PGA Tour to Reward Loyal Golfers with Equity in New Venture After LIV Merger

PGA Tour players who stayed aboard after LIV Golf's formation will receive "a piece of equity" in the new for-profit organization in the works as the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund now join forces.

PGA Tour policy board member Jimmy Dunne spoke with ESPN's Mark Schlabach on the matter.

"The new [company] would grow, and the [current PGA Tour] players would get a piece of equity that would enhance and increase in value as time went on," Dunne said.

"There would have to be some kind of formulaic decision on how to do that. It would be a process to determine what would be a fair mechanism that would be really beneficial to our players."

As Schlabach noted, numerous PGA Tour stars turned down "as much as $100 million" in guaranteed money from LIV Golf League, including Jon Rahm and Hideki Matsuyama.

Ex-PGA Tour players who left for LIV, such as Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka, are not eligible to get equity in the new organization. They will also have to go through a process to get reinstated after PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan suspended players who didn't voluntarily resign from the tour.

"Players on the LIV [tour] that wanted to reinstate into the PGA Tour would go through a process [and] suspension," Dunne told Schlabach. "Whatever the penalty was, they'd have to decide whether they wanted to do that or not and then they could play."

Dunne is the vice chair and senior managing principal of Piper Sandler, an investment bank. As Schlabach noted, he played an instrumental role in brokering the deal between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund, which finances LIV Golf.

The proposed merger ends all litigation between the previously warring sides, per Schlabach.

There's still much more work to be done, however. Of note, Schlabach wrote that U.S. Department of Justice antitrust regulators are expected to scrutinize the merger.