The US Division of Justice is investigating the PGA Tour over potential anticompetive strikes as the highest males’s professional tour continues to battle upstart rival LIV Golf, The Wall Road Journal reviews.
In accordance with The Journal, the DOJ’s antitrust division has reached out to participant representatives to ask in regards to the PGA Tour’s governing over participant participation in different golf occasions, and the PGA Tour’s actions particularly associated to LIV Golf.
“This was not surprising,” a spokesman for the PGA Tour advised The Journal.
The PGA Tour and LIV Golf — a brand new tour backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund — have been butting heads for a lot of the yr. A variety of star gamers — together with Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson — have taken massive portions of cash to affix LIV and been suspended from the PGA Tour in consequence.
“If that is an arms race and if the one weapons listed here are greenback payments, the PGA Tour cannot compete,” PGA commissioner Jay Monahan mentioned in June, in line with The Journal.
The PGA Tour has tried to develop its prize swimming pools and provides gamers extra schedule flexibility, however it will possibly’t compete with the tens of millions being provided by LIV. Consequently, the PGA Tour has needed to flex different muscular tissues from its by-laws, particularly because it pertains to which non-PGA occasions gamers can take part in. These actions are why the LIV Golf leaders consider the PGA Tour is appearing in an anti-competitive approach.
A letter despatched earlier this yr from LIV Golf to PGA gamers earlier this yr in an try to woo them away laid that argument out plain.
“There may be merely no acknowledged justification for banning impartial contractor skilled golfers for merely contracting to play skilled golf,” the letter mentioned, in line with The Journal.
The Journal report provides that it is extensively anticipated that the continuing disputes between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf will face U.S. courts sooner or later.
