Saudi PIF invests in surging soccer realm with Kings League

Having disrupted the athletic world with billions poured into golf, tennis, mixed martial arts and esports, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is diving deeper into soccer.

SURJ Sports, an investment arm of the sovereign wealth fund, signed an agreement on Tuesday to form a joint venture with the upstart Kings League.

The move brings a wildly popular new brand of football to the kingdom that features seven players on each side of the field. 

An inaugural event is planned for November, which will be streamed on a range of platforms including TikTok and YouTube. The league has close to 30 million social media followers.

Kings League was founded in 2022 by former Barcelona defender Gerard Piqué and has a growing young audience drawn by its fast-paced format.

Most of the league’s revenue comes from sponsorship and merchandising, rather than broadcasting, which fuels traditional football teams that play with 11 to a side. 

“Our priority today is to maximize reach and get in front of as many fans as possible,” Kings League CEO Djamel Agaoua tells Bloomberg.

“In the future, as the product matures, we want to develop our media rights revenue stream, and we might consider more exclusive deals with broadcasters and streaming platforms,” he said.

Trump hosts LIV Golf in Miami, wades into PGA merger talks

U.S. President Donald Trump took a break from the political firestorm over trade tariffs to step into the fray between Saudi-backed LIV Golf and the PGA Tour.

Trump flew to Florida on Thursday for a dinner with players and league officials at the three-day LIV Golf Miami tournament, which starts today at his Doral golf resort.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, the president said he’s making efforts to resolve the stalemate that followed a framework agreement to combine their business operations two years ago.

“Ultimately, hopefully, the two tours are going to merge,” Trump said, “That’ll be good. I’m involved in that too.”

The U.S. leader has taken a role from the beginning with LIV Golf, which is owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and burst onto the pro scene in 2021 by offering contracts to PGA stars for as much as $200 million.

While Trump has previously appeared at LIV events hosted at Doral, this week would mark his first appearance as president. In his effort to bring the two golf organizations together, Trump held a Feb. 20 meeting in the Oval Office that included PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan; PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, and golfers Tiger Woods and Adam Scott.

Britain’s The Guardian reported on Thursday that merger negotiations had reached an impasse after the PGA failed to deliver “serious concessions” in exchange for a proposed $1.5 billion investment from the PIF that would make Al-Rumayyan co-chairman of the joint entity.

LIV Golf a step closer to buying 6% stake in PGA commercial unit

LIV Golf, the upstart league backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is generating renewed buzz in its two-year dance with the PGA tour.

The sovereign wealth fund is nearing a deal to acquire a stake of about 6% in PGA Tour Enterprises, which would value the U.S.-based golf league’s commercial arm at $12 billion, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the negotiations.

The PIF started LIV Golf in 2022 as a rival to the PGA Tour, setting off court battles after the new league lured away star golfers for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The two organizations agreed to a merger deal in 2023, but have since been unable to agree on the terms.

LIV is also considering a possible merger with Europe’s DP World Tour, Bloomberg reported last month.

The two golf leagues already have a strategic alliance on prize money growth and some reciprocal memberships.

PGA Tour’s deal with LIV Golf ‘far from dead’

The PGA Tour’s deal with the Public Investment Fund’s LIV Golf “is far from dead,” The New York Times’ DealBook reports.

Term sheets have been exchanged between the North American pro tour and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund “in recent days,” according to reporter Lauren Hirsch.

Under the proposed deal, the PIF would pour $1.5 billion into the tour’s for-profit arm.

In January, Fenway Sports made a $1.5 billion investment in the PGA, with participation from hedge funder Steven Cohen and fellow billionaires Marc Lasry and Arthur Blank, who took a minority stake in the commercial unit of the tour.

The current deal up for negotiation would give the tour $3 billion in new funding, with the Saudis and U.S. investors each chipping in half.

The PGA Tour would retain majority control. What the term sheet does not resolve is what would become of LIV Golf under the agreement.