Power to Punish LIV Golfers Faces a Legal Test in Europe
The players insist, though, that they are independent contractors and should have greater freedom to pick when, where and for whom they compete. An arbitrator paused the tour’s punishments last summer but did not rule on the substantive arguments that will go before this month’s panel. The arbitrators could announce their decision within weeks of the five-day, closed-door hearing, which will begin Monday.
A new series. The debut of the Saudi-financed LIV Golf series in 2022 resurfaced longstanding questions about athletes’ moral obligations and their desire to compete and earn money. Here’s what to know:
What is LIV Golf? The series is a breakaway professional golf circuit bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Its organizers hope to position it as a player-power-focused alternative to the PGA Tour, which has been the highest level of pro golf for nearly a century.
Why is the new series controversial? The event has created sparks within golf for upending the traditions and strictures of how the game is played. It has also become a lightning rod for human rights campaigners who accuse Saudi Arabia of using sports to launder its reputation.
What is attracting the players? The LIV Golf events are the richest tournaments in golf history. The first tournament’s total purse was $25 million, and the winner’s share was $4 million. The last-place finisher at each event was guaranteed $120,000. That is on top of the appearance fees and nine-figure signing-on payouts some players have accepted.
The dispute in London is separate from litigation in California involving LIV Golf. Similar issues have sometimes surfaced in connection to those proceedings, but the arguments there will be evaluated under American law and not tried until at least next year.
It is unlikely that the American legal system will pay much mind to the ruling from London, lawyers said. Paul Greene, a Maine lawyer who works on international sports cases, predicted that the European Tour matter would become one “where the loser will run away from it and say it doesn’t matter to the U.S. case.”
But with an outcome in the United States distant, the London case could do much to shape the months ahead as players consider whether to join LIV Golf and the European Tour scrambles to protect its interests.
Golf is far from the only sport to wrestle lately with legal questions over limits for athletes and competitions. Speedskating has been mired in years of legal quarreling tied to an upstart circuit from South Korea. And last month, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled for swimming’s international governing body in cases related to a potential rival backed by a European business magnate.
European Tour officials have recently scrutinized a December opinion from an advocate general at the European Union’s Court of Justice who argued that soccer’s governing bodies were allowed to threaten penalties if teams helped develop a new competition that “would risk undermining” the federations.
Although the advocate general’s views are not binding on the court — or the London arbitration panel — tour executives appear to see the opinion, issued in a matter related to the European Super League proposal that collapsed almost as soon as word of the plan emerged, as one stocked with legal rationales that could apply in the golf case.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/sports/golf/liv-european-tour.html