Saudi sovereign wealth fund deepens funding in ladies’s skilled golfing

Saudi Arabia is deepening its funding in ladies’s skilled golfing.

The Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, introduced on Wednesday that it is going to turn out to be the identify spouse of 5 occasions that may happen at the the Ladies European Tour.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

As a part of this newest deal, the excursion will revamp the 5 occasions, which shall be jointly rebranded because the PIF Global Series. The occasions happen in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Seoul, South Korea; London; Houston; and Shenzhen, China.

“PIF continues to be a catalyst for the growth of women’s sports, committed to delivering long-term transformative impact by inspiring and empowering female athletes at every level,” Alanoud Althonayan, head of occasions and sponsorships at PIF, mentioned in a commentary.

The made over match structure will function staff and person competitions going down concurrently.

The Saudis also are injecting further cash into the prize swimming pools, with a collective handbag of $13 million around the 5 occasions.

Alexandra Armas, CEO of the Ladies European Tour, mentioned the partnership with PIF has helped carry the extent of festival within the ladies’s recreation and offers gamers extra alternatives to be successful at the international level.

Saudi Arabia has been aggressively making an investment in skilled sports activities lately as a part of its imaginative and prescient to diversify the rustic’s financial system clear of oil. Despite the truth that Saudi Arabia has been sluggish to provide Saudi ladies rights, the ones investments have integrated spending large cash on global ladies’s sports activities.

Last May, the fund signed a multi-year partnership with the WTA Tour, the ladies’s skilled tennis group, to develop the sport and support ladies’s advantages within the league.

And in March, PIF introduced it is going to absolutely fund the excursion’s maternity fund, which might permit ladies to take as much as a yr of depart absolutely paid.

However, PIF’s foray into males’s golfing has been extra difficult.

Nearly two years in the past, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan gave the impression on CNBC, pronouncing a merger between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour. But that deal has but to occur, regardless of the newest push by means of President Donald Trump to deliver the 2 events in combination.

The Aramco Korea Championship kicks off Friday in Seoul.