The Senate investigations subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for Sept. 13 to further address the pending deal between the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund and the PGA Tour.
Titled “The PGA Tour LIV Deal: Examining the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund’s Investments in the United States,” the meeting is set to begin at 10 a.m. ET at Dirksen Senate Office Building.
According to Front Office Sports, no one from the PGA Tour has been requested to appear again thus far. But PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan once again denied a request to testify before the subcommittee.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the subcommittee chairman, asked Al-Rumayyan to testify before the committee since June, when the two entities shocked the golf world by announcing an agreement to form a new commercial entity in conjunction with the DP World Tour.
In a letter dated Aug. 16, Blumenthal once again asked the PIF governor to testify before the committee on Sept. 13 or propose an alternate date. Akin Gump Strauss & Feld, the firm legally representing PIF, declined on behalf of its client on Aug. 23 in a letter first reported by Politico.
“The PIF is proud of its investments, and believes that its support for forward-thinking companies will facilitate growth, economic opportunity, and job creation in the United States, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and around the world,” wrote Akin Gump partner Raphael Prober in the letter.
“As the governor of an instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a minister bound by the Kingdom’s laws regarding the confidentiality of certain information, however, [Al-Rumayyan] cannot participate in any public hearing that is part of an unbounded inquiry into the PIF’s past, present, and future interests and investments.”
The PGA Tour and the PIF-back LIV Golf had been in litigation until it released a framework for its deal in June. The parties have until Dec. 31 to finalize a deal.
Lobbyists on behalf of the Tour had denounced the rising Saudi influence in the game of golf, but now the Tour is spending record sums on The Hill to win approval of the deal.
The Tour spent $460,000 on federal lobbying in the first six months of 2023, more than the $450,000 it spent on lobbying in all of 2022, according to federal lobbying disclosures analyzed by the money-in-politics tracking nonprofit OpenSecrets.
