This year a golf tour is happening in a place one may not expect which is in Saudi Arabia and some of the top players under the PGA Tour have been approved to play in it but not without controversy. There are a couple of reasons for that.
The first is that AT+T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is expected to happen during the same week. Just like with any other sport there is a risk in letting players play in the Saudi League tour that weekend. Why? Because just like with any other sport if some of the players choose to jump ship for Saudi Arabia there is a chance that some of the PGA Tour players who routinely get followed by their fans could jump ship for the Saudi tour. This could have an impact on both course attendance and TV ratings.
In total 30 high-wattage players actually have gotten approval from the PGA Tour to go. High-wattage names like Paul Casey, Bryson DeChambeau, Jason Dufner, Tommy Fleetwood, Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson, Shane Lowry, Graeme McDowell, Phil Mickelson, Louis Oosthuizen, Ian Poulter, Xander Schauffele, Adam Scott, Henrik Stenson, Bubba Watson, and Lee Westwood. They — and others — are all scheduled to play in the 4th Saudi International in February.
Johnson would be defending his course title at the AT+T Pebble beach tour if he were to participate. Greg Norman, The Great White Shark, is feeling good about his new job and what comes with it. The 66-year-old QBE Shootout founder is CEO of the new Saudi Arabia-backed golf league, of which he will serve as commissioner.
Win the battle, lose the war
Some may also argue that the battle that has brewed is because of the issues that the United States has had in the middle east for most of this century, however one could also argue Saudi Arabia is an exception to that as they are the second biggest trade relationship with Saudi Arabia in the world in various fields such as education according to a United States government web site.
The PGA tours— just like with any other entity— is a money-making operation. However, some argue that US players going to the Saudi league, if they actually were to accept the entry and win any money it would be considered blood money, because, of what happened with Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi whose 2018 murder according to an intelligence report was approved by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
However, there is one problem with this argument.
The murder happened three years ago and typically in sports when one tries to mix sports with politics it does not turn out well when it comes to the bottom line. The perfect example of this is what happened with the National Football League and National Basketball Association. Both leagues chose to promote Black Lives Matter and since that has happened the TV ratings for both of the leagues have dropped about 15-20 percent.
For those who are not familiar with what happened in the NFL Colin Kaepernick did something that was considered to be controversial at the time. He took a knee to stand against police brutality against Black people. Not too long after this started to occur the President of the United States at the time, Donald Trump, spoke out against the act which only increased the backlash.
This is when the NFL started to start losing massive viewers at such a rapid pace that during the season, DirecTV, who is the main carrier of their exclusive sports package NFL Sunday Ticket, chose to go against their no refund policy if its viewers found the act of Kaepernick taking a knee offensive. What’s the point of telling this story? Keeping professional athletes out of sports due to political reasons has the potential to increase a huge blowback against the league when it comes to ratings and course attendance.
If we choose to keep American athletes out of Saudi Arabia we may cost our number two trading partner a significant amount of money which could either funnel into their economy or have the ability to purchase products from the US.
