LIV Golf is clubbing down on its inside-the-Beltway play.
This month, the Saudi-backed golf league reported second-quarter Congressional lobbying expenditures of $90,000, according to mandatory disclosure statements filed with the House and Senate. That disbursement—the same as what LIV Golf reported spending in Q1—represents a significant drop-off from the $140,000 it spent in each fiscal quarter last year, when its contentious-turned-collaborative relationship with the PGA Tour raised the hackles of Washington lawmakers.
On June 6, 2023, the rival golf outfits, which had been embroiled in legal action, announced that they—along with the DP World Tour—had agreed to settle their differences by partnering in a new, for-profit entity that would combine their commercial rights. As part of the plan, the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) agreed to invest more than a $1 billion in the new venture.
Congressional condemnation came swiftly; the day after the announcement, a House bill was proposed that would end the PGA Tour’s unique ability to operate as a federal tax-exempt charity. Soon thereafter, the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations (PSI) began probing the “unprecedented deal” and held a hearing last July, which featured the testimony of two PGA representatives.
However PIF, which subsidizes LIV Golf, “refused to cooperate” with requests for documents and testimony, according to subcommittee chairman Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)
“We can only infer that this means that Saudi Arabia intends to gain the benefit of our freedoms while avoiding the obligations of our laws,” Blumenthal said during a follow-up hearing in September. Subsequently, the subcommittee expanded its focus to the larger activities of PIF in the United States. In January, Blumenthal and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), the ranking member, sent a letter to PIF Governor Yasir al-Rumayyan, saying that the PSI would carry forward with its expanded investigation.
“Although the subcommittee’s inquiry began last summer with questions about (PIF’s) billion-dollar investment in U.S. Golf, it has become much bigger and more consequential,” Blumenthal said during a hearing in February.” A spokesperson for the senator told Sportico that the investigation remains “ongoing.”
As Congress’ klieg lights have shifted their focus, so too, it appears, have LIV Golf’s K Street efforts.
In August 2022, LIV Golf engaged Venture Government Strategies—previously known as Hobart Hallaway & Quayle—to lobby Congress about “protecting the rights of professional golfers to play when and where they choose.” The effort was headed up by the firm’s principals, Ben Quayle, the former Republican congressman, and Rashid Hallaway, a one-time Democratic Senate aide.
At the start of the PSI probe, LIV Golf engaged the former Washington PR firm Gitcho Goodwin, which it paid $55,000, according to Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings with the Department of Justice. Other FARA disclosures made by Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the law firm and lobbying shop hired by PIF, showed a flurry of LIV-related activity that same month.
By contrast, Brownstein’s most recent FARA filing showed a lone LIV Golf-related contact—a Zoom session with Sen. Blumenthal earlier this year—in the six-month period from September 2023 through February 2024. Representatives of LIV and Brownstein did not respond to emails seeking comment.
More than a year after announcing their “framework agreement,” LIV Golf and the PGA have yet to bring it to fruition. In May, Jimmy Dunne, a PGA Tour board member credited with helping forge the alliance—and who testified before the Senate last year—resigned his seat from the tour’s policy board, complaining in a letter that “no meaningful progress has been made towards a transaction with PIF.”
(This story has been updated in the sixth-to-last paragraph with the Blumenthal spokesperson’s comment.)
