Entire PGA Tour Playoffs Sponsored By Saudi Arabia-Allied Brands

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The PGA Tour's FedEx Cup playoffs Saudi Arabia
The PGA Tour's FedEx Cup playoffs include three tournaments each sponsored by a Saudi Arabia-allied corporation. (PGW Graphics)

The PGA Tour has regularly attacked the LIV Golf series for being funded by Saudi Arabia. According to the Tour’s allied smear merchants, the checks earned by the likes of Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau are said to be “blood money.”

Commissioner Jay Monahan even refuses to call it LIV Golf, instead opting for ‘The Saudi Golf League’ as a way to foreignize/otherize the startup league.

Yet, if you look at the U.S. tour’s title sponsors, a majority have business relations with Saudi Arabia, and/or footprints inside the Kingdom.

In fact, the PGA Tour’s big-money postseason – the three-tournament series – is entirely title-sponsored by brands with a presence in the Kingdom.

For instance, the Tour’s biggest of all brands, FedEx – the title sponsor of the season-long FedEx Cup race and the postseason’s first tournament (FedEx St Jude Championship), has a “direct presence in Saudi Arabia,” according to tweet last year.

Then you have this week’s BMW Championship, the second leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs. The German automaker also has a footprint in Saudi Arabia, including its own official Twitter account. Will the winner this week in Delaware earn “blood money?”

Next week is the Tour Championship Presented by Coca-Cola, which also has a super-sized footprint in the Saudi Kingdom.

To recap, the three events which comprise the PGA Tour’s season-ending flagship series are all title sponsored by Saudi Arabia-allied companies (FedEx, BMW and Coca-Cola).

You can’t make it up. And that’s just the start.

The Tour’s flagship tournament, The PLAYERS Championship, has three presenting sponsors which it calls “Proud Partners.” They are: Grant Thornton, Optum and Morgan Stanley. All three do big business with the Saudis.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan
Tiger Woods shakes hands with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan during a tournament elevation and sponsorship announcement ahead of the Genesis Open at Riviera CC on Feb 13, 2019 in Pacific Palisades, CA. (Photo by Keyur Khamar/PGA TOUR)

The Tour then has what’s called the Invitational series, a three-tournament series with each event attached to one of its three icons: Genesis Invitational (Tiger Woods), The Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by Mastercard (Arnold Palmer) and the Memorial Tournament Presented by Workday (Jack Nicklaus).

You guessed it: all three tournament sponsors are brands (Genesis, Mastercard, Workday) doing business in Saudi Arabia.

Finally, we have the WGC-Dell Match Play, the tour’s eighth and final (non-major) marquee event. Take a bow if you guessed that Dell Technologies can be found in Saudi Arabia!

2022 LIV Golf-Portland Trophies Greg Norman and Majed Al Sorour
Majed Al Sorour, CEO of Saudi Golf Federation, and Greg Norman, CEO and commissioner of LIV Golf, during the trophy ceremony following the LIV Golf Invitational-Portland at Pumpkin Ridge GC on July 02, 2022 in North Plains, Oregon. (Photo by Jamie Squire for LIV Golf via Getty Images)

LIV Golf CEO, Greg Norman, recently trolled the anti-LIV media with the following questions: “Why does the PGA Tour have 23 sponsors doing 40 plus billion dollars worth of business with Saudi Arabia? Why is it okay for the sponsors?

“Will Jay Monahan go to each and every one of those CEOs of the 23 companies that are investing into Saudi Arabia and suspend them and ban them?

“The hypocrisy in all this, it’s so loud. It’s deafening.”

It’s also mind blowing.

Below are the 27 PGA Tour events with title or presenting sponsors that do business with Saudi Arabia:

  1. 3M Open (3M)
  2. Arnold Palmer Invitational (Mastercard)
  3. AT&T Pebble Beach (AT&T)
  4. AT&T Byron Nelson (AT&T)
  5. Barbasol Championship (Barbasol)
  6. Barracuda Championship (Barracuda)
  7. BMW Championship (BMW)
  8. Charles Schwab Challenge (Charles Schwab)
  9. FedEx St Jude Championship (FedEx)
  10. Fortinet Championship (Fortinet)
  11. Genesis Invitational (Genesis)
  12. Genesis Scottish Open (Genesis)
  13. Hero World Challenge (Hero)
  14. John Deere Classic (John Deere)
  15. RBC Canadian Open (RBC)
  16. RBC Heritage (RBC)
  17. Sony Open of Hawaii (Sony)
  18. The American Express (American Express)
  19. The Honda Classic (Honda)
  20. the Memorial Tournament (Workday)
  21. The PLAYERS Championship (Grant Thornton, Morgan Stanley, Optum)
  22. The RSM Classic (RSM)
  23. The TOUR Championship (Coca-Cola)
  24. Valero Texas Open (Valero)
  25. Valspar Championship (Valspar)
  26. WGC-Dell Match Play (Dell Technologies)
  27. Wyndham Championship (Wyndham)

The four major championships do not have title sponsors but do use presenting type sponsorships, similar to the PLAYERS’ ‘Proud Partners.’ Almost every single “partner” of the four majors does business in the Kingdom.

  • The Masters (AT&T, IBM, Mercedes-Benz)
  • PGA Championship (AIG, Chase, Club Car, KitchenAid, KPMG, Pepsi, Rolex)
  • U.S. Open (American Express, Cisco, Deloitte, Lexus, Rolex)
  • The Open (HSBC, Hugo Boss, Mastercard, Mercedes-Benz, NTT Data, Nikon, Rolex)
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13 COMMENTS

  1. Delete this. It’s too embarrassing to the pga. Wow are they hypocritical frauds.

    Just so we’re clear. Phil has no morals and is taking blood money. But the pga tour’s purses are clean as fresh snow despite coming from sponsors that make billions in Saudi Arabia?

    ??

  2. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a ton more who aren’t necessarily  title sponsors but “official partners” such as Titleist, Amazon, EA Sports, Fanatics and Michelob who also do business in Saudi Arabia.
  3. The very thing that makes the USA better then most counties is it’s capitalism which includes fair competition. It is the very thing that differentiate us from Saudi Arabia !-.

    Yet the PGA wants to squash completion thereby becoming LIKE Saudi Arabia!

     

  4. Gotta love the false equivalencies here.  Cause selling shaving cream to Saudi citizens or John Deere tractors to farmers in SA is the same as being a de facto employee of the Saudi Arabian government.   Yep it’s exactly the same lol.
    • Meh, shaving cream… and communication networks (AT&T), shipping and logistics (Fedex), automobiles (Honda, Genesis, BMW), credit card (Amex, Mastercard), investment services (Morgan Stanley, Schwab)…

      -JS

    • Except…moron…you realize the Saudi Wealth fund are major owners in several of these major corporations.

       

      It’s as if defenders of a monopoly who spew this marketing BS don’t have the brain cells to understand shareholders.   Staggering idiocy from the PGA defenders.

  5. Jimbo, et. al.

    As I pointed out over a month ago, the entire LET (Ladies European Tour) and a sizable chunk of the DP World Tour are DIRECTLY sponsored by Aramco, Saudi Arabia Investment Funds, etc.   The PGA Tour just allied itself bigtime with both.

    Even the LPGA this week is totally funded by Saudi’s, but alas, no TV coverage….golf channel in bed with Tour (for obvious reasons)…

    Please do perhaps minimal research?

  6. i get a chuckle on the concept of ‘sportswashing.’  just to name two examples of the hypocrisy:
    wells fargo has 24 entries in the lawsuits/fines/controversies section of their wiki,,, are they not using the pgatour to sportswash themselves?  and the lead sponsor of lpga’s biggest event is AIG…recipients of 180 billion in bailout (and then paying out 1.2 billion in bonuses).

    so yeah, sportwashing is a thing and seems like the thing pga tour invented.

    • “You know, I really used to hate the Saudis for their human rights record; but now they sponsor LIV, I don’t care anymore…’

       

      Said NO ONE EVER.

       

      The entire argument of ‘sportswashing’, in this case is a JOKE. I can’t think of ANY way the Saudis could have drawn more attention to their HR record..?

  7. What an idiot you are. Because Saudi Arabia’s government is made up of bad actors, that means fed ex shouldn’t deliver packages within Saudi Arabia?? The people of Saudi Arabia should be barred from receiving and goods or services from the western world due to their vicious leadership?? That’s a mentally ill take, based in nonsense whataboutism. Try using logic when thinking and speaking, you goon hahaha. The liv tour is OWNED BY THE SAUDI GOVERNMENT, IN FULL. Companies investing in Saudi Arabia is not even comparable.
    • Logical Larry types always cry when their duplicitous fraudulent narratives get blown to smithereens.

      And without fail, they always cry, “whataboutism,” when in fact whataboutism is exactly the most logical reply.

      If the monopoly’s bootlickers’ main argument is Saudi “blood money,” then the most logical retort is to point out the hypocrisy.

      They then always try to explain that their crime or infraction is not the same. In this twisted scenario, for instance, apparently FedEx is being virtuous for serving the poor citizens of Saudi Arabia, and not doing it to make money by working with the authoritarian state.

      Further, Apple and Twitter, among many others, have received billions in investment from Saudi PIF. Why haven’t they turned down the investments? Where’s the outrage from the cancel mob? Meanwhile, these same frauds criticize Bryson, DJ, and Phil using Twitter and their iphones.

      https://progolfweekly.com/saudi-backed-fund-owns-stake-in-fanatic-pga-tour-fan-shop/
      https://progolfweekly.com/espns-stephen-a-smith-calls-out-pga-tour-for-unamerican-tactics/

      -Jeff

  8. You forgott to mention the sponsors of PGA where  PIF Inveastments owns a stake or two in, like Citi.
    I also guess PGA now will stop posting on Facebook, Isntagram and Twitter. Not look at any movies or series from Disney and so on
    Kind of fun to see that  Jay Monahan earned around 14.2 million dollars in 2020, ONLY beaten in the PGA organisation by Dustin Johnson who had around 20 million dollars in earnings in 2020

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