00:00I want to kind of get back to the thing you just mentioned at the top, which was Tyrell Hatton and John Rahm and their appeals process that they're going through and how that potentially could affect the Ryder Cup at a dare manner.
00:13Those two guys not playing. You got to be a DP World Tour member.
00:17I think that's what a lot of people got to remember in this.
00:19Like you. Well, why can't they play?
00:21It's like, well, you have to be a member of the store.
00:24So they had an option, right, like to to not pay these fines and just resign their DP World Tour membership.
00:32There's been other players that did this. I believe it was like Sergio, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter.
00:38They all I think it was a cat and mouse game for a little bit because Liv was paying the fines and they got to a point.
00:44They're like, no, we're not going to pay him anymore.
00:46It's either you're paying the fines or, you know, you can play.
00:51You still play in these events, pay the fines, but we're not going to do it anymore.
00:54So I think you had some guys resign, which is obviously a huge which I disagree with in a way, because these are the same players who built the DP World Tour like Sergio, Henrik Sensen, Lee Westwood.
01:08You know, when I think of the European tour, these are the players I'm thinking of.
01:12Right. So I understand why that they would be so frustrated by all this.
01:17But they also know that there are rules in place that from a competitive standpoint, that if you're a member of this tour, like you can't go join a rival tour.
01:26Like there's rules in place, just like in any other business.
01:29Which I think is fair.
01:33But I think there is if you're trying to be, you know, fair about this entire thing and not kind of picking one lane or one bias, which we try to be that there is a little bit of an artificiality as to why that's the case.
01:47Right. It's like the reason why the DP World Tour is so heavy on these sort of suspensions and fines is because they're forced to by nature of their partnership with the PGA Tour.
01:56Because the tour is saying, hey, dude, we're not going to give you, you know, upwards of a hundred million dollars a season to underpin your tour and then watch you let your guys go play on this tour that's competing directly with us.
02:08I get why that's the case.
02:10And I get why there was this sort of juncture, this sort of crossroads that the DP World Tour where they found themselves and they kind of had to make a choice.
02:18Like, are we going to bet on this upstart league that has much deeper pockets in the PGA Tour, but could both fund this league and honestly, in some ways.
02:26Financially, they were not in a good place.
02:28They were not in a good place.
02:30Yeah.
02:30And really, I think what the decision boiled down to in a lot of ways was, do we want to be a partner with the PGA Tour or do we want to be a competitor to the PGA Tour?
02:39And there were probably a lot of Europeans, given the past history between the two tours, that would have chosen competitor.
02:45And they may be looking at that decision.
02:47Do we revisit it now?
02:48I'm not sure.
02:49I don't know what the right path is because I think the bet you're trying to make then is, like, how long does the live tour stay around?
02:56And if it does not, does the entire DP World Tour fall apart?
03:00But I do think, as we've discussed on the show, it's like what live is trying to do or has been successful in doing is building more of an international tour.
03:08And you can see how that might be appealing to any number of top European players.
03:13You're saying, I don't want to do the American travel grind.
03:16I like to play internationally a couple times a year.
03:19You know, do some live events where it's guaranteed money, no cut.
03:22Do some DP World Tour events.
03:24Play on the Ryder Cup team and call it a day.
03:27You know, I could see why that would be enticing.
03:30Yeah.
03:30And you don't know how long live is going to be here.
03:33It could be here for another year.
03:34It could be here forever.
03:35You don't know.
03:36I mean, I read an interesting article.
03:38I think Josh Carpenter retweeted it.
03:39It was about Saudi Arabia's PIF and just their return on the investments of currently what they have, what they're looking to potentially cut back on.
03:50And they didn't specifically mention live golf, but they definitely – the article kind of insinuated, hey, we're not going to just continue on a path of spending billions and billions of dollars on things that aren't bringing us money back.
04:03And just an overall restructuring of Saudi Arabia, their economical strategic plan of things that they're doing in Saudi Arabia that has no effect of what we're talking about right now with live golf.
04:16But that is the backing of all this until live golf starts to make more money through the teams, through television networks because right now live golf, they pay for their production for Fox.
04:28Like Fox isn't spending a dime on all this stuff.
04:31This is live golf's production.
04:33So they continue to spend a lot of money in all this.
04:37Listen, so I think the world in which this could have all maybe worked is if the DP World Tour just had the investment maybe from the Saudis and all this, didn't go on to start their own rival league and live golf.
04:49Would you have been okay with a very, very strong DP World Tour with really strong backing financially, let's say $20 million purses a week?
05:00Let's say you might have some European players decide to stay home and play the DP World Tour and not come to the States.
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