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The LIV Golf tour, the breakaway circuit bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, generated “virtually zero” revenue during its first season, its lawyers admitted in US federal court documents filed on Monday.
Attorneys for the rebel tour made the admission in a motion with the US district court for Northern California, in which LIV Golf asked US district court judge Beth Labson Freeman to deny the PGA Tour’s motion for leave to add the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, as plaintiffs in the tour’s countersuit against LIV Golf.
Related: LIV Golf risks becoming an irrelevance in Saudi sportswashing portfolio | Ewan Murray
A trial date for January 2024 has been scheduled for the countersuit, in which the PGA Tour alleges that LIV Golf interfered with existing player contracts. However, the PGA Tour wants to delay that date because it said the PIF and Al-Rumayyan have not complied with discovery and depositions.
“Delay will equally harm LIV because the Tour continues its anticompetitive conduct while the litigation is pending,” LIV Golf’s lawyers wrote in the motion obtained by the Guardian. “The Tour has damaged LIV’s brand, driven up its costs by hundreds of millions of dollars, and driven down revenues to virtually zero.”
Attorneys for LIV Golf argue it will suffer “immeasurable” damage “[i]f the Tour is permitted to continue its anticompetitive conduct into another season beyond 2023”.
LIV Golf reportedly spent more than $700m to draw some of golf’s biggest names, including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau, with $25m prize purses, nine-figure signing-on fees and gaudy perks such as the use of private jets.
It has also drawn fierce backlash from critics who accuse the Saudi government of using sports to distract from the kingdom’s dismal human rights record, its alleged ties to the September 11 attacks, the severe repression of…
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