It’s become the great ‘Will They? Won’t They?’ of our time, but one person with the inside track is expecting the separation at the top of men’s professional golf to come to an end in the not-too-distant future.
US hedge fund manager and owner of the New York Mets Major League Baseball franchise Steve Cohen, has said that he expects the sides to ‘reunite’.
And Cohen has reason to be in the know. Cohen Private Ventures, the firm which oversees the Cohen family investments, is part of the Strategic Sports Group that invested the capital used to form PGA Tour Enterprises earlier this year.
“It’s a lot of moving parts and I think we’ll get there,” Cohen told the media when appearing at a promotional event in New York on Monday.
“The goal is to reunite all the players – it’s fragmented right now. Getting to play in one tournament, one venue, whatever it is, is exciting.”
It’s been a long 18 months since the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund announced their intent to merge and had signed a Framework Agreement that was supposed to bring an end to the effective war between the rival factions, but as of yet, no compromise has been reached and the negotiation process is still rumbling on in the background.
The Strategic Sports Group’s investment in PGA Tour Enterprises – worth up to $3 billion – was initially seen as a counter to the necessity of having the PIF as investors, but it became apparent that the PGA Tour still wanted to strike a deal with the Saudi Investment Fund and that the Strategic Sports Group were under the impression that the PIF would come in as joint investors.
And with their background in sports franchise ownership, the Strategic Sports Group felt that golf – and the PGA Tour in specific – was not maximising its potential finance wise.
“We think the ways it’s been run; we think we can improve the operations and make it much more profitable,” he told Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
“Golf’s at a moment where there’s a lot of stuff going on that needs to be worked out generally.
“But we think we can work it out and we’re excited to get involved and help the sport grow.”
Cohen is also among the investors in the TGL – spearheaded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports – and has taken ownership of the New York Golf Club which is comprised of Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick and Cameron Young.
A number of other high profile sports stars and entertainers have also invested in the New York side, including New York Yankees legends Derek Jeter and CC Sabathia, two-time Superbowl winning former Quarterback Eli Manning and New York Giants teammate Michael Strahan, comedian and talk show host Jimmy Fallon, and tennis great John McEnroe.
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