The PGA Tour has rejected a $1.5 billion reunification offer from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The Guardian was the first to report on the development.

PIF, which serves as the financial backer to LIV Golf, maintained its offer to invest in the newly-created for-profit PGA Tour Enterprises. However, the proposal came with the provision that LIV Golf, in some capacity, would continue in the future professional golf landscape, and that PIF governor and LIV Golf boss H.E. Yasir Al-Rumayyan would be co-chair of PGA Tour Enterprises.

Sources familiar with the matter have told Golf Digest that the tour has asserted it is not interested in a team golf element—a message that was delivered at the White House meeting in February. When the original framework agreement between the tour and PIF was announced on June 6, 2023, Al-Rumayyan was designated as the chairman of for-profit endeavor (called “NewCo” at the time), although the tour has shifted its position following the $1.5 billion investment from the Strategic Sports Group. Joe Gorder, a former head of Valero Energy, is chairman of the Enterprises board.

Prior to the 2024 presidential election, consensus held that LIV would endure in a post-agreement landscape, albeit reconfigured from its current iteration, with team elements preserved. This structure was deemed necessary to satisfy antitrust regulations, as a legitimate competitor to the PGA Tour needed to exist. However, President Donald Trump’s electoral victory in November fundamentally altered this thinking, with tour leadership now operating under the presumption that Trump’s Department of Justice would expedite approval for any arrangement—effectively questioning LIV’s very necessity. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has publicly expressed that the goal of the talks is for “the game of golf operating under one tour with all the top players playing on that one tour.”

Sources familiar with tour thinking have told Golf Digest that the tour has already made a number of concessions in the negotiations and feel PIF has not met them in the middle. Tour leadership also feels PIF does not have a true sense of LIV Golf’s struggles in the golf marketplace.

Conversely, those that want a deal are aware of the enduring financial threat of PIF should the schism continue, especially now that the tour has normalized the idea of doing business with LIV Golf to its players.

Meanwhile, Al-Rumayyan views LIV Golf not merely as a business venture but as his brainchild and enduring legacy, and does not want to surrender control, sources have told Golf Digest. PIF leadership also wants a voice in the future direction of the sport.

Last month at the Players Championship, Monahan said he will only do a deal on tour terms.

“We will not do so in a way that diminishes the strength of our platform or the very real momentum we have with our fans and our partners,” Monahan said. “So while we’ve removed some hurdles, others remain. But like our fans, we still share the same sense of urgency to get to a resolution.”

President Trump, on his way to Trump Doral for this weekend’s LIV Golf event, told reporters on Air Force One this week he maintains a positive outlook on the negotiations.

“Ultimately, hopefully, the two tours are going to merge. That’ll be good. I’m involved in that too,” Trump said before the flight to Miami. “But hopefully we’re going to get the two tours to merge. You have the PGA Tour and the LIV Tour. And I think having them merge would be a great thing.”

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