The biggest news in sports and tourism this week was the sudden wrap-up of a massive fight between the Saudi-backed LIV Golf and the PGA Tour.
We had just written about Saudi Arabia’s use of icons of Western culture to “excite its burgeoning younger generation and supercharge its tourism industry.” In the same story: “campaigners say Saudi Arabia is deflecting attention from a poor domestic record on free speech and other human rights,” as well as an international image “battered by a brutal war in Yemen and murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.”
With the LIV/PGA news, it’s clear we are far from the ceiling of what the kingdom is willing to pay to get the rebrand done.
It helps, of course, to have a sovereign wealth fund worth in excess of $600 billion and the ability to pump $1 billion a day in oil. That kind of money will help buy Newcastle United FC and muscle into the established world of the PGA Tour. (Though even $400 million apparently couldn’t attract Lionel Messi.)
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