PIF will turn into the title sponsor of revamped golf sequence.
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Saudi Arabia is deepening its funding in ladies’s skilled golf.
The Public Funding Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, introduced on Wednesday that it’ll turn into the title companion of 5 occasions that may happen on the the Girls European Tour.
Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
As a part of this newest deal, the tour will revamp the 5 occasions, which shall be collectively rebranded because the PIF International Collection. The occasions happen in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Seoul, South Korea; London; Houston; and Shenzhen, China.
“PIF continues to be a catalyst for the expansion of ladies’s sports activities, dedicated to delivering long-term transformative affect by inspiring and empowering feminine athletes at each stage,” Alanoud Althonayan, head of occasions and sponsorships at PIF, stated in an announcement.
The revamped match format will characteristic workforce and particular person competitions occurring concurrently.
The Saudis are additionally injecting further cash into the prize swimming pools, with a collective purse of $13 million throughout the 5 occasions.
Alexandra Armas, CEO of the Girls European Tour, stated the partnership with PIF has helped elevate the extent of competitors within the ladies’s recreation and provides gamers extra alternatives to succeed on the world stage.
Saudi Arabia has been aggressively investing in skilled sports activities in recent times as a part of its imaginative and prescient to diversify the nation’s financial system away from oil. Even if Saudi Arabia has been gradual to offer Saudi ladies rights, these investments have included spending large cash on worldwide ladies’s sports activities.
Final Could, the fund signed a multi-year partnership with the WTA Tour, the ladies’s skilled tennis group, to develop the sport and enhance ladies’s advantages within the league.
And in March, PIF introduced it’ll totally fund the tour’s maternity fund, which might permit ladies to take as much as a 12 months of go away totally paid.
Nonetheless, PIF’s foray into males’s golf has been extra sophisticated.
Almost two years in the past, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan appeared on CNBC, asserting a merger between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour. However that deal has but to occur, regardless of the newest push by President Donald Trump to convey the 2 events collectively.
The Aramco Korea Championship kicks off Friday in Seoul.
