For people on the market who love pro golf and need the most effective of the most effective competing against one another every week, you higher hope Donald Trump is your next president, and it’s not simply because the previous president is such a golf fanatic.
It’s due to the style of regulatory apparatus he’ll install if elected, a free-market one that can greenlight the much-needed merger of the PGA Tour and the upstart LIV Golf league. Yes, the nonsensical hatred of all things M&A by the leftists within the Biden administration has been horrible for US businesses and the economy. It also could maim skilled golf.
As golf aficionados know, LIV was created as a competitor to the PGA to provide fans what they need — more golf and in numerous formats, including shorter tournaments. It has been using Saudi money (it’s owned by the Saudis’ sovereign wealth fund often called PIF) to steal players like Phil Mickelson and others, causing enough of a ruckus in the game that the PGA now desires to merge.
So does LIV; each leagues agree that golf fans simply need to see big-name stars competing against one another in these tournaments. It’s the identical logic behind the merger of the old NFL teaming up with the newly established AFL within the Nineteen Sixties when the latter showed it could compete with the massive guys and had the cash to draw gridiron talent.
The NFL has exploded through the years because the country’s hottest sport; it’s a $19 billion-a-year business. The PGA brings in about $2 billion a yr and with the Saudis as partners there’s definitely room to grow, so recently each parties set a 2024 deadline to work out the main points.
Case closed, right? Not so fast. The no-brainers within the Biden antitrust orbit began getting involved — and like all things touched by Sleepy Joe’s minions, common sense is now taking a back seat to politics.
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Combination in peril
The union of the 2 golf leagues is now on “life support,” in keeping with two lawyers directly involved within the merger. The Biden hacks think one league as an alternative of two might violate some odd reading of antitrust laws, possibly limiting the power of millionaire golfers to chop deals for more cash. Strange, I at all times thought antitrust laws were alleged to protect consumers, who obviously desire a merger because they need to see top golfers square off.
On top of that, the PGA is doing business with the Saudis, a key ally within the treacherous Middle East that the left hates for civil-rights abuses.
OK, I’m not here to defend the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. But where is the left in condemning all those countries that at any time when the UN meets cheer on Hamas’ massacre of innocent Israelis?
Said considered one of my sources: “You’ll think this merger is inevitable because people need to see the most effective against the most effective in golf. But all bets are off with this administration.”
Full disclosure: The closest I’ve ever gotten to a golf course was a summer job landscaping one in Westchester County, NY, back within the day. But I do know a thing or two concerning the confluence of politics and finance. So I can see how the PGA-LIV deal each makes financial sense and matches neatly into the Biden administration’s illogical antitrust vortex of deals that either get killed or have to be fought within the courts, which is at all times a crapshoot.
Recall how the administration’s wickedly left-wing FTC chief Lina Khan opposed — unsuccessfully — Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard because she claimed Microsoft may need monopoly control over the least controllable a part of the economy, the business of gaming that’s driven by the innovations of tech-savvy entrepreneurs on a regular basis.
The Biden Justice Department is obstructing the JetBlue-Spirit merger since it says there must be more competition out there for the discount airline business. OK, but some Wall Street analysts say Spirit could face cash-flow issues in the subsequent yr or so. A bankruptcy would robotically leave less room for competition.
Cohen takes a $wing
Seeing what the Bidenistas have done to normal deal-making, the PGA isn’t taking any probabilities, I’m told. It recently sought and received an enormous infusion of money from Steve Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire owner of the Recent York Mets, and one other baseball billionaire, John Henry, who owns the Boston Red Sox, to strengthen its recruiting hand just in case it has to compete against LIV for the foreseeable future, and longer if sleepy Joe gets re-elected.
Biden has done some horrible things in office: The botched Afghanistan withdrawal; the crisis on the border; useless spending that stoked inflation. Now his administration trying to decimate the enjoyment of watching skilled golf.
