John Jones/USA TODAY
The controversial LIV Tour golf circuit, funded by Saudi Arabia, has attracted numerous top professional players as well as a legion of critics.
On Thursday, the New Jersey Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism & Historic Preservation Committee voted 3-2 — along partisan lines, with Democrats prevailing — in favor of a bill that “prohibits professional sports organizations operated utilizing funds primarily received from sovereign wealth funds from hosting sport or athletic events in this State.”
The bill’s backers clarified before the vote that it was specifically designed to prevent a repeat of the LIV Tour’s event that was held at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster this summer. The fate of the bill also likely will provide a clue as to whether state regulators eventually will allow legal wagering on any of the tour’s events. Connecticut, Illinois, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington are among the states that have allowed betting on LIV events in this inaugural season — but New Jersey has not.
In July, a state Division of Gaming Enforcement official told NJ Online Gambling, “Pursuant to our regulations, DGE has neither approved nor denied wagering on LIV Golf, as DGE has not received the required information to fully consider.”
The new tour features three rounds of 18 holes instead of four, has no qualifying cut midway through, has 48 competitors instead of as many as 156 players at some PGA Tour events, offers prize money far more lucrative than the traditional tour, and has a team element absent from most golf tournaments.
Prominent players to make the leap to LIV include Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, and Patrick Reed — meaning that, on some weekends, the star power of the LIV fields rivals that of the PGA Tour’s parallel event.
Since New Jersey leaders were the ones who spent six years in a legal battle with the NFL and four other sports organizations before the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door in 2018 for any state to offer sports betting, many lawmakers and regulators have looked to the state for guidance on how to proceed in the new industry.
And, for the most part, the state Division of Gaming Enforcement has seemed inclined to let the free market decide on whether sports are worthy of a wager. Its list of approved events includes Australian rules football, badminton, bandy, billiards, bull riding, curling, cycling, darts, competitive eating contests, handball, lawn bowling, rowing, ruby, sailing, snooker, and table tennis. The latter includes Russian Liga events.
But per the bill co-sponsored by former Gov. Richard Codey and fellow state Sen. James Beach, the LIV Tour wouldn’t even be allowed to set foot on New Jersey soil. From Bill S2032:
“This bill prohibits sports organizations operated utilizing funds primarily received from sovereign wealth funds from hosting sport or athletic events in this State. A sovereign wealth fund is a state–owned investment fund comprised of money generated by the government, often derived from a country’s surplus reserves. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the ‘Public Investment Fund’ (PIF), is among the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world and is primarily funded through the country’s large fossil fuels supply and exports.
“Critics have argued that the PIF is being used to fund various ‘sportswashing’ endeavors. ‘Sportswashing‘ is the term used to describe when a government uses sports in an attempt to improve the government’s global image. As a recent New York Times article has pointed out, ‘Critics of the tournament note that American intelligence officials concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, ordered the killing and dismemberment of the dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018; that 81 men were executed in Saudi Arabia in a single day in March, calling into question the fairness of its criminal justice system; and that Saudi women did not receive permission to drive until 2018 after a longstanding ban and still must receive permission from a male relative to make many decisions in their lives.”
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