Jay and Yasser. Like this is fucking

18:54

insane. Like we have not paused to say

18:57

like how far... I could not. We

18:59

followed this story from the going

19:01

back three years as closely as possible. Almost

19:04

everything that has happened to this point has

19:07

been rumored in some way. Like there's rumblings,

19:09

there's smoke. There's a shitload of smoke out there that doesn't

19:11

ever lead to anything. There was not a peep

19:13

on any of this. Like truly, truly remarkable.

19:16

There was not a peep on any of this. None of the

19:18

players knew about it. I still

19:20

am like struggling to... I think everyone's kind of struggling to

19:22

come to terms with it. And I think again, not

19:24

a good... I see how like channels mind

19:27

control you like through news channels. I

19:29

literally at the gym, CNN and Fox

19:32

News are on two different screens. And I watch them cover

19:34

the same stories and I watch them just like angle things

19:36

in there. Bad start was, hey, this

19:38

merger between the two tours. Cause again, my first

19:40

thought was this is fake. This is not actually

19:43

real. What is actually happening here? And of course, when

19:45

you dig in to the details a little bit, it does

19:47

start to make sense. I think there's a lot to not

19:50

like about it and a lot to talk about. But

19:52

again, I cannot express how shocking this

19:54

was and we did not see this coming.

19:56

So I don't want this to come off as in a told you so. I

19:59

told you so.

19:59

in any way, but like nothing that happened

20:02

today was what any of us thought was like

20:04

eminently gonna happen. But there's a lot

20:06

of a reason why a lot of us had this

20:09

kind of stance on live that we did because it was never

20:11

about the golf. It just never was. Like that was a huge

20:13

core reason why I never liked it. It was like, look

20:15

at what these dudes are doing. This is about sports

20:18

washing their regime. It's about advancing

20:20

in the business world. It's about normalizing, doing

20:22

business with them. It just made no sense

20:24

to dump all that money into golf on these

20:26

players with no eyeballs on it and continue to do so

20:29

it didn't make sense from a business standpoint.

20:32

What they got today is exactly what they

20:34

wanted. The PGA Tour is an

20:36

enormous, enormous commerce center. It's

20:38

where a ton of business gets done. And

20:40

the PIF is a sovereign wealth fund

20:43

that is looking to add to that fund. The golf

20:45

aspect of this was always a teeny tiny aspect

20:48

of their future plans for their country

20:50

and for their finances. They want

20:52

to do business around the world. They wanna normalize

20:54

doing business with Saudi Arabia in general and

20:56

holy shit did they accomplish that here.

20:58

They advanced their entire agenda almost

21:01

through to completion in terms of wanting to

21:03

have a seat at the table. They can rub elbows now with

21:05

important CEOs in the US

21:07

and the PGA Tour has completely enabled

21:09

them in that. And maybe this was

21:11

all more inevitable than I've realized or understood,

21:14

but that's what happened here today. That's why they

21:17

wanted to do this. Why the PGA Tour did

21:19

it was, hey, we just like funded

21:21

our tour with a shit ton of money and

21:23

wiped out our biggest threat all in one blow.

21:26

Is it gross? Is it like extremely

21:28

hypocritical? Are there some really tough questions that

21:31

Monahan and the leadership are gonna have to answer an extremely

21:34

upset membership group that

21:36

has did not leave and take the Saudi

21:38

money that now are getting, the Saudi money is getting

21:40

forced on them and the guys that took the money

21:43

might be coming back. It's gonna be a total and complete

21:45

shit show.

21:46

Yet at least I can kind of see why

21:48

they did this here today. I don't know if it's a bad

21:50

decision making along the way that has led to this point,

21:53

but it makes more sense

21:55

than just like, hey, the two, like live

21:57

won this thing. Now the two tours are merging. It's like,

21:59

no.

21:59

that live was just fine to let

22:02

everyone die and the PGA tour finally caved

22:04

in and said let's just all get out of this TC

22:07

over to you oh baby man

22:09

I you know it's all I thought all this stuff was just

22:11

about shotgun starts it's about

22:13

growing the games of course exactly

22:15

and you know the game's gonna be so big now in shorts

22:18

I'm on the side are making golf their thing we're

22:20

gonna help guys I I

22:23

go back to like three or four years ago and Jay Monaghan

22:25

wouldn't take the call

22:27

from anybody and was arrogant and

22:29

standoffish and now he paints

22:31

the tour into this corner to a point

22:34

where they have to take this deal the

22:36

the legal stuff wasn't going well I don't think

22:38

the DOJ investigation was big but I think

22:40

the I think they had him dead to rights

22:42

on some things and they were pretty sloppy with both

22:45

the majors and some of the collusion going

22:47

on you know around vendors

22:49

and that sort of thing but you know what overall

22:51

it's just like I'd be so pissed if I'm Rory

22:54

or if I'm any of these players who stuck around and

22:56

were loyal and I mean you're

22:58

looking at Jay Monaghan and his

23:01

cabal of execs there at the tour

23:03

who hid behind the 9-11 families this week

23:06

last year

23:08

in Canada like if I'm RBC

23:10

if I'm like if I'm the Canadian Open I'm

23:12

like hey guys two years in a row can we get

23:14

something this is not cool we

23:16

got luck big man come on block

23:20

yeah basically trotted trotted that

23:22

stuff out and then they're you know

23:25

they're willing to have these conversations what

23:27

changed Jay you know and then he says yeah

23:30

I looked Yasser in the eye and I trusted him like that

23:32

sounds like George W Bush Putin

23:34

in the eye I think you added the look to be

23:37

that was he spent 10 minutes with him and immediately

23:39

trust no no they had lunch and play golf okay

23:42

well anyways I just think like

23:44

Jay painted him into this corner and then

23:46

does this and it's like oh see like this was

23:49

our only way out yeah because of all of your actions

23:51

and all of

23:52

all of this stuff also I have no

23:54

idea how this is ever going to pass muster

23:56

with the DOJ and the FTC

23:58

I know If this was

24:01

if this was anti-competitive already,

24:03

they all spent tens of millions of dollars

24:05

building a case like about The

24:07

lost you know antitrust stuff and now they're

24:10

gonna supercharge it. It's it's like the

24:12

legal stuff is Yet, let's

24:15

you know accuse each other of it But now let's

24:17

go away with the legal stuff because it doesn't it doesn't

24:19

help anymore Isn't it funny how

24:21

just like expensive it is to or

24:24

like how much cheaper it would be to just say the quiet part out

24:26

loud You know, I mean it's just tens

24:28

and tens of millions of dollars to just like pretend

24:31

like nobody's gonna say the quiet part out Well, and I know

24:33

the legal fees are you know, those were mounting

24:35

that's an immediate savings for the tour that was

24:38

flowing out the door It's a significant

24:40

amount like a shocking amount to

24:42

the players What one player told us

24:44

what how much was he spending on today like

24:46

half a million dollars like this bonkers? Yeah,

24:48

yeah I mean the tour is probably spending 30 to 50

24:51

million a year right now just on just

24:53

on this case alone Which is your

24:55

point DC I would push back slightly

24:58

on like the the case wasn't going well Cuz I think

25:00

like I think the case was going well for the PJ

25:02

tour I think the point was that it was just gonna like

25:05

Contin like continues to be dragged out

25:07

and dragged out and dragged out. Yeah

25:09

dragged out I'm also and that was I think

25:12

like the inflection point was like just

25:14

understanding from Yasser from

25:16

whoever just like no, man We have let

25:19

me write a number on a sheet of paper for you Here's

25:21

the war chest we have just for legal fees

25:24

and like said it earlier deeds. You're like, hey, he said aside

25:26

He's earmarked five billion dollars

25:29

Just a player. Yeah tour. Yeah

25:32

Well, it's like to fund to keep live going

25:35

It's just like without it or here to

25:37

need to try to destroy the PJ tour like

25:39

here's the amount of money that we have Yeah, this is our goal So

25:41

I think there's something there especially with and

25:43

I'm sure live will try to do the the failing firm

25:46

defense thing Which is told from people

25:48

antitrust people like hey, we're not a going

25:50

concern We're not gonna survive without this and the

25:53

whole thing with that is like a it never works and

25:55

B That's not gonna work because you set this

25:57

thing up to fail like like not to succeed

25:59

in the first

25:59

It's not a profitable enterprise to begin

26:02

with. But I

26:04

can't help but think, like the Secretary

26:06

of State lands in Saudi Arabia

26:08

today, right after this is announced, Saudi

26:10

Arabia was talking about cutting oil production

26:14

over the weekend. Maybe they stave

26:16

that off. I just like, maybe there's stuff

26:19

happening. Phil was right.

26:21

In the government here saying

26:23

that, hey, this will all be washed away. But based

26:25

on what the, you

26:26

know. Connected dots.

26:29

And J stands to, you

26:32

know, what they purport to me, they

26:35

don't support this sort of

26:38

merger agreement very often. KBV,

26:41

let's go to you. Yeah,

26:43

just a surreal day. Definitely had the

26:45

AI deepfake impression early

26:47

on. It was a great reminder of how

26:49

weird Twitter is now without the blue check mark stuff.

26:52

As you don't know, like, wait, is this the actual CNBC

26:55

account? Or is this like someone faking a CNBC

26:57

account? Oh, wait, no, there it is actually on the television.

26:59

I saw Bryson just tweeted something out of his. Yeah.

27:02

Is that the real Bryson? Oh, exactly. Crazy.

27:05

I don't think you want to do this bad adult. Send in

27:07

the link. Love to hear it. Hey, pop

27:09

in Bryson. We'd love to have you. You're familiar with YouTube

27:11

from what I've told.

27:12

You know, I think I

27:14

was there at the very first live event. So I feel like

27:17

it's sort of a surreal kind of full

27:19

circle moment for me. Obviously

27:21

I've not been shy about some

27:24

of my moral objections to

27:26

some of this stuff.

27:29

I think that the interesting

27:31

part of, we all read that Graham

27:34

Wood article in The Atlantic years ago about talking

27:36

about, as tough

27:38

as you might think things are in Saudi Arabia, they

27:41

could be way worse if someone other than MBS

27:43

was sort of running things. There is progress going.

27:46

It was sort of, you know, shot

27:48

in a very favorable light. And after I

27:50

tweeted that, and after I was in London, I had a couple, like

27:53

actual Saudi dissidents reach out to me. Like,

27:55

you know,

27:56

it's just all a front. It's all a front

27:58

for the sort of, you know.

27:59

the PR stuff that they're doing up front, they're still torturing

28:02

people, they're still killing gay people. Please

28:04

don't be part of this stuff. And so we got

28:07

on the phone and talked and, and I'm

28:09

bummed, uh, sad for those people

28:12

who are, you know, gonna just feel like in

28:14

the end that the sports washing totally worked. And

28:17

I just don't know really any other way

28:20

to, to look at it like this. I mean, it, we

28:22

knew that money was going to sort of be

28:24

the end all kind of nuclear weapon and all this. And

28:27

turns out that that was the case. And

28:30

maybe this was sort of like the, you

28:32

know, the death before dishonor

28:34

sort of moment for the PGA tour. Like they,

28:36

they had to choose between, are they going to die?

28:38

Are they going to sort of dishonor themselves and sort of admit

28:40

like, Hey, you know, we, we didn't actually have

28:43

the firepower to kill this off.

28:45

And so they absorbed in a way. And honestly,

28:48

Saudi Arabia got exactly what they wanted is that they're

28:50

going to have, you know, a say in this. They're going to be able to

28:52

have connections with major business leaders. They'll

28:55

probably be a PGA tour sponsored

28:57

event inside of Arabia at some point. I would have to

28:59

think that that was part of the sort of like handshake

29:02

agreement of like, Hey, you know, if we could go away, like

29:04

you need to sort of throw us a bone on some

29:06

of this stuff. And I think that in

29:08

the long run, like Saudi money

29:10

is just going to be everywhere. It's going to be in sports

29:13

everywhere. And people like me are going

29:15

to have to sort of accept that and get used to it and

29:17

sort of, you know, do what soccer fans

29:19

did, which is kind of create a disconnect

29:22

in it, because, you know, obviously

29:24

there's a lot of countries out there with a lot of money

29:26

and there's a lot of bad, I reminded of that scene

29:29

in the West Wing where, you know, CJ

29:31

is trying to get some, you know, the secretary

29:33

of state to sort of not sell weapons. And

29:35

she's like, you know, it's a big world and everybody's got

29:37

guns.

29:37

You know, it's a, it's just

29:39

the same thing. Neil, you said this in our chat today, like gas

29:42

wins wars, not bullets. That's like, I think a quote

29:44

from the world war two stuff. That turned out

29:46

to be true. Oil still runs the world and it probably

29:49

always will until we're fighting for water

29:51

that's diminishing. So let

29:53

me pick, let me pick it up right there. Okay. I gotta get

29:55

my take in here. I feel like

29:57

from over the.

31:45

You

32:00

look at the what the legal fees cost and you look at

32:02

doubling the purse sizes Maybe

32:04

you can get some of these sponsors to

32:06

pay up But I think a lot of the longtime ones

32:08

are like I'm not paying double for the

32:10

same product

32:11

Right, like it'd be like us going to somebody and saying

32:14

pay double for the ad read Well, that doesn't work for my

32:16

CPA man. So I'm sorry We're gonna have to go

32:18

look elsewhere and all and that's just like fact

32:20

and I'm sure that the CFO the financial

32:23

guys at the tour like yo, this doesn't look good We're

32:25

in your demographic in your demographics

32:28

going like this And always and the only

32:30

lever we have to pull is more commercials,

32:33

right or this or that So what this does is it

32:35

closes the gap right? The pith basically

32:37

is gonna float this probably because

32:39

I think another piece of the the high-level

32:42

details I think there is a combined

32:44

everyone's putting their stuff into a new entity.

32:47

I think outside of that I feel like the pith

32:49

might be offering like more money as well

32:51

as a sponsor Do you know what I'm saying? Like they're gonna

32:53

it's not just them buying in equity But they're

32:55

also probably gonna do a ton of stuff just

32:58

as an OMP official marketing partner,

33:00

right? So that is a a

33:02

bit of a safety net now, right? And

33:04

so if you think about it then DJ you said this

33:06

earlier if you'll lobotomize yourself and

33:09

you take out all of this

33:10

Drama and bullshit that's happened the past

33:13

two years on paper It probably does

33:15

put the tour in a much stronger position

33:17

But it's hard to do that KV with all the stuff

33:19

you just outlined the geopolitical stuff the

33:22

human rights stuff

33:23

It's harder now for me It's still

33:25

better than the alternative of

33:27

live outright winning and for me that was

33:29

because of foreign government

33:31

Saudi Arabia named the government. I

33:33

just don't like that idea of them running a pro sport.

33:36

I really do feel this way It's gonna

33:38

feel extra stinky If all of a

33:40

sudden JT and max have to get

33:42

up there and like do PR work for

33:44

the Saudis Right, and I think that it's

33:46

a totally different situation if that happens

33:49

to be the case now at the same time If

33:51

I'm toward leadership, I have seen

33:53

how the Saudis have fought in this how they've

33:55

played this game. It's been dirty It's been

33:57

really dirty at a lot of different levels

33:59

and now you've let them in the house,

34:02

right? Now you are taking billions

34:04

of dollars for them. They're not gonna want nothing for that,

34:07

right? So I don't know, once they

34:09

have this seat at the table,

34:11

I don't think the PJ Tor really has all that much

34:13

leverage to keep them at a distance. Like I think

34:16

it's gonna be rather pervasive at

34:18

this level of investment. Now, is it

34:20

about, you know, invest? I don't know exactly

34:22

what their plans are for the advertising, but when you

34:24

pay an organization billions of dollars, you are expected

34:26

to get something in return. We know what they

34:28

wanted out of Live, and that was to get into

34:31

this ecosystem, but where it goes

34:33

from here is where like, if I'm the tour,

34:35

I don't know how you can trust these

34:37

guys for what, you know, they're

34:40

buying something here. I don't know if you could

34:41

possibly lay out what that actually is at this point.

34:44

I think the hardest part about that is, and

34:46

I don't know that we've, you know, Neil, you were scratching

34:49

at this, but like, I don't know what the alternative

34:51

option for the tour was. Tron, I know we

34:53

talked about this earlier, and I think you're totally

34:55

right, and like, the alternative option was four years

34:57

ago. Sit down with Andy Gardner

35:00

and the PGL and figure out

35:02

a different source of funding and unlock all of this

35:04

private capital and private investment

35:06

and like, do all of that stuff like a

35:08

number of years ago, right? But if you're not

35:10

gonna do it four years ago, and just like on June

35:13

6th, 2023, you gotta make a

35:15

decision, like, I don't know what other decision

35:17

they had, if I'm being totally

35:19

honest, and that sucks because like, when I, the

35:22

first gut reaction I had to the news was just

35:24

like, fuck this, fuck that, you've just

35:26

been saying for two years, these people

35:28

are awful, you've never had to be, you

35:30

know, apologize for being a member of the PGA

35:33

Tour, here come the 9-11 families,

35:35

all this stuff, and now you're gonna go take their money,

35:37

like fuck off, which I still feel that

35:40

way too, to an extent. But the more

35:42

I thought about it all day, I'm like, man, I don't

35:44

totally know what the alternative option

35:46

was because of the slow gas leak you're

35:49

talking about, Neil. Even if you do, And

35:51

that sucks, by the way, that's not like an endorsement

35:54

of this decision, but. Even if you

35:56

do the PGL stuff

35:58

early on, guys are still gonna.

35:59

to sell their stake. That's not to

36:02

say the Saudis couldn't amass a stake

36:04

here. They had a stake, they were involved.

36:07

Yeah, but then they weren't. But they could always,

36:09

you could always buy back in or when there's

36:11

a market for it. But how

36:14

many, yeah, the devil's in the details.

36:16

How many board seats are the Saudis going to get? How is

36:18

the- Like one on the

36:20

PGA Tor policy board.

36:23

But yeah, but the PGA Tor policy board,

36:25

is that still just controlling the

36:27

PGA Tor? What's the new entity

36:30

governance structure going to look like?

36:32

That's where I think they are outnumbered

36:35

on that. That I think is the

36:37

key detail with like the Yasser being chairman, the PGA

36:39

Tor still has the representation. The majority of

36:41

the state. But if you

36:43

have Fishers there, like the way the boards work, is

36:45

like if you have Fishers in your board and there's people

36:48

that disagree on different sides of things,

36:51

it's not like you're voting as a clean block.

36:54

Starting me with jargon, poison pills,

36:56

bear bucks. Yeah, it's like, let's say you have some

36:58

dipshit on your board who like,

37:00

you know, let's say Grayson Murray's on the

37:02

board or James Hahn's on the board. Like, you

37:04

know, like there's, there's stuff there.

37:06

There's, let's say Randall Stevenson goes rogue.

37:08

There's all sorts of stuff there,

37:10

you know? I don't know. It's just, I guess for me

37:13

though, it's like, it's,

37:14

it's the way that it's, it's how reactive

37:16

the Tor was and how arrogant they were until

37:18

they weren't. So it's like, you know what?

37:21

So Cody, maybe we can get that draft pick up

37:23

of the guy that got stabbed. Just

37:27

the quote from like, what are you going to do? Stab me? Like,

37:30

well, yeah, man, that's kind of what we're going to do.

37:32

Right? Like, so that's

37:34

kind of what happened here with the Tor, I think real

37:37

quick before, I don't know when we're going to find gaps in the show to

37:39

be able to do this, but I got it. I got to say we, I'm

37:41

surprised we got this far without, I thought you guys wanted to talk us

37:43

open longest day in golf. I thought

37:45

we went a totally different direction there, but of

37:48

course, Titleist is the number one ball in golf each and

37:50

every day, especially on golf's

37:52

longest day. When a tee time in the U S open is

37:55

on the line and in total, there were more than 800 juniors,

37:57

amateurs, college golfers, club pros and

37:59

Tor pros.

37:59

who teed it up in a US Open final qualifier

38:02

with the hopes of punching a ticket to Los

38:04

Angeles Country Club. 77% of them played

38:06

at titles Pro V1 or Pro V1X

38:09

golf ball including Vanderbilt's Gordon Sargent. He

38:11

won the Georgia sectional with rounds of 64 and 67 playing the Pro V1.

38:15

PGA Tour rookie Carson Young he's torched the

38:17

Dallas qualifier with a 63-62 at the Pro V1X. The

38:20

title has been the most played golf ball at all US

38:22

Opens for anyone want to guess that's 74

38:26

years in a row starting with Medina in 1949.

38:28

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39:28

today sorry to interrupt there but where

39:30

were we well I think let's move

39:32

into some questions right I think we

39:34

put together a bit of an FAQ section

39:38

just because there's a lot I think there's more questions

39:40

than answers right now I feel like we've laid

39:42

out

39:43

kind of our initial thoughts kind of the nuts

39:46

and bolts the framework as as Yasser

39:48

and Jay said to us but I'm going

39:50

to toss one out to you guys

39:52

what is the name of the new venture let's

39:54

start there the I said this

39:56

on Twitter the only thing is with the golf world's

39:59

going to be unified on this

41:59

I've been imagining in my

42:02

head a scenario where J. Monhan trying

42:04

to teach Fred Ridley to use Signal so they

42:06

could have like, off

42:08

the record untraceable conversations.

42:10

It would have been way better. I

42:13

got to think this, you said the antitrust stuff

42:16

was not pernicious, but now is it a little

42:18

more pernicious if the two people

42:20

that were suing each other combined? Like, isn't there precedent

42:22

that you can't do that? Totally. That's

42:24

where I struggle. I'm like, unless there's some

42:27

wink, wink at the federal level, which, hey,

42:29

maybe they're counting on DT

42:32

to

42:33

take the W next year and then DT is

42:35

going to say, hey, you know what? I'm waving this

42:37

through if you guys have an open at

42:39

Turnberry or something like that. Maybe that's in

42:41

the cards here.

42:42

Not only that, it's the DOJ. This

42:45

is the DP World Court too. Yeah.

42:47

And Europe has to approve it. Europe

42:50

has to approve it. Like they've made a lot

42:52

of different rulings in the tech sector on antitrust

42:55

that the DOJ hasn't come to the same conclusion

42:58

or it's just taken longer. So if I

43:00

may, just guy said earlier that nobody called

43:02

this, I must correct the record. The only

43:05

one man that I know that called this was DT. What

43:07

he talks about the inevitable merger with Liv

43:10

coming that I just want to call that

43:12

out. The DT

43:12

was right on this one. Where

43:15

was this? It was on True Social, right? This was right after

43:18

Cam won the open, I guess.

43:20

Yeah. Yes, I think that was. So he called this a log

43:22

log type ago, which I think you should read the actual

43:24

tweet. He said, all these golfers that remain loyal,

43:27

quotes to the very disloyal PGA

43:29

in all of its different forms will pay a big price when

43:31

the inevitable merger with Liv comes and you get

43:34

nothing but a big thank you from PGA officials

43:36

who are making millions of dollars a year. If you

43:38

don't take the money now, you will get nothing

43:40

after the merger takes place and only say how smart

43:42

the original signees were. Good luck to all and

43:45

congratulations to really talented Cam Smith on his

43:47

incredible win. So I don't want to read it because it's not

43:49

actually accurate, but I thought it

43:50

was very funny. That's interesting though, because

43:52

it brings up a good question about, I

43:55

think the for-profit entity is important

43:57

detail because it probably enables them. to

44:00

make some of these guys that stuck around whole

44:02

that that has to be that's why they're all furious

44:04

in this player meeting, right? But like now it's probably

44:07

like, Hey,

44:07

you know, to the PIF, like you

44:09

got to pick up the check here.

44:11

So Neil, actually, Jay talked about this and he

44:14

did some media availability today. And there was a question,

44:16

obviously, like, what do you how do you look these players

44:18

in the eye who you basically said

44:20

be loyal to the tour and you know, they

44:22

were and then they got screwed out of hundreds of millions of

44:24

dollars. It came up earlier in the show, we're talking

44:26

about like that some of the live guys would pay back

44:29

fines or whatever. It seemed less like

44:31

that in Jay's mind, you know, he wasn't going to get specific

44:33

about it and more like there will be and use this

44:35

word equalization come

44:37

around. So I would think that preparation

44:39

maybe yeah, maybe live guys wouldn't be eligible

44:41

for the PIP or maybe they wouldn't get

44:44

that the guys who stayed would get money

44:46

that live guys who came back would not get

44:49

so it'd be like they already got their money. Now

44:51

you're going to get yours. We'll make sure that everybody

44:53

feels essentially whole so that we can move

44:55

forward without, you know, a bunch of other we'll make

44:57

sure to launder it through some type of thing

45:00

where we slap a sponsor's name on it such

45:02

as the Comcast business top 10. Real

45:04

quick, though, I do think you don't have to do any more

45:07

just real quick is like now that it's a for profit

45:09

thing like they can they can run it. They don't have to do it like

45:11

a membership. So you're just envisioning

45:13

the t-shirt cannon, baby, like maybe but

45:15

I think that that was like

45:16

part of the right was like because

45:18

of the member is every say, well,

45:20

yeah, so hey, I was going to say like I

45:22

think a lot of those live signing bonuses

45:25

to like,

45:26

there were like three and five year deals. So

45:28

they like a lot of these guys have only made, you

45:30

know, I'm sure that a lot of them were 33% or 50% up front or whatever, but

45:34

like they haven't made all of their deal. And

45:36

I doubt they get paid out on the full

45:39

amount of deal. No, but I think it's a fair amount

45:41

was up front. And then also the two

45:43

of the four year deals will have passed, right?

45:45

So consider the you know, I would

45:47

think guys of upfront money, they got greater

45:49

than 50% of it at least. Yeah, I don't know each case

45:52

is different. But yeah, or through through two years, but

45:54

also, I think too, it's just Yeah, it seems

45:56

like

45:57

the for profit nature of this, you

45:59

know, they can

45:59

can be subjective with they, like

46:02

you don't even need the PIP anymore, right? You just pay

46:04

guys out. It's just a matter of, I struggle

46:07

to think, how is this,

46:08

how does this all sit where competitions and all

46:10

this stuff still sits within this 501c6. And

46:13

then you've got some of this other holding stuff with the,

46:15

you know, I know PJ Tour superstores and TGL

46:18

and all that stuff already

46:20

sits in there, but like, you know, basically

46:22

I, you know, I'm sure anything franchise

46:24

they do or anything, like it sounds

46:26

like all the broadcast rights are going up into this

46:29

holding company. It seems like such a sham

46:31

from like almost tax avoidance. And I'm sure

46:34

that Jay's basically sitting in there saying, talk

46:36

to all the mules, you're going to have equity

46:39

in this holding company.

46:41

And that equity is going to be worth, you

46:43

know, let's say you're going to, you're going to have 0.1% of 0.1%

46:48

and that that's going to be worth $15

46:49

million. Right? Woof

46:52

woof TC. That I don't,

46:54

Table scraps are going to be million. I'm

46:56

going to have to ask about it 55 more

46:59

times before I understand that the, you

47:01

know, not for profit and for profit part.

47:03

And like, why was this not possible before?

47:05

Like why until I've always understood

47:08

it to be extremely complicated. Exactly.

47:10

I know for profit. And it's, it's like, don't,

47:12

like, don't quote me on this. Not a lawyer,

47:15

but this seems like the classic have your cake

47:17

and eat it too on

47:18

like, they have the best pension in

47:20

sports. It's like

47:21

noted, everybody's written about it. And that

47:23

is all contingent on the nonprofit

47:26

stuff and something that they passed with the IRS like

47:28

back in the seventies.

47:29

And so you can't have it both ways. Like, I don't know how you

47:31

can just, oh, no, no, don't touch our pension, but

47:33

now we're just going to be like profit. Like

47:35

we're just going to

47:36

stand up a for profit business over the top

47:38

of this. It's like, I

47:40

don't know how you can do all this legal

47:42

stuff for the last year and a half, and then expect people

47:44

to just turn a blind eye to that when you

47:47

want to like change the rules of the game. Like

47:49

live and for the PGA tour. Yeah, like why, like

47:52

if this was possible, why didn't you do this two or three

47:54

years ago and at least take the conversation

47:56

and say, you know what? This is a great idea. We're going

47:58

to adopt this instead of getting.

48:00

bear hugged by the Saudis, even

48:02

when your shareholders, the members, the

48:04

mules don't even understand that you're getting bear

48:06

hugged. Like they're like taking the opposite

48:09

side that everybody normally takes on

48:11

the bear hug. Like normally it's the shareholders

48:14

who like want you to sell out and

48:16

Jay would not want to sell out. It's the opposite in this

48:18

case. So DJ and KBB

48:21

question for one of you guys,

48:23

DJ said like they don't have to do the Comcast

48:25

business top 10, the PIF, they don't have to like launder

48:27

it through some

48:29

like faux meritocracy anymore because

48:32

like the 501c6 was what dictated

48:34

it. All payment had to be based on

48:36

like performance. But I

48:38

think the beauty of that model

48:40

was it was very easy to explain to your

48:42

members, play better. It's almost

48:44

like takes it out of your hands, right? But now

48:46

they have to come up with like,

48:48

is it more like a team

48:50

where it's like a salary cat?

48:53

You know, not like how do you decide who gets what

48:55

without these guys, this could turn into

48:57

just

48:58

a massive cat fight amongst these like,

49:00

you know, the horses and the mules

49:03

and like almost certainly will. But

49:05

I guess they have nowhere else to go. So that,

49:08

you know, there's no competitor right now. So

49:10

that's competitive. What I

49:12

would say is you're also starting

49:15

with like

49:16

just like unstable nitroglycerin, right?

49:18

Like all these guys are like, all

49:20

you did, all you did, it's

49:22

like the rock. Yeah. The

49:25

ex poison gas. All you did was piss

49:27

off

49:28

all your members, right? Like that,

49:31

I shouldn't say all you did, but like

49:32

pretty much, you know, what 95% of guys

49:35

are just like, yo, this fucking sucks.

49:38

I'm never going to trust another word you said. And now it's

49:40

like, all right, let's talk about money.

49:42

Yeah. I'm sure that's going to go. Well,

49:44

like kind of how what happened, you know, you hear about, I'm not in the, you

49:47

know, finance world, but sometimes I, it blows

49:49

my mind when I hear my wife talk about like how bonus

49:52

season works. Right. And it's just

49:54

big secrets. Like the MDs are just like,

49:56

you know, handing it out, like in an envelope, like

49:58

don't tell anybody, you know. I got you this

50:01

year. Like is that what this is

50:03

going to? Like that feels like a bad Long-term

50:05

play for the PGA tour last three years

50:08

or four years. It felt like under jay monahan

50:10

Like there's

50:11

I mean, I guess they know all this they

50:14

were kind of doing it at least Like

50:16

through the OMP deals and through the

50:19

you know, PIP and all that stuff

50:21

But this just feels like a free-for-all almost like

50:23

when the NIL stuff came out and the NCAA just

50:25

throws their hands up It's like now

50:27

now what? Do you think

50:29

that since? Since

50:31

the designated

50:33

is this a reaction partly to the designated event

50:35

stuff not going well. I

50:37

would guess Pure

50:39

speculation, but I would guess that it's like

50:42

the idea of getting like Neil was saying earlier getting sponsors

50:44

for the designated events I think it's all follow

50:46

the money TC I really think that like

50:49

these sponsors are saying to them

50:51

and some of the probably longest running ones like I

50:53

don't want to

50:55

Like like let's take the Schwab for instance

50:57

It was an invitational right when Schwab took over

50:59

it was an kind of an elevated event, right?

51:02

Where it's like, oh, this is an invitational you guys are

51:04

in the top tier of events I'm

51:06

guessing they went back to the you know to Schwab

51:08

was like hey Do you guys want to be a designated event

51:11

and I it's probably a hard sell to

51:13

be like well I mean, it's are we

51:15

what are we gonna get for the double the money? Well,

51:18

nothing but like you're gonna you know, you

51:20

gotta like rally around the flag a little bit

51:23

Well, it's like somebody like that's probably like now we'll just

51:25

sit tight like we'll still be a partner But

51:27

we're gonna sit tight and so all of a sudden

51:29

More and more those sponsors over the next three years

51:31

start saying that

51:33

and you've got this big Delta on like we have

51:35

to pay These purses and we don't have the money

51:37

and you can't

51:38

you only go to the TV contract once every

51:40

eight to ten years Right. So like that's can't

51:42

find it there right now. So I

51:44

gotta think that it's just strictly a financial thing

51:47

Well, as I say on top of that yet two to three work

51:49

designated events worth of legal fees

51:52

Right. Yeah, you're adding on extra.

51:54

I mean just the money is kind of all the same It's

51:56

got to go somewhere and it's just crazy to

51:58

me that like we're here right now

51:59

how, like less

52:02

than 365 days ago,

52:05

Monaghan was sitting there with Jim Nance saying

52:07

what he said,

52:08

less than, you know, however long ago

52:10

he was saying the stuff that he said

52:12

with legacy not leverage. He was standing

52:15

up in March at

52:17

the fucking players.

52:18

Like I want to read the stuff that he said,

52:21

like, like, you see, like it's worth revisiting

52:23

the quote because it's because

52:26

as it relates to 9 11, I've

52:28

had two families that are close to me that

52:30

lost loved ones. So my heart goes out

52:32

to them. And I would ask any player that has

52:34

left or any player who would ever consider leaving,

52:37

have you ever had to apologize for being a member

52:39

of the PGA tour? I get that. It's

52:41

so scripted that line is so scripted.

52:44

I get this is what executives do. They sort of eat

52:46

shit when they have to, they invoke, you know,

52:48

family stories when they have to, and

52:51

the money is what matters. But God,

52:53

you'd have to feel dirty. Like if you were

52:55

like one of J monaghan's friends who like had

52:57

themselves dragged into this fight and all of

52:59

a sudden it was like, man, nevermind. He addressed

53:02

this in the, in his meeting with the media

53:04

today. He said, I recognize everything I've said in the

53:06

past and in my prior positions, I recognize

53:09

that people are going to call me a hypocrite. Anytime

53:11

I said anything, I said it with the information that I had

53:13

at that moment. And I said it based on someone

53:15

that's trying to compete for the PGA tour and our players,

53:18

I accept those

53:18

criticisms, but circumstances do change. I think

53:21

that it, and looking at the big picture and looking at it this way,

53:23

that's what got us to this point. End quote. So

53:25

basically like, look, I, I played

53:27

that card because they were trying to steal our players. Like I didn't actually

53:30

like meet it. Like I don't actually care about the nine 11

53:32

families because now we've got their money and

53:35

like they're our partner now. So yeah, this, that's

53:37

the information I had at the time. A big distinction too

53:39

is it seems like now they, they

53:41

cared about who had control

53:43

of the money coming in.

53:46

Right? Like they wanted, they wanted to control.

53:49

They talked a lot today about

53:51

growing the game and all this money flowing

53:53

in. It's, it's about control of

53:55

where that money goes to. Right. Does

53:57

that go back to the players? Does that go? that

54:00

going to the DP

54:01

world tour. No, it's flowing

54:03

into the PGA tour and then they decide what to do

54:05

with it. Whether it's Jimmy Dunn or Ed Hurley,

54:08

or J. Monaghan or whomever.

54:10

I think that's the big thing for me is like Ed

54:12

Hurley and Jimmy Dunn are like in control. Like

54:15

J. Monaghan is not,

54:17

those two guys are. So is your beef

54:19

more with those two guys or are your beef with Monaghan then?

54:22

Well, I think they're in control because like Monaghan

54:25

has kind of thrown up his hands and he's like, I'm told, I'd

54:27

like, I have no control of the situation. And

54:30

I've led us into something that I don't know how to fix. Well, I'm

54:32

just really shocked by you read that quote out and

54:34

all the things that were said in

54:36

the last year by J.

54:38

Monaghan. And then

54:41

you have to walk it back. I feel like nobody

54:43

learned, he didn't learn a lesson because I'm watching CNBC

54:46

this morning. And it's like, this is

54:48

a done deal.

54:49

I mean, he went to great lengths to even like talk

54:52

over the host and be like, we're going to figure this all

54:54

out. Like we are going to get this done. And I'm

54:56

looking at this, I'm like the policy board can nuke

54:58

this.

54:59

The USDOJ can nuke

55:02

this. The European commission

55:04

or whoever runs the justice department in Europe,

55:06

they could nuke this.

55:08

Like I feel like this is far from a done

55:10

deal. And I don't know if that's a Hail

55:12

Mary. Flying the banner too soon, mission accomplished.

55:14

A little bit, right? Like am I off base

55:17

with that? Or do you have to just project this confidence

55:20

to

55:21

generate, like to basically switch

55:23

directions and get the inertia going

55:26

the complete opposite direction? I

55:28

think it may, here, I'll just, I'm

55:30

thinking of this up on the spot, but I'm thinking they

55:33

gained it out this way and like the initial

55:35

shock and you hear that what

55:37

is happening, the initial reaction by everyone, players

55:39

and everyone's going to be pissed at some level. Right? Yes.

55:43

But as of today, as of yesterday, whatever you want to

55:45

situation, you want to put yourself in, a

55:47

decision had to be made based on the information as it currently

55:49

stands. And as dirty as it feels,

55:52

taking their money for your members, which

55:54

is we've not fully stressed and slowed down

55:57

enough on how much fucking money we're probably talking about.

55:59

I mean, totally.

55:59

everybody's going to get made whole of dollars.

56:03

So much money about to come in and

56:06

you wipe out the existential threat to your

56:08

tour that still exists. People, you know, the

56:10

tour has moved forward. They've said all those

56:12

things, but like, there's still a threat out there for

56:14

you. If the antitrust stuff comes through, if

56:17

live drags this lawsuit out for five to six years

56:19

and drains you for $300 million in

56:21

that process, that's not going to go well. How much your

56:23

sponsors are actually going to buy into this stuff is still a major

56:25

question mark. Like that is all to

56:27

say, like, Hey, I can make all those problems go

56:29

away

56:29

today. Like is it going to be unsavory

56:32

for you guys? Is it going to be like suck a little bit to, you

56:34

know, imagine Brooks walking back in this room and Phil

56:37

taunting his way through it. And Bryson tweeting it,

56:39

no, laying up a little emoji face a little

56:41

bit, taunting. I'm sure that bothers you guys a lot, but like,

56:43

what, what's the actual right move sitting here

56:46

right now?

56:47

I think like getting it out like this and getting through

56:49

it all at once. Maybe I don't know.

56:51

Maybe it's the best move. Like I think this

56:53

gets through. I think this happens, but I don't think Jay

56:56

survives it

56:57

because I don't

56:59

think, I don't even think anybody trusts

57:01

him

57:02

anymore to keep this going. I don't even think

57:04

some of the top players trusted him

57:06

to begin with. Right. But he's the guy in charge

57:08

and they were in a precarious spot to change

57:10

leadership. And now once it's kind

57:12

of, Hey, we're on great footing here

57:15

financially moving forward, it's like, let's get some real

57:17

pros in to kind of manage this

57:19

thing. I think both things can be true.

57:22

Right. That

57:23

I think solid, what they did today

57:25

makes a ton of sense. I was, I was saying earlier,

57:27

like if you hand me a worksheet

57:30

today that just spells out the problem,

57:32

and it says like, come up with a solution. Like

57:35

at the end of the day, like this looks pretty good. This

57:37

is a pretty good solution and a pretty good way to like

57:39

wriggle yourself out of there. I think that can

57:42

be true. And I also think like using,

57:44

like using like

57:47

the, not to be like too much of

57:49

a dipshit here, but like the, the

57:51

nine 11 family stuff is like

57:54

lighting your cigarette with a blowtorch. Right?

57:56

Like that is like the biggest fucking gun you've got

57:58

emotionally.

57:59

And it is so fucking

58:02

craven and soulless

58:04

to pull that card, to play that card and

58:06

then to go do this. And that's where I'm just like, man,

58:08

congratulations. Like that's a great deal

58:11

that it seems like you made today, but also like go fuck

58:13

yourself. That is such a shitty thing

58:15

to do. As

58:17

an organization, like strategically

58:20

from a communications perspective,

58:22

somebody made that decision.

58:24

It's insane. This was on Golf

58:27

Channel today. This is a statement from the

58:29

9-11 Families United. The

58:31

statement reads, PGA commissioner

58:33

Jay Monahan co-opted the 9-11 community

58:36

last year in the PGA's unequivocal

58:38

agreement that the Saudi live project

58:40

was nothing more than sports washing of Saudi Arabia's

58:42

reputation. But now the PGA and Monahan

58:45

appear to have become just more paid Saudi

58:47

shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse

58:50

the Saudi reputation so that Americans and

58:52

the world will forget how the kingdom spent their billions

58:54

of dollars

58:54

before 9-11 to fund terrorism,

58:57

spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans and

58:59

finance Al-Qaeda and the murder of our loved

59:01

ones. Make no mistake, we will never forget. Like

59:04

that is brought on, like whether or not you

59:07

people want to make the connection between 9-11 and the

59:09

Saudis and whatnot, like that is fair

59:11

criticism brought totally on the PGA tour. We're not making

59:14

the connection. The PGA tour did it. No, I'm saying,

59:16

put that aside whether you want

59:18

to make that connection. The PGA tour did this

59:20

and that statement. The two people

59:22

that did it are still

59:24

gainfully employed by the PGA tour and leading the charge

59:26

on this. Well, I guess Deed, back to your point

59:28

earlier about being lobotomized,

59:31

which I can't get that out of my head because

59:33

it's a great way to describe. I wish I could

59:35

be lobotomized of all this stuff on pay. It's almost

59:38

like you could argue the

59:40

PGA tour as an entity, as

59:42

an organization, this

59:44

is great and this is a win.

59:46

But the people that manage the tour,

59:49

this is a massive, massive loss

59:51

is kind of where I'm netting out a little

59:53

bit. I truly like it. We're going to do it later, like a

59:55

winners and losers segment. I think Jay is absolutely

59:58

the biggest winner of the day and the biggest loser.

59:59

today. Right? Like,

1:00:02

and that's where I'm at. This is bizarre because you could argue

1:00:04

everybody is able to argue

1:00:07

like live fans are able to argue

1:00:09

that live live has, has won the PGA tour

1:00:12

is becoming live, which we can

1:00:14

talk about it. Like, what does this mean for live?

1:00:16

Let's get to that. And you know,

1:00:19

the PGA tour, like if you look at the bullet points

1:00:21

we read out earlier, I'm like, Oh man, like as an organization,

1:00:23

you guys are back in charge of the best golf in

1:00:25

the world. Basically you have the decisions to

1:00:28

run the season and the tournaments as you see

1:00:30

fit and basically dole out

1:00:32

the, you know, set the schedule and

1:00:35

that's a win for the organization.

1:00:37

Real quickly. I think it's very telling

1:00:39

to the, the

1:00:41

tacit approval and

1:00:43

positivity from each of the governing

1:00:45

bodies within the game. They

1:00:47

all know that the RNA, the masters, all

1:00:52

of them, it's like, Hey, we're, you know what? Like we're,

1:00:55

we're, we're in support of this. We're,

1:00:57

you know, it's like, I don't think that it shouldn't

1:00:59

be shocking. I mean, I, they were all, they

1:01:02

all had a bullseye on them as

1:01:04

far as colluding. And I think they were all

1:01:06

like, I

1:01:07

think, I think the PGA America got cold feet

1:01:09

when they,

1:01:11

you know, they're, they're letting guys in. I

1:01:13

think they were on the verge of figuring out a way

1:01:15

to give some of these guys world ranking points to keep

1:01:17

the, you

1:01:18

know, to keep themselves out of the crosshairs. Like that's

1:01:21

like things weren't going great on that front either.

1:01:24

Listen, today was a very unproductive

1:01:26

work day for a lot of people. And if you sat in your

1:01:29

office all day, scrolling golf Twitter, trying to figure out

1:01:31

what was going on, you are not alone, not alone.

1:01:33

The folks at Miznan main did the exact same

1:01:35

thing. They only took one break today. That was to write

1:01:38

this ad read. The differences, the guys in

1:01:40

the Miznan main office were wearing the world's

1:01:42

most comfortable dress shirts while they watch professional golfers

1:01:45

try to catch up on news about their own league. These

1:01:47

are dress shirts that feel like t-shirts and have all the performance

1:01:50

qualities of a workout shirt. They're lightweight,

1:01:52

breathable, moisture wicking, blah,

1:01:54

blah, blah. You get it. So if today was

1:01:56

a wash work wise and you need the rest of the

1:01:58

week to double down and catch up.

1:01:59

in a more comfortable, to do it, do

1:02:02

it in a more comfortable dress shirt. Again,

1:02:04

I wish I had these things back when I was running up

1:02:06

enormous dry cleaning bills when I had to

1:02:08

go into an office every time. We

1:02:11

like the Strap Boys, we love a discount. So use

1:02:13

code Strap for $35 off any purchase of 125 or more. And

1:02:18

then TC and I got this added. You

1:02:20

can use code C-suite for absolutely no

1:02:22

discount at all because

1:02:25

you only pay full price for things. So use

1:02:27

Strap for $35 off any

1:02:29

purchase of 125 or more at

1:02:32

MizaninMaine.com or C-suite for no

1:02:34

discount at all. I hope Jay was wearing

1:02:36

a Mizanin Maine today. He's gotta be sweating

1:02:38

through that suit, man. You gotta

1:02:40

have it for the pit stains. I don't think

1:02:42

Jay was wearing Mizanin Maine cause he's always, he's

1:02:44

still, he just can't get a properly tailored suit. Can we

1:02:46

get him a sharper, pitten suit? Like he's a good

1:02:49

looking guy. Like get him a good suit. Like Yasser

1:02:51

looked so slick in his thing and Jay- I was

1:02:53

taking strays, I love it. One

1:02:55

thing I do wanna point out, I don't know when

1:02:57

to shout this out or whatnot, just acknowledge

1:02:59

the secrecy this was done in for

1:03:02

something this complicated has blown

1:03:04

my mind all day. Like the amount of people that

1:03:07

within the organization, again, players up to

1:03:09

the top players in the world that did not know about

1:03:11

this, Rory did not know this was happening. Tiger

1:03:13

did not know this was happening. Like- NBC,

1:03:15

CBS, ESPN didn't know what was happening. None of

1:03:18

the sponsors obviously knew what was happening. Like it

1:03:20

was a, just a total incomplete shocker

1:03:22

to everyone involved. God, I

1:03:24

mean, just, but TC, like you said with the governing

1:03:27

bodies, like imagine Juan and

1:03:29

Fred Ridley hearing this like, what the fuck,

1:03:31

man? How about a heads up dude? How about Brandon?

1:03:33

Brandon will look like you got wrestled from asleep at some

1:03:36

point today. You know, you know, you know,

1:03:38

Augusta knew, you know, Augusta

1:03:40

knew. Like all I'll say though is

1:03:42

it's just- Isn't Hurley, he had an Augusta

1:03:44

member by the way. Yeah. Oh, Jimmy. Yeah,

1:03:46

for sure. This tweet from

1:03:49

Christopher Powers, Cody put that one back

1:03:51

up for a second. I wanna read this one out loud. This cracked

1:03:53

me up. It's just

1:03:56

catching up on Brandle. Feel

1:03:58

for our guy, the amount of

1:03:59

sensory. Blitzkrieg must be dealing with

1:04:01

wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy Brooks

1:04:04

Brooks was tweeting about Brandel And

1:04:06

then and then took it from Twitter to Instagram.

1:04:08

We posted the tweet on Instagram

1:04:10

cross I would say that now can we

1:04:13

do a live guys now like is that

1:04:15

it's been a sensory blitzkrieg all guys I

1:04:17

got a bounce. I got a bounce. I gotta go to dinner with

1:04:19

my anniversary dinner. That's Yeah,

1:04:22

but I will say I just I can't believe everything

1:04:25

today happened

1:04:26

and I'm starting to feel like

1:04:28

rather Hopeless in that there's

1:04:31

still this like membership Organization

1:04:33

that sits under this now non or this process

1:04:36

for-profit entity Like we're still not gonna

1:04:38

be able to think like fix slow play

1:04:40

We're still like like like none of these guys

1:04:42

can agree on anything like TC.

1:04:45

How do you think this this? You know

1:04:47

is going to impact the roll back the ball

1:04:49

discussion Hey,

1:04:52

let's maybe I'm rooting for Yasser to kind of

1:04:54

the side it's got some muscle Just you

1:04:57

know sure they love golf as much as they say Need

1:05:01

to hire the group of Salinas

1:05:04

Benjamin and how mean you know not

1:05:06

disrespecting You know inclusive

1:05:08

business model shared prosperity

1:05:10

talk about their vision and proof I hope the vision

1:05:12

fun can get a seat on the board TC. I

1:05:15

Think Yasser

1:05:17

has a seat on the vision fun board. I think that's how

1:05:19

it works I think Yasser needs to

1:05:21

finance the rollback all the all the companies that are

1:05:23

worried about the the dollars And stuff it finance the

1:05:25

rollback you can get a lot if you can get a lot of quick

1:05:27

wins actually not that many people Really want it Maybe

1:05:31

maybe the Saudis of by all the OEMs just

1:05:33

all of them and they're just rolling in there You know your

1:05:35

golf clubs would be standard like it's just

1:05:37

driver. It's not it's pretty It's pretty

1:05:39

cheap to hear Jay and the gang talking about

1:05:41

you know using this to hashtag grow the game now

1:05:44

It's like cool like that's

1:05:45

that that's that's that's why we're doing this

1:05:47

like fuck you All right

1:05:50

TC happy anniversary smell yeah a

1:05:52

question we have outstanding here is what does this

1:05:55

mean for for live Is

1:05:57

it worth also probably worth starting with what

1:05:59

is live?

1:05:59

versus what is the PIF.

1:06:01

Again, we kind of emphasize at the top of the show saying

1:06:04

that this is a partnership

1:06:06

agreement between the PGA Tour, the

1:06:08

DP World Tour, and the Public Investment Fund of

1:06:11

Saudi Arabia, which includes LIV,

1:06:13

in terms of what commercial interest they're bringing. Again,

1:06:15

the letter says, through a framework agreement,

1:06:18

the PIF is contributing its golf-related commercial

1:06:20

businesses and rights, including LIV

1:06:22

golf. Of course, this was gonna happen, but

1:06:24

it felt a little weird for like a bunch of LIV boys

1:06:27

and LIV players to be a little bit taunting

1:06:29

today as their league essentially

1:06:31

was announced that it's closing. I

1:06:34

don't know how they view this as a win,

1:06:36

or for the people that were

1:06:39

like pretending to have liked LIV, how in

1:06:41

the world was this a celebration day? I

1:06:43

agree with you, and like

1:06:46

that it's technically not a win, but

1:06:48

it's easy to argue that it is, because it

1:06:51

basically establishes the credibility of

1:06:53

what they did, which is like, we're here to disrupt

1:06:55

golf, and you have to accept

1:06:57

that. And that's basically what happened. They

1:07:00

got bought out

1:07:02

basically, and so now they get

1:07:04

to

1:07:05

continue to play golf. And like, in a way, that's

1:07:08

the crazy part about this, is both

1:07:10

sides, both teams can argue victory.

1:07:13

But no one was arguing that LIV didn't disrupt

1:07:16

golf. It was like, does that thing suck or not? And

1:07:18

it's like, yeah, well, obviously it sucks. Like it doesn't

1:07:21

mean anything, and now it's going away

1:07:23

this quickly. It's all the way to the bank, brother. If

1:07:26

I'm Brendan Steele, it feels like a win today. Yeah, I

1:07:28

know. It's like the guy for them, for the individual

1:07:30

players, I can see why they're like, yeah, you should have taken

1:07:32

the money. See how right I was

1:07:34

about that. I got my money, and now I'm probably

1:07:36

going to get to come back. So like,

1:07:38

nice guys finish last, basically. I think

1:07:40

that's still a wait and see. I think

1:07:42

there's a wait and see to see how that gets reconciled. I'm

1:07:45

basically just

1:07:46

trying to outline, if I'm putting myself

1:07:48

in their shoes, like I can see how you want to

1:07:50

take a victory lap on this. Yeah.

1:07:54

I think it's a couple of things. One, just

1:07:56

to, again, so there's no uncertainty

1:07:59

here of what we're talking about. talking about, they're going to

1:08:01

get through the 2023 season live

1:08:03

that is. And then this new

1:08:06

group, the PJ tour, Yasser, the

1:08:08

PIF, the DP world tour is going to take a

1:08:10

look at

1:08:11

live and it's P and L

1:08:14

and going to be a lot more L

1:08:16

than P in that. And they're

1:08:18

going to basically say like, okay, let's figure out what, what

1:08:20

the place in our new company is for team golf,

1:08:24

which

1:08:25

speculation here on my part, like would

1:08:27

be none or, or very, very little, maybe

1:08:29

a little bit of a bone and like some sort of a

1:08:32

Ramco team series, like Kuzia

1:08:34

TGL to do like the remaining

1:08:36

like roster spots of TGL get filled out by

1:08:39

guys that were on formerly part of live. Maybe

1:08:41

but what I

1:08:42

can say pretty fucking confidently is not going

1:08:44

to happen is the PGA tour putting up a

1:08:47

title sponsor like John Deere or RBC

1:08:50

or Quicken Loans or whoever, but

1:08:52

only to compete with themselves with a live

1:08:54

event. So all the fans of the fireballs

1:08:56

and the cliques and stingers, like you

1:08:59

better savor these last, uh, say these

1:09:01

last couple of events. That merch is going to be valuable.

1:09:03

No joke. I'm not lying about that. That's

1:09:05

not a, that's not a, uh, a joke

1:09:08

in that. But to your point, Neil, like I don't think the

1:09:10

point of live was never like, it

1:09:12

was never because live was like such an inescapably

1:09:15

brilliant idea. It was just like, I'm not rooting

1:09:17

for me to win. I'm rooting for you to lose. Yeah. I'm

1:09:19

like, I'm going to vibe of breaking this door

1:09:21

down. Like, yeah, we'll just, do

1:09:22

you think they wanted to run a league themselves?

1:09:24

Absolutely not. It was like, no, this was, this

1:09:26

was just a stepping stone to like, we want a

1:09:28

seat at the table. And so in that way it is a

1:09:31

mission accomplished for

1:09:32

them. You know what I keep thinking about though

1:09:34

is how

1:09:35

like real and perfect the Taylor Gooch

1:09:38

big head comp is CEO

1:09:41

at the end of the show. Yeah. Yeah. Just like,

1:09:43

you know, you just sit on the roof drinking big gulps

1:09:46

and it's like, Oh yeah, yeah, man. I just like

1:09:48

just kind of floundered into this like

1:09:51

perfect setup. I just got accidentally

1:09:53

joyed. I accidentally joined the

1:09:56

league. Oh, oops. Yeah.

1:09:59

I guess I'm going to win a couple of them. Well, that's

1:10:02

like, that's cool. And then now I get to come

1:10:04

back and play. Do you guys think

1:10:06

Mickelson's happy today? No.

1:10:09

No way. I don't think so either. I mean,

1:10:12

he's talked all this shit about Jay and now Jay's

1:10:14

his boss again. Like he's the person

1:10:16

who's around that he says to go back and sort

1:10:18

of, if he wants to continue to sort of be on

1:10:20

the PJ tour, which I don't think he's even going

1:10:22

to do that, I doubt it. I mean, probably they'll just

1:10:25

go into the sun play out this last

1:10:27

live season. I mean, if it is,

1:10:29

in fact, the last live season. Or just play majors.

1:10:32

Yeah, just play the majors going forward.

1:10:34

Yeah, his whole thing about media rights,

1:10:36

like this is nothing to do with that. Like none of the,

1:10:38

he's claiming the tour was sitting on $20 billion worth

1:10:41

of media rights. Like NFTs, that's not

1:10:43

a real thing. Like that the tour was hiding all

1:10:45

this money. That's also not a real, none of this is addressed

1:10:48

by what just happened. Like Phil, he's going

1:10:50

to of course play the I was right again card

1:10:52

and the live boys are going to play that card again. But

1:10:55

this is not what Phil wanted out of this, other

1:10:57

than getting a shitload of money.

1:10:58

I think that though that he will frame

1:11:00

it forever as like, I was the huge agent of

1:11:02

change. And I actually don't think that he's like entirely

1:11:05

wrong in some way. No, not at all. We,

1:11:07

if like, you know, if Phil doesn't

1:11:09

what I think probably need a lot of money, he

1:11:12

doesn't sort of go into this deal

1:11:14

with the Saudis quite as sort of brazenly and

1:11:17

maybe live never kind of happens without someone like Phil

1:11:19

to sort of form the backbone of the whole

1:11:21

deal. Like I think he'll, he'll say

1:11:24

on some level, I'm going to be go down in history as

1:11:26

one of the people who changed golf forever and brought

1:11:28

all this money. I'm the person who made you rich. I'm the King

1:11:30

maker. And I think, I

1:11:33

think he'll probably feel pretty smug about that forever.

1:11:35

He's not like, he doesn't need to keep playing

1:11:37

golf to have money. He probably

1:11:38

needs the juice of it, but he's, he's going to

1:11:40

be sort of on some level, he's going

1:11:42

to be annoyed that like it wasn't an outright

1:11:45

win, but he's forever going to frame it in his mind.

1:11:47

Like I won. I think the way that a lot

1:11:49

of this stuff works is, and

1:11:52

I think this would be the same thing is like, we could sit here and talk

1:11:54

for three hours about all the intricacies

1:11:56

and all the reasons he was wrong and NFTs and

1:11:58

media rights and all.

1:11:59

of these different things. But like, man,

1:12:02

the further we get from this, like the

1:12:04

more and more and more simplified it's going to be.

1:12:06

And so when we're looking back on this in 20 years

1:12:09

and KVV, it's like, Hey man, I got room for

1:12:11

one sentence in my brain. Like what happened with

1:12:13

that whole weird couple of years on

1:12:15

the PJ tour? It is going to be like Phil was

1:12:17

right. Like I think that is how it's

1:12:20

going to go. And I'm happy to like, you

1:12:22

know, sit at the bar and like explain

1:12:24

all the details to somebody, but nobody's going to give a shit. It

1:12:27

is going to be like, no, Phil was totally right, man.

1:12:29

He shook it all

1:12:29

up and the tour capitulated and

1:12:32

you know, now we play for $70 million a week. I

1:12:35

uh, Phil's the true goat, not tiger. For

1:12:37

sure. Phil completely rechanged the whole

1:12:39

model of golf. Like I hate that that's

1:12:42

it's, it's a true, like, unfortunately you got to hand

1:12:44

it to him situation just because people are going

1:12:47

to do that. The examples I'm thinking

1:12:49

of in my head are truly horrific and I shouldn't

1:12:51

say them out loud. So I'll just tell you guys to come up

1:12:53

with, come up with like an example of somebody like, yeah,

1:12:56

there's a lot of people that like went in and just destroyed a bunch

1:12:58

of shit and change things. Like

1:12:59

things were very different

1:13:02

on the back half of that. Let's go with the

1:13:04

guy that tried to light a shoe bomber. The guy that tried

1:13:06

to fuck that guy, Richard, Richard

1:13:08

Reed. Yeah. Let's go with that. Like he can take credit

1:13:10

for like, yep, flying's a lot safer now. Thanks

1:13:12

to me. That's pretty much how I

1:13:14

would argue. It isn't though. I mean,

1:13:17

maybe I would argue there's some guys before

1:13:19

him security theater. You know, take that

1:13:22

off security. Yeah. Well, I'll take that offline TSA.

1:13:24

You get what I was saying. Come on. I

1:13:26

know what you're saying. What about it here? Hate to

1:13:28

get, maybe it reblocked

1:13:29

by Phil because we compared to the shoe bomber. What?

1:13:33

Also him unblocking everybody. Uh, that

1:13:36

makes a lot more sense. That could have been part of the

1:13:38

agreement is that Phil had to unblock people. Do we think

1:13:40

Phil knew this? Uh, actually

1:13:42

don't. I don't think he did. I think because they

1:13:45

were so concerned about leaks that they wouldn't,

1:13:47

they were going to do the worst guy. I think this is the

1:13:49

biggest upset of the century is that to

1:13:51

do something this, this big

1:13:54

and

1:13:55

not nobody knows about it.

1:13:57

Like in truly that's like the word

1:13:59

I'm.

1:13:59

everybody that we've talked is like, I had no idea,

1:14:02

no idea, no idea players,

1:14:04

you know, sponsors, whoever you want to bring

1:14:06

up. And that's just like,

1:14:08

that's like, that's where I'm like, you got to

1:14:10

hand it to him. I mean, Jay did run us like

1:14:13

straight up, like a total flea

1:14:15

flicker caught the defense napping. So

1:14:18

let's dig into that a little bit. Cause I, it's all, yeah,

1:14:20

I want to hear, did you talk to anybody who was in the player

1:14:22

meeting and kind of how that

1:14:24

all went? Because let's get into a little

1:14:26

bit of the, like, should he have told anybody,

1:14:29

should he not have told anybody that, that kind of

1:14:31

situation

1:14:32

golf golfers are notorious for

1:14:34

not being able to keep secrets very well. There's

1:14:37

a lot of big J journalists, ourselves included that

1:14:39

are hunting for angles and getting, you

1:14:41

know, asking questions a lot and call it guys

1:14:44

are pretty talkative, right? But there's a back and forth on

1:14:46

what you can say, what you cannot say. We've

1:14:49

known a lot of stuff throughout this whole process that

1:14:51

we just have to be quiet on and we can kind of insinuate

1:14:53

when we form our opinions on it. But you

1:14:55

know, you can't outright say like so and so told me

1:14:57

this dude, none of it, I had nothing,

1:14:59

no freaking clue. And none of the dudes

1:15:02

truly had any idea that this was coming. Like Maura Cowell

1:15:04

tweeted, he had no idea it was coming. Jay talked

1:15:06

to JT today. He had absolutely

1:15:08

no idea this was coming. A lot of guys are taking a few

1:15:11

days. A lot of them didn't run straight to the press

1:15:13

after the meeting to like start shredding

1:15:16

this thing. It was like, I think everyone needs a few days,

1:15:18

maybe a week

1:15:18

or two to like download on

1:15:20

all of this and start picturing it, start understanding what

1:15:23

the, what the picture looks like. But

1:15:25

the vibe in the player meeting tonight was

1:15:27

not of that. It was a lot of reaction.

1:15:29

Um, that's a mule uprising. The

1:15:32

wheels are kicking everything. Rick

1:15:35

run goods tweet said Johnson Wagger

1:15:38

Wagner estimated the negative positive splits be 90

1:15:41

10 in the player meeting, including a standing ovation

1:15:43

when the room called for new tour leadership. Talked

1:15:45

to two sources that did not necessarily

1:15:48

say that it was a standing ovation, but maybe some muted

1:15:50

applause when it would, when Grayson Murray called

1:15:52

for Jay's head for maybe the third or fourth game, which

1:15:54

I believe

1:15:55

happened in the, in the meeting as

1:15:57

well. You know, who should run the tour.

1:15:59

You know

1:16:03

who would have fixed this shit and really seen all this

1:16:05

covered? Frank Grayson Murray. It is good to see TC

1:16:07

and Grayson Murray fighting some common crowd and I've regret

1:16:09

that he left the show before I could say that because.

1:16:13

But yeah, I think people are very,

1:16:15

I don't know, again, the emotional reaction

1:16:17

to it is it's again,

1:16:20

it's really, really hard for guys to sit there and stomach

1:16:23

this when like obviously the better

1:16:25

thing is like the golf world to get back together for

1:16:27

the PGA tour to have a lot more money and to no longer be fighting

1:16:29

a legal battle and to get rid of a competitor.

1:16:32

But it's really hard for the stomach when like these are the

1:16:34

dudes that didn't take the tens and hundreds of millions

1:16:36

of dollars from this league that have stuck

1:16:38

their neck out for this for this tour multiple

1:16:41

times have become kind of martyrs for this

1:16:43

tour. Like end up looking like idiots, talk to a couple

1:16:45

guys. They're like, well, now I look like a fucking idiot for

1:16:47

standing up for this. Like now the Saudi money

1:16:49

is basically forced upon me and I have no choice

1:16:52

to take it like that is like Saudi money

1:16:54

has now taken over the game of golf. It's everywhere now

1:16:56

in golf, which I

1:16:57

think we've kind of have said that over the last couple

1:16:59

of years. This is inevitable that it was going to end up this

1:17:01

way. It's just still kind of shocking when it happens

1:17:04

in the way that it has. And I

1:17:06

don't know what the right answer is. I struggle

1:17:08

to sit here in armchair a lot of this really

1:17:10

because a lot of criticisms

1:17:13

that I've felt of Jay kind of

1:17:15

get addressed by the fact that it's like, dude, his

1:17:17

job's like make money for the players.

1:17:19

Like okay, well, yeah, they haven't addressed this, like,

1:17:21

which makes it really shitty to watch golf on TV. Okay,

1:17:23

his job's to make money for the players. And at the end

1:17:25

of the day, that's like what drives. We have a mission

1:17:27

statement. Like we have drives all the decisions

1:17:30

that we make and like the PGA tour

1:17:32

has a mission statement, you know, or the commissioner has a mission

1:17:34

to whatever it is specifically.

1:17:36

I don't know what it is, but it's to make money for the players. And that like

1:17:38

is what drives the decision making. And through that lens,

1:17:41

it's like, yeah, fuck man. Like this

1:17:43

sucks. This is really not X's and

1:17:45

O's for those guys though. There's just so there's

1:17:47

a lot of, you know, emotion

1:17:48

involved in this, especially when you ask

1:17:51

guys to, you know,

1:17:53

BAM for you, you know, come on. This is

1:17:55

your tour guys. This is your tour. Like, like,

1:17:58

let's, you know, let's rally.

1:17:59

here and then yeah, just to then

1:18:02

come out with this and not tell anybody,

1:18:04

that's why everybody's pissed,

1:18:07

right? Like in the smart decision and like blindsiding

1:18:10

people with a smart decision are two different things. Yes,

1:18:12

that's extremely well said. And I think just

1:18:14

to pull the thread on that and again, just like

1:18:17

underscore this.

1:18:18

Sol, you talked about these guys who, you

1:18:21

know, Neil who took that task and who

1:18:23

said, I, you know, JT, Max, Beef,

1:18:25

Rory, we haven't really talked about Rory all that much.

1:18:28

All these guys who like

1:18:30

it weighed on them, I'm sure, going

1:18:32

into the media room every time and taking all these questions

1:18:35

and probably made for awkward conversations and

1:18:37

probably made for a lot of like really weird

1:18:40

just years here. If those

1:18:42

guys leave, just to say the quiet part out loud here,

1:18:44

if those guys leave, the fucking tour doesn't exist anymore. Right.

1:18:47

Like at all, like it's not just like, oh man, hey,

1:18:49

we kind of did you solid here. It's like, no, you guys like

1:18:52

saved the tour. If Scotty

1:18:54

and Rom and Xander and Cantlay and

1:18:56

Spieth and JT and all those guys, like if

1:18:58

they leave eight months ago, we're not even having this conversation

1:19:01

because then the piff wins and they've

1:19:03

just moved everything to live. You know

1:19:05

what I mean? Like the only reason we're even in this spot

1:19:07

now is because those guys did

1:19:09

what

1:19:10

they eventually got dicked over for. Which

1:19:12

is nice, but if I'm like John

1:19:14

Rom, I'm like, okay, I need

1:19:16

to be made whole for this. No, that's what I'm saying. 300 million. Yeah,

1:19:19

I think they will be. So once the emotions die down,

1:19:21

I'm sure,

1:19:22

I'm sure that's in the works. Do you think they can give like

1:19:24

John Rom and Scotty Sheffler and Roy McElroy

1:19:26

and all this three, $400 million each? Like

1:19:29

maybe over 20 years, I don't know, but like

1:19:32

the idea that that's going to add up pretty quick.

1:19:34

Cause if I'm Ricky Fowler, I got my hand out too,

1:19:36

even if I'm not an elite player. Well, that's

1:19:38

going back to what I was saying earlier. It's like the organizational

1:19:41

structure now without the meritocracy argument

1:19:44

is broken down. Like, yeah, how do you

1:19:46

decide how to divvy that up? Checking

1:19:48

your locker, Neil, there's an envelope. Exactly.

1:19:51

That's

1:19:52

going to get messy, KBB. But at

1:19:54

the same time, what choice do they have?

1:19:56

Now there's no, there's no competitor. So

1:19:58

that's where you, it's like. Like truly

1:20:01

it's an antitrust case now. Do you guys want

1:20:03

to start a golf league? Really quick, so you agree? It's

1:20:06

fucking crazy. Also,

1:20:08

I want to go back to you on the thing, though. Real quick, if

1:20:10

we're talking about making players whole and

1:20:12

sanctions, like I could see

1:20:15

a situation where it becomes, all right,

1:20:17

Phil, you got $200 million. It's either

1:20:20

like two years and you can come back, or

1:20:22

you can pay back this amount and you can play

1:20:24

right now. Yeah, there's probably answers

1:20:27

to that question, I think. There's a scale

1:20:29

there.

1:20:29

There'll be settlements where people will be like, I'm just

1:20:32

so sick of this. I want to go play golf. Yeah. And

1:20:34

now we're all playing for so much more money. I

1:20:36

don't even want to think about it anymore. Phil's

1:20:38

almost a billionaire, so thanks for asking. The money

1:20:41

should not be a problem. So one thing I wanted

1:20:43

to point out that you brought up, and I think earlier today,

1:20:46

and it goes to the question of what happens

1:20:48

to Liv. Hasn't been a lot of chatter out of

1:20:50

the official Liv accounts. Norman

1:20:54

finally tweeted. So talking about being blindsided, I

1:20:56

got to think that people working over there, like,

1:20:58

yeah, you could argue this is a win for the golfers.

1:21:00

You haven't even mentioned Greg Norman's name. No,

1:21:04

no, the guy Yasser said, he said like, oh, they

1:21:06

call it a point blank. Where does Greg Norman fit in? Yeah,

1:21:08

I told him five minutes ago. Nice. Yikes.

1:21:13

Oh my god. Imagine having ridden for Greg

1:21:15

Norman just and not gotten

1:21:18

paid by him over the last year or so and just

1:21:20

totally eviscerated within one day, just

1:21:22

gone.

1:21:22

He will do the same thing that Mickelson

1:21:25

did. One, he'll probably get a fat payout, right?

1:21:27

Or he'll get litigious AF.

1:21:30

And two, he can argue, like, see,

1:21:32

look at how I disrupted things. Look what I

1:21:34

did. I changed the game, right? And

1:21:36

again, I think with Norman, or same

1:21:38

thing with Phil, like, you can make that argument. Garrett Morrison

1:21:41

on the Friday transcribed exactly

1:21:43

Yasser's answer when asked on CNBC. And

1:21:45

it's totally awesome. It's worth reading. It said, will

1:21:48

Greg Norman, is he still involved? And Yasser

1:21:50

said, he is. I

1:21:54

made the call just before this. And

1:21:56

of course, he's a-

1:21:59

a partner with us and all

1:22:02

the stakeholders that we have or will

1:22:04

have with us, they had a call

1:22:07

just right before this interview. That

1:22:09

is so damning. It's

1:22:13

so good. I don't want to like,

1:22:15

English is Yasser's second language. I don't want to rag on him

1:22:18

too hard, but he didn't come across great, I

1:22:20

didn't think, in the interview as well. He didn't

1:22:22

seem especially well prepared and extremely

1:22:24

confident things. It

1:22:26

didn't seem like Jay was trying to reinforce

1:22:29

after

1:22:29

he would talk, be like, we're

1:22:32

going to get this done. And it's just like, man,

1:22:35

I guess that's part of the job. Goodell

1:22:37

has to eat shit for the owners, but

1:22:39

I mean, god, after how vitriolic

1:22:42

it's gotten, how can you sit there? I just,

1:22:44

hey, we're partners now. It's bizarre.

1:22:47

I feel a little bit sad for Greg Norman. Like,

1:22:49

he just complained. What? I don't know why.

1:22:52

What? He could make a new

1:22:54

KBV. Just kidding. No,

1:22:56

he just completely. He's

1:22:59

wanted this world tour, which I think actually

1:23:01

has value for

1:23:04

many years. And he's been

1:23:06

completely, obviously, a dick about

1:23:08

a lot of the way he's handled it, whatever. But it's

1:23:11

like feeling sorry for Kendall Roy, like watching him

1:23:13

sitting on the roof. Somebody needs to, somebody

1:23:16

right now, get me a Photoshop of

1:23:18

Norman's face sitting watching the water. He's

1:23:21

just got to be so deflated deep down.

1:23:24

I'm not involved in this. And honestly, also, I feel

1:23:26

sorry for the Australian fans, because

1:23:28

I think the Australian fans are going to get fucked over again

1:23:30

in this. Liv used them to

1:23:33

say, hey, look, and there will

1:23:35

be no tournament in Australia. I'm sorry. There

1:23:37

just won't be. They're going to get fucked

1:23:39

twice. There's too many stakeholders now, right?

1:23:41

You've got to keep a lot of people happy. I mean, this

1:23:43

is,

1:23:44

I don't know. I

1:23:47

said it after the Liv Adelaine. You thank

1:23:49

your Liv, your Saudi sugar

1:23:51

daddy for bringing it. That doesn't mean

1:23:53

it makes economic sense to do it. And now we're

1:23:55

right back at, I don't know, it's

1:23:58

even worse for that kind of opportunity.

1:23:59

and landscape now. That's so true

1:24:02

though. Katie, Norman's gotten. He

1:24:04

cucked twice on like, by the same

1:24:07

thing of like the PJ tour, like, I know we'll just take your idea

1:24:09

and excommunicate you. It's a

1:24:11

true, you can't fight city hall situation for him.

1:24:13

He's also also not a serious person. Yeah,

1:24:16

that's true. Surely you just, but this whole

1:24:18

thing, yeah. Like I'm sorry, Greg, I love it. You're

1:24:20

not a serious person. You need to get the fuck out

1:24:22

of here. Oh my God.

1:24:25

Um, I got three minutes

1:24:27

left. All right. Because you know what? Like

1:24:30

new everybody's day, but I got a rec league basketball game

1:24:32

tonight. I got to go get some buckets. All right.

1:24:34

I want to hear your eyes. I want to hear your winners

1:24:36

and losers. I like I said earlier,

1:24:38

I would, I would ride that the PGA tour

1:24:41

as an entity is a winner. And

1:24:43

I would argue that the management of that entity

1:24:46

is a loser. That would be my

1:24:48

like first two off the top. Would you guys agree with that?

1:24:51

I would agree with that. Yeah.

1:24:53

Uh, I think it's really tough to, to

1:24:56

consider it a massive W when you,

1:24:58

you go home at the end of the day and

1:25:01

you've got like

1:25:02

all your best players in the world, the 9

1:25:05

11 families and like a good

1:25:07

amount of fans like pissed off at you.

1:25:09

I think it's hard to be like, man, I fucking killed it. And

1:25:12

I think they don't know it yet, but I think the PGA

1:25:15

tour members, especially the guys in the

1:25:17

top 30, the, the, what

1:25:19

is it? The, not the Delaware cabal

1:25:22

are massive winners. I think if you give

1:25:25

it two years, those guys are all going to get paid it

1:25:27

some way or another. I think,

1:25:30

I mean, lives a loser. I think the, I think the

1:25:32

Saudis are probably the winner though. Like just as

1:25:34

a,

1:25:34

for their goal, for their goal, for their goal,

1:25:37

like they got exactly what they wanted. I think they don't have

1:25:39

the headache of running a tour anymore.

1:25:41

They just get to sit on the board. They get to go

1:25:43

to all the tournaments. They get to have their name plastered

1:25:45

on billboards as an official marketing partner.

1:25:48

I mean, that is a runaway win for

1:25:51

the Saudi Arabian Saudi Arabian

1:25:53

public investment fund. Here's a kind of a, maybe

1:25:55

a backwards way of getting into

1:25:57

this answer is well, obviously the

1:26:00

details. We can't know all the details. We can't know how bad

1:26:02

the situation was the tour. We can't know what

1:26:04

other options there were. But

1:26:06

to go

1:26:07

confidently into a decision

1:26:09

that would knowingly be this unpopular,

1:26:12

knowingly put your own comments like up

1:26:14

against what you said today versus what you said a year ago,

1:26:16

what you said several months ago, knowing

1:26:18

how bad all of the optics would

1:26:20

look on all this and to still go down that route

1:26:24

tells me that there's probably something

1:26:26

there that makes them very confident in this decision, right?

1:26:28

Like this maybe like probably explored

1:26:30

all options and thoughts and said this is the best

1:26:33

option for us going forward. Is it

1:26:35

black and white? I know like I can't

1:26:37

wait. I can never predict what the next criticisms of

1:26:39

us are going to be. That's not like defending all of

1:26:41

this. This is going to be extremely gray, extremely

1:26:44

not easy to swallow for anyone.

1:26:47

And I still think like

1:26:49

that was probably probably again for the goal they're

1:26:51

trying to do, which is, you know, to create playing

1:26:54

or money and playing opportunities for the tour pros. This

1:26:56

was probably the best option. It doesn't

1:26:58

feel good. Does it make me want to watch more golf? Does it make

1:27:00

me a bigger fan of golf? No, it

1:27:03

it again. I was only really rooting

1:27:05

for the PGA tour in this because I knew a fractured

1:27:08

golf world was going to suck and I knew Liv was never

1:27:10

going to make it. And I maybe we can

1:27:12

just go right back to our full on hate of the PGA

1:27:14

tour and all of this because I don't we don't need to root

1:27:17

for them to win anymore because they did probably win

1:27:19

this. I think I think they are the winner today. I

1:27:21

mean, they are getting the Saudi money and the Saudis

1:27:23

are going to get what they want. Again, they didn't care about

1:27:25

golf. They wanted to use golf and the golfers

1:27:28

to get what they wanted. And they got that today.

1:27:30

Before I go, I want to just

1:27:33

Rory winner or loser here because

1:27:35

I think you could argue there's going to be two camps

1:27:37

on this one. Yeah, I think

1:27:39

winner and loser. I think more lose

1:27:41

than win today for what he

1:27:44

cares about by a very, very, very wide

1:27:46

margin. And I think slowly

1:27:48

those two scales are going to

1:27:49

flip over time, right? Like I think what

1:27:52

you're saying, Neil is give it, you know,

1:27:55

give it a couple months, give it a couple of years, let

1:27:57

all this kind of simmer down. I think like when we're looking

1:27:59

five years from now, I think it's going to be probably

1:28:02

a massive W.

1:28:04

I think if you look at it right now, it's a massive L,

1:28:06

right? He, he probably, I don't

1:28:08

want to say wasted,

1:28:10

you know, years of his career, but like, man,

1:28:12

if you don't think that took a toll, like you're not paying

1:28:14

attention, right? And I think if

1:28:16

it would be crazy to think that there wasn't, there

1:28:19

wasn't a toll that was, that was on him these

1:28:21

last couple of years,

1:28:22

having to like be the fucking pain sponge

1:28:25

for all of this shit, right?

1:28:27

And some of that's on him for taking

1:28:29

that on, but man, I, I don't know. We're

1:28:33

pretty, it's pretty clear how we feel about Rory

1:28:35

in these parts. And I commend

1:28:37

him for being, you

1:28:38

know, at least trying to do the right thing and say

1:28:41

what he actually, right? What he actually thought. That's

1:28:44

what he thinks. Right. I mean, that's, I guess that's a

1:28:46

win personally. You can, I guess you can

1:28:48

like

1:28:49

lay your head easy on the pillow. If you're

1:28:52

speaking your mind.

1:28:54

Yeah. I mean, I did, from my perspective, I think

1:28:56

Rory stood for something that he

1:28:58

believed in and his reputation

1:29:00

remains sort of intact. I'm sure from your

1:29:02

fucking idiot's perspective, that he's like took a massive

1:29:05

L and he's like crying in his, you know,

1:29:07

million dollar mansion or whatever. But I think in

1:29:10

the end, like Rory, you know, had, had

1:29:12

some beliefs that he wasn't willing to sort of compromise

1:29:14

and he stood by him. Yeah. He said at

1:29:16

last July, he said, um, you know,

1:29:18

when it kind of seemed like his stance on live had softened, he

1:29:20

was basically like, look, I think the, the Saudis

1:29:22

want to invest a lot of money in golf. I think ultimately that's a good

1:29:25

thing. And it seemed like it was softening. And when

1:29:27

he's asked about it again, he's like, I want to be clear. Like what Liv

1:29:29

is doing, I don't agree with, right? But he didn't

1:29:31

stand on like the morality clause of

1:29:33

like the Saudis one and two invest in golf. Right.

1:29:36

So I, I don't think he comes across nearly

1:29:37

as hypocritical as like Jay and the PGA

1:29:40

tour, exact team do of going on TV

1:29:42

and invoking the nine 11 families today. Yeah.

1:29:45

I mean, it's like, it's like the, the money

1:29:47

is a, it's, it's water, baby. It's coming

1:29:49

downhill. Can you, can we get it in the storm drain?

1:29:51

Or is it going to flood the,

1:29:53

you know, flood the streets? I guess. I'll

1:29:56

leave you with that guys. I got to go.

1:29:58

Thank you. Deal. Yep.

1:29:59

Could be a triple threat out there, Neil. I will.

1:30:02

I will add on to it's hard

1:30:04

to sit here in armchair a lot of this too of,

1:30:07

I don't think this option was on the table two,

1:30:10

three years ago from the Saudis of like,

1:30:12

hey, we want to, like this exact option was not

1:30:14

on the table, right? And the

1:30:16

Saudis did have to power play their

1:30:18

way into the situation and the

1:30:20

tour is up against an unstoppable force

1:30:23

of truly, truly billions of dollars.

1:30:26

And also assholes on the other end

1:30:28

that are willing to starve you out and

1:30:30

spend it just to starve you out, right? Like that combination

1:30:33

is lethal, truly lethal for the tour.

1:30:36

That's what I think Jay wants to scream from the rooftops

1:30:38

and probably can't. I'm just like, dude,

1:30:40

like I couldn't have done this two years ago. It

1:30:43

has been shitty to go through. And now we got to this point.

1:30:45

I'm like, I don't feel good about it either. But like, what the fuck

1:30:47

else am I supposed to do? What

1:30:50

other key decision points would you guys point towards

1:30:52

of being like, should have done this other than obviously

1:30:54

the dumb interviews?

1:30:57

I think, yeah, you're honestly right. Like if

1:30:59

Jay had come, if he had been a like a massive

1:31:01

change commissioner and been like, hey guys, like we

1:31:04

got to do this sort of thing, this is a way to

1:31:06

get more money and do it. I think it

1:31:08

would have been hard to sort of move that. And he's

1:31:10

not that person. Like he's a make

1:31:12

sure the bills get paid, make sure the sponsors feel happy

1:31:14

kind of guy. And so it

1:31:17

did take something like this to move it forward. So

1:31:19

I, you know, I guess in the end, like

1:31:21

he was the one who brought peace to golf or at

1:31:23

least Jimmy Dunn is probably the real person who brought it. But

1:31:26

Jay was able to sort of sign off

1:31:28

on it. I mean, I think I've been thinking a lot about like

1:31:30

Jimmy Dunn's role in all this. Like, and if Jimmy Dunn doesn't

1:31:32

have like moral objections to

1:31:35

the 9-11 stuff, who the fuck am I

1:31:38

to sit here and say like that I have objections

1:31:40

about it? Like,

1:31:41

you know, maybe I should sit this one out in that sense

1:31:43

because Tell listeners why that is for the, that

1:31:46

are not familiar with Jimmy's situation. Jimmy

1:31:48

Dunn, his financial firm was

1:31:50

basically in the, you know, twin towers. He

1:31:53

happened to not be at work that day. He lost a

1:31:55

ton of his friends in 9-11. And

1:31:57

people always ask like, why is 9-11 in connection?

1:32:00

to Saudi Arabia, well, you know, 11

1:32:02

of the 12 hijackers were Saudi Arabian

1:32:04

citizens. And there's a lot of evidence that the

1:32:07

actually, the government of Saudi Arabia did sort

1:32:10

of, you know, train some of these guys or did sort

1:32:12

of ask them to, you know, be involved

1:32:14

in kind of these, you know, hard Muslim

1:32:16

sort of extremist Muslim organizations. There's

1:32:19

this court case has been split or the proceeding

1:32:21

forward that they will not let go through

1:32:23

that the Saudi Arabians have fought it at every single

1:32:26

end. And so, you know, there's a

1:32:28

nine 11 families feel very much

1:32:30

like Saudi Arabia is still refusing

1:32:32

to claim any responsibility for stuff

1:32:35

at nine 11.

1:32:36

And I think they have every

1:32:38

right to feel frustrated about this. But

1:32:41

you know, Jimmy has sort of said, and he's, he's done

1:32:43

a lot of there's, you know, classic ESPN

1:32:45

sort of feature about how, you know,

1:32:48

broken and hurt he was and how golf kind of helped

1:32:50

put his life back together. I

1:32:52

know it's hard to sort of square that in

1:32:55

my mind, but also I didn't lose, you

1:32:57

know, I mean, I, one of my friends,

1:33:00

his mom, his mother-in-law was killed in the

1:33:02

Pentagon. That's as close as my connection is to

1:33:04

it. You know, Jimmy's had

1:33:06

literally people he worked with and

1:33:09

some of his best friends. And so, you

1:33:11

know, if he's willing to stomach this and be okay with it, his,

1:33:13

I think his point is probably like the money is there

1:33:15

anyway, like we got to, they're everywhere in

1:33:17

sports,

1:33:18

they're everywhere in society. And

1:33:20

you know, I would love to hear from him publicly

1:33:23

about, you know, how he sort of came to that decision.

1:33:25

But this is what he does. He makes kind of people

1:33:27

merger, merge their businesses and get along.

1:33:30

So it's not a merger. It's not a merger.

1:33:32

It's not a merger. Excuse me. Oh,

1:33:34

I think the one

1:33:36

kind of final thing that I wanted to dive

1:33:38

into, if you guys are interested is just

1:33:40

what, so taking

1:33:43

the DOJ stuff out and the monopoly

1:33:45

stuff and let's just save it like all

1:33:48

of this goes through the way that they're selling it. What

1:33:50

the fuck is this podcast now? This is such bullshit

1:33:52

that we get tasked with dealing through this. I wanted to talk

1:33:54

about how many majors Rory was going to win. So

1:33:56

the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. Let's

1:33:59

just say that.

1:33:59

that all that stuff goes through the

1:34:02

way that they claimed it was gonna go through today.

1:34:04

What does that actually mean for golf? Because

1:34:07

basically you have all of these powers kind

1:34:09

of consolidated in one place. You got a massive

1:34:12

slush fund of cash. Like are

1:34:14

we talking like purses just go to the moon

1:34:17

immediately? Are we talking investments and other

1:34:19

things? What do you, Solly, where do you think we're headed?

1:34:22

Dude, it was like three hours into this dropping

1:34:24

today. And I was like, wait a second, let's talk about

1:34:26

this. Is there like a new tour? Is

1:34:29

this still the same PGA tour? Is it the same

1:34:31

events? Are the events moving around? I

1:34:33

still don't think we have answers to any of that. If

1:34:35

I was to guess, it's gonna look relatively

1:34:37

similar. But again, I just, I

1:34:40

have no experience dealing with the Saudis and

1:34:42

taking billions of dollars of their money. But first

1:34:44

thing that came to mind for me was like, well, yeah,

1:34:47

they're gonna want an event in Saudi Arabia. They have

1:34:49

a Formula One event there. They have wrestling there. They

1:34:51

have obviously the Saudi international.

1:34:54

Obviously they have live events. They're like, that's what they want. They

1:34:56

want to introduce tourism to Saudi Arabia the same way

1:34:58

that's gone to the UAE and Dubai and things like

1:35:00

that. So I don't think we can

1:35:02

answer that right now. I struggle to even kind of

1:35:05

guess. I think that they have an image of what that's

1:35:07

all gonna look like. But how

1:35:09

binding is the agreement? How long

1:35:12

does the agreement go? Can the Saudis money,

1:35:14

does the Saudi money dry up quickly if they don't get

1:35:16

what they want out of it? Do they fund it

1:35:18

annually? There's so many questions that need

1:35:20

to be answered. There's so much of what happens

1:35:23

to the current sponsors of the PGA tour? If

1:35:26

you were on the fence about doing this, do you wanna continue

1:35:28

down this path like with Saudi involvement

1:35:31

in it? Probably, but they didn't

1:35:33

know this was coming. TV partners, so

1:35:35

much is about to change and I don't

1:35:38

know what it's gonna look like. So it's hard to sit

1:35:40

here. A couple of questions we got, how

1:35:42

am I supposed to feel about this? Like, dude, I truly

1:35:44

don't know. I don't know how I feel about it

1:35:47

right now. We

1:35:49

knew Liv wasn't gonna last. We've said that for

1:35:52

as long as we possibly can. And

1:35:54

we knew there was gonna be some kind of reconciliation. Again, I think

1:35:56

we predicted, a couple months

1:35:58

ago, I predicted like it was. We'd end up with Liv

1:36:01

moves to the fall. There's an Aramco team series

1:36:03

that's joint shared of some kind, something

1:36:05

like that. And the PGA Tour keeps their Monday or

1:36:08

January through September schedule. And

1:36:11

that didn't quite end up happening, but something

1:36:13

along those lines ended up happening in terms of

1:36:15

some kind of agreement reached.

1:36:17

I think a couple of things that

1:36:19

you touched on there. One, I think it's

1:36:22

a new company, and this would be an investment

1:36:24

in that company. So I would imagine that's like a, I

1:36:26

don't think that's an annual check that they're sending to

1:36:28

underwrite things. I think that's like you're a partner

1:36:31

in the company. So I don't really

1:36:33

think that's getting cold feet or going away

1:36:35

without dissolving the company or divesting

1:36:37

the equity, I would assume. But

1:36:40

two, I think there's a couple of interesting things.

1:36:43

The DP World Tour we haven't really even talked about

1:36:45

at all, but they have to be doing fucking

1:36:47

back flips today, I would think,

1:36:50

about their tour

1:36:52

kind of looked like it was teetering on the edge of just

1:36:55

immolation over the last couple

1:36:57

of years. And now it seems like, it

1:36:59

just seems like the kind of thing that like a big influx

1:37:01

of cash and like strapping

1:37:04

yourself onto kind of

1:37:06

a rocket ship with all this other stuff

1:37:08

just seems generally great for the DP

1:37:10

World Tour, which is interesting. We

1:37:13

know with like the Aramco

1:37:15

Ladies Series and the Team Series and all that stuff,

1:37:17

we know that there's an interest in women's golf.

1:37:20

I wouldn't be surprised if we see this investment kind

1:37:23

of becoming the first step

1:37:25

towards pulling the LPGA under

1:37:28

that umbrella as well, which is,

1:37:30

you could convince me and twist my arm is could

1:37:33

be a good thing for women's golf, could

1:37:35

be a bad thing for women's golf, who could say,

1:37:37

truly don't know. But I think

1:37:39

once you start looking at it like that, it's like, man, there's, we're

1:37:42

truly just scratching the surface of like, what's going

1:37:45

on here?

1:37:46

Parentheses, footnote,

1:37:48

all of those things, like provided this

1:37:50

is able to even like go forward because

1:37:52

it seems comically like it shouldn't. And

1:37:54

what happens if it shouldn't? Like then what happens?

1:37:57

Then does Liv pick back up and everybody.

1:37:59

pretends like this agreement never happened. And oh

1:38:02

my God, dude, I

1:38:04

don't feel qualified for this. I really don't. Yeah.

1:38:08

What if the Saudis just decide to run all sports?

1:38:11

I mean, what's to stop them now from saying,

1:38:13

yeah, we want an NBA team? Like, you know, it's

1:38:16

just, why shouldn't you get an NFL

1:38:18

team? Like, I think they've kind

1:38:20

of opened the door to that.

1:38:22

And, you know, like, the piff ain't going anywhere.

1:38:24

You know, it's going to be worth a trillion dollars and

1:38:26

not too long. How

1:38:28

much money is a trillion dollars, DJ? We

1:38:32

truly have no concept of that. Yeah. I

1:38:36

don't think I've fully wrapped my head around and definitely haven't iterated

1:38:39

this enough on, like, imagining what this

1:38:41

new entity could be. We're probably thinking, like,

1:38:43

way too small.

1:38:44

That's what I mean. We've

1:38:47

always pictured all these individual tours. And we've always also

1:38:49

said, like, hey, if you were designing a tour now, you wouldn't look

1:38:51

like the PGA tour. I didn't know you'd

1:38:53

kind of snap your fingers and just get rid of that structure, like

1:38:55

they've claimed to have done, which is where it seems like

1:38:58

they have a world of complications ahead of them. And

1:39:00

gosh, there's

1:39:03

got to be so much uncertainty down the road here

1:39:06

in Ponte Vedra about how things are going to proceed.

1:39:09

And yeah, I think it's close

1:39:12

to wrapping up tonight, because that is all the reaction

1:39:14

you

1:39:14

can have on day one to this of, like, seriously,

1:39:17

we might have to move to close to daily pods, because

1:39:19

a lot is going to happen. A

1:39:22

lot of opinions are going to be shared. A lot of thinking

1:39:25

needs to be done on this, because holy

1:39:27

shit, yeah, what does it mean for the Ryder Cup?

1:39:29

Like, are the European tour guys

1:39:32

back in the Ryder Cup? Is Sergio back on the Ryder

1:39:34

Cup team? Well, not only that, but, like, again,

1:39:36

this is my super rudimentary

1:39:39

understanding of it. But, like,

1:39:41

if the DP World

1:39:43

Tour is putting all of their commercial interests into

1:39:45

this new bucket, like, doesn't that include their share of the Ryder

1:39:48