Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt, my name.
Speaker 4: Is no they call me Ben. We're joined as always
Speaker 4: with our super producer Dylan to Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly,
Speaker 4: you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 4: want you to know. Tonight we are exploring the wide
Speaker 4: world of sports and maybe some other things, though perhaps
Speaker 4: not in the way you might initially assume, fellow conspiracy realists.
Speaker 4: First things first, gentlemen, would you guys consider yourself golfers
Speaker 4: or I know we've all played golf at some point, well, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, if you're counting many golf then yes, if we've
Speaker 3: done it together in fact, but I've never played golf
Speaker 3: on a proper course, never even been to a top
Speaker 3: golf y'all talking about doing that sometime together too.
Speaker 4: I played golf for the first like actual I guess
Speaker 4: grown folk golf for the first time in my life,
Speaker 4: very long life, just a few months ago, and it
Speaker 4: was entirely due to peer pressure, and I got to
Speaker 4: tell you, golf fans in the crowd, I get it.
Speaker 4: I see how. It's a lot of fun plus can
Speaker 4: definitely be a time and money vampire. But unfortunately, folks,
Speaker 4: we could assure you being a crackerjack, talent at putt
Speaker 4: putt and fun mini golf is not the same thing.
Speaker 4: It doesn't translate to other golf. Now.
Speaker 3: He used to work at the club, right, Did you
Speaker 3: ever get out there on the links in between shifts?
Speaker 2: I don't want to go too much into it, but
Speaker 2: it was a health club and they didn't own a
Speaker 2: golf course until well into my tenure there. Once they did,
Speaker 2: I was kind of out of the picture. I have
Speaker 2: played with my father, my grandfather, my friends several times,
Speaker 2: not enough, but my grandfather told me I have a
Speaker 2: natural swing, but your handicap.
Speaker 3: I don't know what that means. You want a good one? Hi, Well,
Speaker 3: I don't know. Do you tell me?
Speaker 2: It's terribly fun once you are out there, and it
Speaker 2: is a nice relaxing I would say sport. If you're
Speaker 2: going to join a sport that is one of the
Speaker 2: most relaxing while also having some of the most intense
Speaker 2: micro moments in any sport. So I don't know it's thrilling,
Speaker 2: I would say so.
Speaker 4: We'll have to check with our producer, Dylan, But for
Speaker 4: now it's fair to say the three of us here
Speaker 4: are people who have golfed, but perhaps don't consider ourselves golfers,
Speaker 4: especially not professional golfers. If you were, like more than
Speaker 4: one hundred and twenty million Americans, more than a third
Speaker 4: of the population, you, like us, have played golf, either
Speaker 4: on a course or off a course, or you f
Speaker 4: followed it on television or oddline, read about the game.
Speaker 4: You may have even listened to a golf related podcast.
Speaker 4: Some folks love it, some folks hate it. But there's
Speaker 4: no denying golf is a big business, and you know
Speaker 4: what happens with big businesses, folks, Golf has become embroiled
Speaker 4: in what may well be a global conspiracy. Here are
Speaker 4: the facts, all right. I feel like we're increasingly colliding
Speaker 4: the world's of ridiculous history and stuff they don't want
Speaker 4: you to know. But the history of golf is fascinating,
Speaker 4: and in my opinion, if you go to the ancient
Speaker 4: parts of it, it's incredibly endearing.
Speaker 3: It really is. It's also one of those parallel thinking
Speaker 3: type things where it's like people have been hitting rollly
Speaker 3: things with sticks since time immemorial, and it's just a
Speaker 3: matter of organizing it in different ways. And why not
Speaker 3: just hit it a long distance and shoot for a
Speaker 3: tiny hole that seems like a fun diversion. And this
Speaker 3: was first kind of envision back in Scotland in the
Speaker 3: fifteenth century, possibly building on again some older games found
Speaker 3: in China, one in particularly called chiu Wan, and other
Speaker 3: similar predecessors in France, Persia and England. This is yeah again,
Speaker 3: you find something that's laying around and implement of some
Speaker 3: sort falling tree branch and then something rolling, figure out
Speaker 3: where to hit it where it should go, and your
Speaker 3: brain just kind of fills in the gaps and a
Speaker 3: game is born.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, That's what I like about that, the idea
Speaker 4: that there's something classic human about finding a cool stick.
Speaker 4: I don't know about you all, but I am unapologetically
Speaker 4: a fan of finding cool sticks and walking around with them,
Speaker 4: especially during a hike.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I sometimes I don't know, when you pick them up,
Speaker 4: when you feel like you're gandolf with a nice cool stick.
Speaker 4: You might find at some point multiple times in history,
Speaker 4: some and found a cool stick, and they found something
Speaker 4: like a ball. Probably started off with the rock, if
Speaker 4: we're being honest, and then later they made up rules
Speaker 4: about the quote unquote right way to hit it, and
Speaker 4: as you said, how to hit it, we also want
Speaker 4: to shout out the ancient sport of Roman Paganica. Pardon
Speaker 4: my mispronunciation there, but.
Speaker 2: That one had a leather ball that was right stuffed
Speaker 2: with wool, yes, and you just knock it around with
Speaker 2: a bent stick.
Speaker 4: And we're unclear on exactly the nature of the bent stick.
Speaker 4: It's it's very odd and check out if you want
Speaker 4: to learn more about ancient sports, check out our upcoming
Speaker 4: episode on Weird Sports for ridiculous history. But as you
Speaker 4: were saying, Noel, the predecessor of the modern version of
Speaker 4: golf comes to us in Scotland in the fourteen hundreds,
Speaker 4: in the fifteenth century, and ever since then, golf's popularity
Speaker 4: has only grown. Golf in North America is older than
Speaker 4: the United States. In North America.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting too, because golf is one of these
Speaker 3: sports too that kind of combines sport with architecture and landscaping.
Speaker 3: And it's like, sure, you'll have like famous baseball stadiums,
Speaker 3: but it's all the same baseball diamond. You know, golf
Speaker 3: course is something to be designed and fussed over, and
Speaker 3: it's sort of like a demonstration of opulence too, because
Speaker 3: you know, you can literally terraform the earth and create
Speaker 3: this labyrinthine golf course.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and it's a way to draw in highly
Speaker 2: influential people to your neck of the woods, right to
Speaker 2: hang out, play a little game, maybe have some drinks,
Speaker 2: a couple of meals and meetings with people who, again
Speaker 2: are generally highly influential. And I think it's been used
Speaker 2: that way for centuries.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which, well, we'll definitely have to get to there,
Speaker 4: because you can also say that about many professional sports.
Speaker 4: There's a reason people fight to have a sports organization
Speaker 4: in their neck of the global woods, in their I mean,
Speaker 4: if you look at the US, people have been playing
Speaker 4: some version of golf in North America since the early
Speaker 4: sixteen hundreds, likely introduced by the Dutch and the Scottish.
Speaker 4: As we know the Dutch settlers went on to become
Speaker 4: patricians of the United States. To that point earlier made
Speaker 4: about influence, it was still centuries before the foundation of
Speaker 4: the first US official golf club Saint Andrew's Golf founded
Speaker 4: in Yonkers in eighteen eighty eight. And I don't know
Speaker 4: about you, guys, I don't know too much about Yonkers
Speaker 4: other than I like the name. There's something Soussian about it.
Speaker 4: So this is now the one fact I know about Yonkers.
Speaker 3: It's like a It's not a borough of New York exactly.
Speaker 3: It's more of it's like a township or something. It's
Speaker 3: its own thing, but it is near you know, New
Speaker 3: York City for sure.
Speaker 2: Just weirdly, guys, the Piedmont Driving Club that we mentioned
Speaker 2: earlier was founded in eighteen eighty seven. Wow, And just
Speaker 2: thinking about these are organizations of again influential people already
Speaker 2: getting together and forming another little club thing that they get.
Speaker 4: To do, which they've been doing for a long time.
Speaker 4: You know, Europe's aristocrats met it exclusive salons and clubs.
Speaker 4: I guess the difference there for Saint Andrews then, just
Speaker 4: so we're clear, is that that was the first one
Speaker 4: founded just for golf.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's interesting though, because you don't really think about
Speaker 3: influential people getting together to play a game of touch
Speaker 3: football and have influential meetings. Yeah, Like there's something about
Speaker 3: golf where the individual anybody can play it, not anyone
Speaker 3: can be good at it, but it's kind of this
Speaker 3: equalizer in a way, and there's an exclusivity to it,
Speaker 3: and you play in small groups.
Speaker 4: It's not a sport, and think about the way the
Speaker 4: sport works. You have a rotationary period and you don't
Speaker 4: have a very tight clock often so this naturally generates conversation.
Speaker 4: But bowling is not the same because in bowling people
Speaker 4: rotate quickly, so you don't have as much time to speak.
Speaker 4: But also it's not as physically demanding, and a lot
Speaker 4: of times when people play golf, part of the game
Speaker 4: involves hanging out before or after grabbing some snacks, nashin
Speaker 4: and then talking about business deals. That's I would argue,
Speaker 4: that's part of the reason golf is so popular. It's
Speaker 4: a major economic draw. Just to finish that part. Most
Speaker 4: people don't want to compete professionally necessarily. They say, you
Speaker 4: play for about three years and you get a rough
Speaker 4: idea your skill level or your potential. But it's incredibly
Speaker 4: popular because it helps in business. It is not uncommon
Speaker 4: to hear professionals from across industries say a good game
Speaker 4: of golf or playing golf is a pivotal moment in
Speaker 4: their careers or their negotiations or their promotions.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, well, that's exactly what you said, Ben. It's the
Speaker 2: walk from one hole to the next hole, right from
Speaker 2: the place where the previous hole finishes to where the
Speaker 2: next win begins.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty text for a walk and talk you know,
Speaker 3: constantly for eighteen of them.
Speaker 2: Yes, I cannot I think we cannot stress that enough,
Speaker 2: like how impactful that has been through the years and
Speaker 2: just the things that have occurred in history because of
Speaker 2: a maybe a single game of golf or a series
Speaker 2: of games of golf.
Speaker 4: And also it's at the same time, it functions as
Speaker 4: an extended version of you know, the lunch meeting or
Speaker 4: the firm handshake, because a lot of people pride themselves
Speaker 4: on getting a good read on folks, especially and you know,
Speaker 4: in the world of private business. So they'll I've heard
Speaker 4: things like, you know, show me a guy how how
Speaker 4: a guy plays golf, and I'll tell you how he
Speaker 4: works in the boardroom. Well, it's why one of my
Speaker 4: favorite old Cadrey insults from business tycoons is that guy
Speaker 4: cheats at golf because what they're really saying is they
Speaker 4: think he's also a shark at business and not ethical.
Speaker 3: Wait, so that's a compliment.
Speaker 2: Sounds like a winner to me. Why are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: But then there's also so many business terms that spring
Speaker 3: from golf, like the idea of having a big swing,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, like take like a big
Speaker 3: grand efforts, or like some sort of like big forward
Speaker 3: thinking risky move is like a big swing, you know.
Speaker 4: And golf and business are inextricably linked in a way
Speaker 4: that is somewhat unique. Right, every major sport has this
Speaker 4: huge business link to it. We talked oh links haha.
Speaker 4: We mentioned some startling stats about people playing golf in
Speaker 4: the US, but to get our heads around tonight's episode,
Speaker 4: I think we need to consider financial stats as well.
Speaker 4: The economic impact of golf in twenty twenty two was
Speaker 4: one hundred billion dollars, and that's an increase from the
Speaker 4: last time they ran the numbers in twenty sixteen, when
Speaker 4: it was only eighty four billion dollars. Because this is
Speaker 4: another unique thing about golf, Unlike a lot of other sports,
Speaker 4: it flourish during the pandemic. It's perfect if you have
Speaker 4: to worry about social distancing.
Speaker 3: And Ben, I mean, I'm assuming this number is referring
Speaker 3: to the economics of golf courses, of the money golfing generates,
Speaker 3: perhaps also on professional level.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's you nailed at NOL because it's
Speaker 4: things like not just the fees people pay to go
Speaker 4: to a course, but things like there were sometimes risdiculous
Speaker 4: money you can you can spend on clubs, both you know,
Speaker 4: golf clubs and golf club Hey, I got myself in
Speaker 4: a pickle there, both golf clubs as the implement and
Speaker 4: golf clubs as the location medium.
Speaker 3: But it also just it occurred to me though that
Speaker 3: this number, if you think about all the business deals
Speaker 3: that golf generates, would be way higher in the trillions,
Speaker 3: probably an immeasurable.
Speaker 4: Number, right, Like the endorsements, no, no, but even just
Speaker 4: the deals.
Speaker 3: People are making whilst playing golf, you could ye as
Speaker 3: another economic impact of golf. Right, it's on.
Speaker 4: Think.
Speaker 2: I think it's no accident that mar A Lago is
Speaker 2: such an important function within Donald Trump's career and world, right,
Speaker 2: because it is where you can have those conversations, and
Speaker 2: he's an avid golfer, and it just occurs that.
Speaker 4: Way, and business tycoons have on several occasions accused former
Speaker 4: President Trump of cheating Nikola.
Speaker 3: I have heard that golf, you pick up your you
Speaker 3: drop your ball illegally, or you maybe not get some
Speaker 3: strokes back basically, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I guess. I mean. Also, if you're playing golf with
Speaker 4: your buddies, did I'm sure it's a very different game,
Speaker 4: kind of the honor.
Speaker 3: System, right, because you're keeping score for yourself. There's no
Speaker 3: like referee or official watching over you.
Speaker 4: And I didn't want to I don't want to be
Speaker 4: labor is pulling up the quotes even though they are funny.
Speaker 4: But I have to say, in the interest of fairness
Speaker 4: and being very apolitical here, it is also possible that
Speaker 4: the business tycoons accusing each other of cheating at golf
Speaker 4: might just be sore losers. M you know. So anyway,
Speaker 4: golf is not without controversy. No sport is. There's all
Speaker 4: the drama between players. You know, We've got this almost
Speaker 4: Shakespearean tragedies of the of the great athletes who find
Speaker 4: themselves fallen on hard time. Shout out Tiger Woods. He
Speaker 4: did disagreements, but that's not what we're here for tonight,
Speaker 4: because to really get into this. We have to go
Speaker 4: past the US and Scotland guys all the way out
Speaker 4: to the Middle East. This might finally be the episode
Speaker 4: that gets us jammed up at customs. But the Kingdom
Speaker 4: of Saudi Arabia never been.
Speaker 3: No, right, no. Many of you listening will probably be
Speaker 3: aware that this is an incredibly rish nation, incredibly wealthy.
Speaker 3: It's located in the Middle East, home of the most
Speaker 3: important holy sites to the Muslim faith, and also home
Speaker 3: to incredibly dense and rich fossil fuel reserves or fossil
Speaker 3: fuel deposits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oil has been very important for ye old KSA,
Speaker 2: and I think one of the main things that we're
Speaker 2: going to be looking at today is what do you
Speaker 2: do as a giant, wealthy country when you know that
Speaker 2: your primary resource that has built all the wealth is
Speaker 2: beginning to fade away from popular opinion right or to
Speaker 2: be soured amongst popular opinion of the world.
Speaker 3: What do you do.
Speaker 4: Well? And if you join us for past episodes, you
Speaker 4: know that this is something the kingdom has been wrestling
Speaker 4: with for quite some time, for decades now, because people
Speaker 4: in the petroleum industry had the predictive science about the
Speaker 4: decline of fossil fuels far before the public did so.
Speaker 4: The ruling powers, not just in Saudi Arabia, but in
Speaker 4: other oil rich nations, especially in the Middle East, they
Speaker 4: knew about this, and if you are running a long
Speaker 4: term sustainable economy, you never wanted reliant upon a single
Speaker 4: export or product or type of product. Right, So they
Speaker 4: have made a pivot. Maybe there will be a future
Speaker 4: episode about some of their other things, but from now,
Speaker 4: let's leave that right there and introduce you to the
Speaker 4: other piece. We all we have to say, we have
Speaker 4: to acknowledge the issue in the room. Look Saudi Arabia
Speaker 4: is a huge deal, not just for fossil fuel. The
Speaker 4: most important holy sites of the Muslim faith are located there.
Speaker 4: You've also likely heard of the huge problems the nation
Speaker 4: has historically had with their human rights abuses, their treatment
Speaker 4: of women, LGBTQ, foreign workers essentially being enslaved, they vivisected Kashaki,
Speaker 4: They're terrible with journalists. They're known for very harsh enforcement
Speaker 4: and interpretation of Islam. The list goes on. It's not
Speaker 4: a democracy. It's a very powerful place. If you've met
Speaker 4: folks from Saudi Arabia, you know they're awesome because people
Speaker 4: are pretty much people wherever you go, but people are
Speaker 4: not the country. No, And.
Speaker 3: Gosh, can I just attempt this full name Ben?
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, we just call him, but his full name
Speaker 5: is Salomon, Ben Abdullah Ziz, Ben Abdul Raman, Ben Faisal,
Speaker 5: Ben Turkey, Ben Abdullah, Ben Mohammad Ben Saud.
Speaker 4: Great work, Nolan, Yeah, and everybody wondering Ben there is
Speaker 4: spelled b I n like of yeah, like son of
Speaker 4: yea of that family or of that lineage. You nailed that.
Speaker 4: You you nailed that. We can see why people don't
Speaker 4: always say his full name. Uh So that is the
Speaker 4: person uh nol Us named is the king of Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 4: But the guy we hear about most in the West
Speaker 4: is the current Crown Prince and Prime Minister, Mohammed ben Salman.
Speaker 4: And that's the guy much younger. You'll hear a lot
Speaker 4: of quotes from him in the news. Will have some
Speaker 4: for you this evening. He is definitely the policymaker of
Speaker 4: the land, and he's done controversial, frankly brutal things. But
Speaker 4: he's also known for instituting a series of sweeping reforms
Speaker 4: that are in theory downright revolutionary for a country that
Speaker 4: is this conservative. It's called Vision twenty thirty.
Speaker 3: So in addition to kind of pulling back on some
Speaker 3: of the historical restrictions and minor law changes, it also
Speaker 3: aims to do what could be referred to kind of
Speaker 3: as a rebrand, sort of a pr refresh of Saudi
Speaker 3: Arabia's as you mentioned Ben, patently pretty negative image to visitors,
Speaker 3: to outsiders, tourists and invest abroad. There was a particularly
Speaker 3: snarky journalist that you found a quote from Ben who
Speaker 3: put it this way, Saudi Arabia really wants.
Speaker 4: You to think it's cool, which is, you know, I
Speaker 4: don't know how they would react to that title. While
Speaker 4: it may sound cavalier. Stephen A. Cook, writing for Foreign
Speaker 4: Policy is correct Vision twenty thirty. A lot of people
Speaker 4: are still pretty skeptical about the scope of it and
Speaker 4: the timeline. As you can imagine, they want to do
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff by twenty thirty, but right now
Speaker 4: oil is still seventy five percent of Saudi Arabia's fiscal
Speaker 4: revenue easily and forty percent of its GDP. It's it's
Speaker 4: the right move.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, but I'm a big part of American policy
Speaker 3: when whatever side of the aisle you know, people fall politically,
Speaker 3: is to reduce our reliance on foreign oil. Like, that's
Speaker 3: a pretty bipartisan issue, right.
Speaker 4: Which is weird because the US is also in the
Speaker 4: grand scheme of things and a fossil fuel rich.
Speaker 3: Country, but nowhere near as much so as Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 4: Right, no, no, no, But US crude oil exports reached
Speaker 4: a record high just last year. So when you hear
Speaker 4: people say the US is fighting to not be reliant
Speaker 4: on foreign fuel, it's important to look at the current
Speaker 4: numbers too. I know for sure this is exciting to
Speaker 4: some people, even though it's deeply imperfect. They can be
Speaker 4: seen as steps in the right direction human rights that
Speaker 4: people have always deserved that are maybe slowly coming to
Speaker 4: pass in this nation. But to others, granted, this is
Speaker 4: an insincere performative dance for approval on the international stage.
Speaker 4: This leads us to one of the weirdest controversies. Shout
Speaker 4: out to our buddy Brian Towey, a type of conspiracy
Speaker 4: called sports washing. What is it? I'll tell you after
Speaker 4: a word from our sponsors, here's where it gets crazy,
Speaker 4: all right, what is sports washing?
Speaker 2: Well, according to Britannica money Sportswashing is the use of
Speaker 2: an athletic event by an individual or government, or a
Speaker 2: corporation or another group to promote or burnish the individuals
Speaker 2: or group's reputation, especially amid controversy or scandal. What so
Speaker 2: they use sports to make themselves look good.
Speaker 3: Whilst now I'm gonna see you here, guys, let's we
Speaker 3: just let's have a good old friendly game of sports.
Speaker 4: We're Russia, we love the Olympics.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about the fifteen of nineteen terrorists that were
Speaker 2: from Saudi Arabia that allegedly caused the nine to eleven attacks.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about Jamal ka Shogi, who was a journalist
Speaker 2: who got exiled because he said some stuff about the
Speaker 2: King's son Wen Golff.
Speaker 3: You guys get that right. You guys know what golf's about.
Speaker 4: If you don't like golf, I've got other stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 4: This is similar. It's a portmanteau similar to greenwashing or
Speaker 4: which wash when yeah, which is when companies try to
Speaker 4: distract from their environmental damage by appearing to do like
Speaker 4: recycling programs are often accused of being greenwashing, and my
Speaker 4: favorite part of this definition is that list of things
Speaker 4: that might do it where they say individual, corporation, government,
Speaker 4: or other group. I kept thinking what falls into miscellaneous?
Speaker 4: Is it like your local improv group does sports washing?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: How small can a group be? How big do you
Speaker 4: have to be to participate in sports washing? I guess
Speaker 4: you have to be big enough to have a pro
Speaker 4: sports team.
Speaker 3: Improv can be pretty controversial. Ben say some pretty inflammatory
Speaker 3: stuff in these sketches, But also I retract pink washing.
Speaker 3: That's different, though it sounds similar. Pink washing is more
Speaker 3: the sort of sale of like stuff geared towards you know,
Speaker 3: women in a kind of offensive pandory way.
Speaker 4: Huh Okay, Okay, yeah, I bet, I bet there aren't
Speaker 4: tons of portmanteaus with washing right other than brainwashing that
Speaker 4: will we'll run into. It's weird, though, because sportsa washing
Speaker 4: is a pretty new term. It was printed in first
Speaker 4: in print in twenty fifteen and was not referring to
Speaker 4: Russia nor to Saudi Arabia. It was referring to Azerbaijan.
Speaker 4: They had taken these actions with the European Games, and
Speaker 4: a lot of critics said this is entirely a cynical
Speaker 4: attempt to take focus off some of the horrible human
Speaker 4: rights abuses you are committing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and groups like Amnesty International have used this term
Speaker 3: as well to criticize other countries with similar controversies, trying
Speaker 3: to kind of cover up their, you know, sins with
Speaker 3: rollicking sporting events, including Russia's hosting of the twenty four
Speaker 3: teen Olympic Games like you were mentioning or alluding to
Speaker 3: a little while ago, ben and the twenty eighteen World Cup,
Speaker 3: because again, these are just kind of these events are
Speaker 3: we use them in America in a similar way sometimes right.
Speaker 4: To cover up well, national anthem is at the top
Speaker 4: of every ball game.
Speaker 3: Sure, but like sporting events, there is this kind of
Speaker 3: unifying quality to them that can be used propagandistically. And
Speaker 3: I think, you know, I'm maybe I'm overstating the case,
Speaker 3: but it feels like America can be guilty of this too,
Speaker 3: just in terms of the fervor around sports, where it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: look at this this. I mean, it's like bread and circuses, right,
Speaker 3: It's a way of distracting from a fed up stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it is weird. So I'm thinking about Olympic
Speaker 2: Games in the United States, right. Two thousand and two
Speaker 2: is when Salt Lake City happened. That was just before
Speaker 2: we entered Iraq, right after nine to eleven and all
Speaker 2: of that stuff. That's when one of the main places
Speaker 2: where the United States has been accused of, you know,
Speaker 2: some human rights stuff, right, Not that the United States
Speaker 2: isn't accused of human rights stuff in places across the
Speaker 2: world pretty much at all times with military actions and
Speaker 2: like stuff that isn't quite a military action. But I
Speaker 2: don't know that it's the same necessarily.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I don't think it's the same. But I'm
Speaker 3: just saying I can see the value. How sports are
Speaker 3: clearly kind of like an obvious, you know, choice for
Speaker 3: doing this kind of thing. Yeah, we don't do it
Speaker 3: in the same way that these countries are doing it
Speaker 3: because our reputation is kind of our reputation.
Speaker 4: It seems like they's a little fluid. I'll tell you.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you why they're too. No, because the the
Speaker 4: thing that we have to remember in this context is
Speaker 4: that the US already has huge cultural exports of soft
Speaker 4: power that other countries may not possess at that same level.
Speaker 4: So if you're the home of Hollywood and you have
Speaker 4: one of the biggest entertainment industries in the world. Then
Speaker 4: you're already getting a lot of that washing to distract
Speaker 4: from things. Check out our previous episode on the Cozy
Speaker 4: relationship and the sweetheart deals. The US military industrial complex
Speaker 4: will make with you as a director or a production
Speaker 4: studio so long as the army looks good in your movie. Yep,
Speaker 4: they'll just let you drive the tanks. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Which, by the way, Saudi Arabia has a big old
Speaker 2: hand in Hollywood with its Vision twenty to thirty plan
Speaker 2: that we were talking about.
Speaker 3: So basically we wrote the playbook for a lot of
Speaker 3: this stuff, is what I think the takeaway is here.
Speaker 4: Well, when the case of sports washing, it's strange because,
Speaker 4: like so many other things, the term itself, the language
Speaker 4: for it, is new, but the strategy is old. Beans.
Speaker 4: One of the most famous early examples of sports washing
Speaker 4: before we all collectively learned the term, is the nineteen
Speaker 4: thirty six Nazi Olympics. The Nazi already hosted the Olympics,
Speaker 4: both because they wanted to look like the good guys
Speaker 4: are a legitimate part of the international order, and then
Speaker 4: also to them just as importantly, they wanted to prove
Speaker 4: their disturbing pseudo scientific beliefs.
Speaker 6: About race, and uh it blew up in their face
Speaker 6: because yes, Jesse Owens right, they were wrong, kicked ass
Speaker 6: he like absolutely blew away all of their aryan entries
Speaker 6: in track and field.
Speaker 3: And it was like a hugely embarrassing kind of pr
Speaker 3: debacle for.
Speaker 4: Old Hiller right, because their beliefs were and beat me
Speaker 4: here at c Palin Tryers their beliefs were bullshit and
Speaker 4: easily disprove it. So this this question is what all
Speaker 4: right sportswa washing? What does this have to do to
Speaker 4: South with Saudi Arabia. Even if you don't know much
Speaker 4: about golf, and we're not the golf encyclopedias that some
Speaker 4: people are, you've probably heard of the PGA Tour, right,
Speaker 4: even if you've just been at David Busters and played
Speaker 4: one of the golf games with the little rollie ball,
Speaker 4: it's the big one.
Speaker 3: I actually really like playing golf video games, whether they
Speaker 3: be kind of goofy, you know, Mario type golf video
Speaker 3: games or some of the PGA Tour ones.
Speaker 4: I find it a little bit relaxing and I find
Speaker 4: it meditative.
Speaker 3: I enjoy it. Yeah, it's fun. It's a good chill
Speaker 3: type of game to play that does involve some precision,
Speaker 3: and it's sort of like a languid kind of pace
Speaker 3: to it, and I can see why it's appealing to
Speaker 3: some people. However, watching it on television, I do not
Speaker 3: understand entirely. It just blows my mind to the people
Speaker 3: will sit and watch golf on TV.
Speaker 2: It's a professional golfers association. These are pros guys.
Speaker 4: The PGA. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Near where we live in Atlanta, we have a pg
Speaker 3: where I live. In particular, in East Lake area of Atlanta,
Speaker 3: there is the East Lake Golf Course which hosts a
Speaker 3: PGA tour and it clogs stuff up real bad, you
Speaker 3: know when it's happening because it's hard to get around.
Speaker 4: But PGA is the big dog too. By the way,
Speaker 4: PGA is the the organizer of professional golf tours in
Speaker 4: North America. Back in twenty nineteen, there was a would
Speaker 4: be rival that I guess smelled the money. So back
Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen, a would be upstart must have smelled
Speaker 4: the money. Entered the proverbial chat. They wanted to usurp
Speaker 4: the role of the PGA, and in a burst of creativity,
Speaker 4: they called themselves the Premiere Golf League, the pg L.
Speaker 3: It's one letter different.
Speaker 4: It's cool, yeah, but that sounds like Vanilla Ice saying
Speaker 4: that he didn't rip off that drum track.
Speaker 3: It is funny though, because they definitely intentionally left the
Speaker 3: P and the G in there because p stands are
Speaker 3: something different. It's premiere, which is a little more vague
Speaker 3: than professional. I would argue, you know, yeah, we're the best,
Speaker 3: We're the one of the matters.
Speaker 4: Which is like, what those kind of the strategy for
Speaker 4: those sort of people, you know, like, can't it, will
Speaker 4: steal it. That's a common strategy, right, because if you
Speaker 4: think about the brass tacks they're saying, all right, what
Speaker 4: if someone's buying and I guarantee this conversation happened. What
Speaker 4: if someone's buying PGA tickets for a loved one and
Speaker 4: they don't know much about golf at all, They can't
Speaker 4: get PGA, but they see PGL and they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's mostly the same, right, you know, like when your
Speaker 4: grandma buys you a video game for the wrong console,
Speaker 4: that's kind of the that's kind of the idea. But
Speaker 4: they also, you know, this happens all the time in sports.
Speaker 4: So this group a Premier Golf League. They're in talks
Speaker 4: with Saudi investors early on and they say, let's get
Speaker 4: some kind of financial partnership going. Yes, they're probably playing
Speaker 4: golf when they added these conversations too. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4: But in twenty twenty something something went awry. Because Saudi
Speaker 4: Arabia's sovereign wealth fund is known as the Public Investment Fund.
Speaker 4: They said, hey, we'll make our own I'm not going
Speaker 4: to quote Bender from Futurama, but they said, we'll make
Speaker 4: our own golf league.
Speaker 3: Oh. I thought the PGL was that thing. I got it.
Speaker 3: So the PGL was like another American interest that Saudi's
Speaker 3: were investing in, and they're like, you know, let's take
Speaker 3: this a step further. We'll launch something called the l
Speaker 3: I V or LIV Golf Investments under the Golf Saudi Moniker.
Speaker 4: Right, we're usurping the usurpers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's wild. What a power move.
Speaker 4: And the Public Investment Fund is a story, it's all
Speaker 4: its own. That's where you see multi billions of dollars
Speaker 4: worth of investments and all sorts of things that you
Speaker 4: probably don't recognize as influenced by this money.
Speaker 3: This is something where I guess there's some sort of
Speaker 3: committee behind making these decisions, and the decisions are pretty
Speaker 3: shadowy in terms of how things get done or where
Speaker 3: the money goes.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, just to be clear, the citizens in Saudi
Speaker 4: Arabia do not get devoted.
Speaker 3: But it's public.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's public information because of some lawsuits specifically
Speaker 2: that we're involved between the PGA and LIV that we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about. We know some of those investments.
Speaker 2: Now you guys might if we just go over a
Speaker 2: couple of them, just so we have some context of
Speaker 2: what they invest in. So this PIF has holdings as
Speaker 2: of oh gosh, this is from April twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: so this is probably changed. It's in a giant investment fund,
Speaker 2: so they move money around and shares around a lot.
Speaker 2: But as of April twenty twenty three, they owned eight
Speaker 2: point nine billion dollars worth of Lucid stock, which is
Speaker 2: that car manufacturer, three point two billion dollars worth of
Speaker 2: Activision Blizzard, two point nine billion in Electronic Arts, two
Speaker 2: point three billion in Uber, eight hundred and eighty million
Speaker 2: dollars in Live Nation. They own a ton like hundreds
Speaker 2: of millions of dollars in Meta Starbucks PayPal, Microsoft, Carnival
Speaker 2: as in like Cruises, Costco, JP, Morgan Chase, and Blackrock,
Speaker 2: and there's so many more. Black Rock will by the way,
Speaker 2: the real estate investment firm thing. They also own a
Speaker 2: ton of Nintendo. They own eight point five eight percent
Speaker 2: of Nintendo right now, that's a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's not a controlling stake, but it is
Speaker 4: an influential stake. And yes, black Rock not to be
Speaker 4: confused with the black Stone. The Rock set into the
Speaker 4: eastern corner of the Kabba, the Public Investment Fund before
Speaker 4: we before we go back to the golf stuff. It
Speaker 4: has an estimated total asset of nine hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: five billion dollars nine hundred and twenty five billion.
Speaker 3: Let's just make it a cool trillion man, you know.
Speaker 4: I know, right, They're so so close, right, And the
Speaker 4: purpose of this investment is to diversify the economy, to
Speaker 4: bring Saudi Arabia further into the international order and sports
Speaker 4: in specific. For this episode, it became a great way
Speaker 4: to accomplish that. In October twenty twenty one, Golf Saudi
Speaker 4: division of the Public Investment Fund. Because it's that big,
Speaker 4: they have a bunch of divisions who just work on
Speaker 4: specific ideas golf. Saudi launched Live Golf Investments LIV. You know,
Speaker 4: like how the cool apps don't put the E at
Speaker 4: the end of their stuff sometimes.
Speaker 3: I always found this silent letters to be a bit obnoxious.
Speaker 4: Anyway, So yeah, you think they're presumptuous a little bit.
Speaker 3: They really insisted on them.
Speaker 4: So you must hate French.
Speaker 3: I enjoy the French.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Okay, So there's a legendary golfer named Greg Norman.
Speaker 4: I got excited about this, but it's not a guy,
Speaker 4: I know, it's just a very common name, Greg.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did.
Speaker 4: For a second, I thought, oh snap, Greg. He is
Speaker 4: named the CEO PIF Fund and live as billions bot
Speaker 4: billions of profits from fossil fuels. So they go around
Speaker 4: to all of the biggest names in the world of
Speaker 4: golf and they say, hey, how much money.
Speaker 3: Well, they need a face, they need a recognizable face
Speaker 3: for their operations, somebody who's beloved, you know, by followers
Speaker 3: of the game of golf. And they you know, went
Speaker 3: to the top names, starting with folks like Tiger Woods
Speaker 3: who did turn it down, whether it be for philosophical reasons,
Speaker 3: ethical reasons, or they just didn't hit his rate.
Speaker 4: His quote, he said it was as a matter of
Speaker 4: loyalty because good for TIGERSGA had done so much for
Speaker 4: him and for the game of golf, and they offered
Speaker 4: him more than seven hundred million dollars. Dude.
Speaker 2: ABC News said eight hundred million dollars, which, again, those
Speaker 2: kinds of numbers. What's the difference between seven hundred million
Speaker 2: and eight hundred million. I don't know that I could
Speaker 2: really tell you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't have a nine hundred billion and a trillion,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, it's like, might as well be
Speaker 3: infinity money.
Speaker 4: We Yeah, we don't have the specifics obviously of the deal,
Speaker 4: but most news sources are going to estimate it as
Speaker 4: saying between more than seven hundred up to eight hundred million.
Speaker 4: And then so Tiger Woods and other people said no,
Speaker 4: and then other golfers like Greg Norman.
Speaker 3: I do not know.
Speaker 4: It's crazy. I feel like I know three people named
Speaker 4: Greg Norman.
Speaker 3: I just know him from growing up around golf and Augusta, Georgia.
Speaker 4: Other people like him and Phil Mickelson. Then, just to
Speaker 4: show this up, they didn't say yes, they did play ball.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I understand, Like, the only reason I have any
Speaker 3: association with names like this is because growing up in
Speaker 3: my hometown, which is the home of the Augusta National
Speaker 3: where the Master's golf tournament is played, and it is
Speaker 3: a big deal in the city of Augusta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guys like Bubba Watson, which was a big deal.
Speaker 2: I remember there were news stories when he went over
Speaker 2: to live as well, and he was just like, hey, sorry, guys,
Speaker 2: this is about my family a money.
Speaker 4: By Yeah, golf clubs are expensive, which I was just
Speaker 4: learning to.
Speaker 3: By the way, Yaviar's expensive.
Speaker 2: Just to bring in this ABC News article because I
Speaker 2: think it speaks to why this is such a weird situation.
Speaker 2: ABC News is talking about this, right, They posted an
Speaker 2: article in March of this year called Live Golf's controversial
Speaker 2: growth raises questions over Saudi sportswashing, right, the very thing
Speaker 2: we're talking about here, and ABC News the person who
Speaker 2: wrote this had to write this in the article.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 2: Quote the PIF we're talking about here, the Public Investment Fund,
Speaker 2: which also owns a minority stake in Disney, the parent
Speaker 2: company of ABC News and Hulu. Again, like all of
Speaker 2: these companies together, the person writing this has to make
Speaker 2: this concession because Saudi Arabia is investing so much money
Speaker 2: across entertainment and sports and all these things that literally
Speaker 2: to even talk about it often as a journalist, you
Speaker 2: have to be aware that you are probably being touched
Speaker 2: by this Saudi money.
Speaker 4: Right, Saudi Arabia. Also, I would say it's less a
Speaker 4: concession and more like the ethics of journalism, Like when
Speaker 4: NPR says short of our funding is here, it's just
Speaker 4: to just to get in from of disclosure, right, full
Speaker 4: disclosure maybe. But with this, it also reminds me our
Speaker 4: parent company, iHeart is associated with Live Nation, and who
Speaker 4: who has a stake in Live Nation?
Speaker 2: Well that's yeah, yeah, exactly this one. But there's according
Speaker 2: to that article, this Sovereign Wealth Fund has invested thirteen
Speaker 2: point five billion dollars into sports since it started, Right,
Speaker 2: So if you've got that much money just going into sports,
Speaker 2: and then you know that there's like one point three
Speaker 2: trillion dollars in total that has been invested like since
Speaker 2: the inception of this twenty thirty thing, and then you
Speaker 2: know that all this money is just spreading out. When
Speaker 2: I'm saying like everybody's being touched by it, it just
Speaker 2: means you there's a level of full disclosure is one thing,
Speaker 2: but there's a level of anyone writing about it has
Speaker 2: to just be a little more careful absolutely when they're
Speaker 2: doing that.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, like you said, the Saudi money touches
Speaker 3: so much industry, and for a good reason are they
Speaker 3: investing in sports beyond the whole sports watching of it.
Speaker 3: It's just good business. It's a way making a.
Speaker 2: Crap ton of money, and everybody wants it.
Speaker 4: That's a great point to you, Noel, because the PIF,
Speaker 4: the Public Investment Fund, began in nineteen seventy one, so
Speaker 4: even the numbers you're getting now about their total financial
Speaker 4: assets are not counting other things that have grown over time,
Speaker 4: right because compound interest I think was Mark Twain had
Speaker 4: a great quote about compound interest, which I will slow
Speaker 4: us down with now. But the point you made that
Speaker 4: really stands out to me there, Noal, is that if
Speaker 4: your goal is to diversify your economy, right, then of
Speaker 4: course you want to invest in a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: other things. It would be cartoonish to say, we're too
Speaker 4: reliant on fossil fuels, so let's invest everything in corn,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean? Because now you're just too
Speaker 4: little corn. It's fine a little. The corn is fine
Speaker 4: as a treat. But now otherwise you're taking all your
Speaker 4: eggs and just putting them in a different basket made
Speaker 4: of corn husks. Perhaps, so it's not necessarily just on
Speaker 4: the economic structure and strategy, there is not itself inherently sinister.
Speaker 4: The problem comes when we consider that in the context
Speaker 4: of all these other controversies surrounding the kingdom and live golf.
Speaker 2: Well, you just have to consider how many corporations out
Speaker 2: there are wanting an investment from Saudi Arabia because you can.
Speaker 2: If you can get two billion dollars injected into whatever
Speaker 2: your company is doing, that's amazing. And everybody's looking for
Speaker 2: that year over a year, quarter over a quarter increase.
Speaker 2: And if you've got like two twenty one hundred billion
Speaker 2: dollars to play with your and he's going to do
Speaker 2: just fine.
Speaker 4: And if you can keep it quiet to avoid controversy, right,
Speaker 4: if you can get it through a subsidiary of a subsidiary,
Speaker 4: the money spends the same and you can possibly avoid
Speaker 4: the bad optics or the.
Speaker 2: Great optics of Hey, investors, he just got two more
Speaker 2: billion dollars to play with. And then stock shoots up,
Speaker 2: and then everybody makes money because Saudi Arabia has got
Speaker 2: you know, a minority share.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, my point was that I think a lot
Speaker 4: of them are getting money through subsidiaries in a way
Speaker 4: that helps obscure the origin of Saudi Arabia and industries
Speaker 4: where that might be sensitive and maybe I mean correct.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think it's certainly part of it. But I
Speaker 3: think it's also on a pr level easy to explain
Speaker 3: the investment away because it's like, duh, we're business people.
Speaker 3: We are investing in things that make us money. It
Speaker 3: doesn't have to be some sort of nefarious plot.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying the two things don't coexist, but I
Speaker 3: think it's easy to explain it away on a public
Speaker 3: relationship level by just saying this is just good business.
Speaker 4: And taking it back to Live Golf for the record,
Speaker 4: you know, people love golf obviously, obviously, people love sports,
Speaker 4: people love golf. Live Golf has always claimed that we
Speaker 4: want to holistically improve the health of professional golf. That's
Speaker 4: quote from their website and to quote, help unlock the
Speaker 4: sports potential. A lot of the old Guard was again
Speaker 4: pretty miffed about this, and they're some of the most
Speaker 4: strident critics of Saudi Arabia's moves in this field, and
Speaker 4: a lot of longtime critics of Saudi Arabia for other
Speaker 4: stuff on the human rights spectrum. They just said, Saudi
Speaker 4: Arabia is doing this not because they like golf, not
Speaker 4: because it's a good investment for them economically, but because
Speaker 4: it's a geopolitical conspiracy. This is to improve the soft
Speaker 4: power of the country, their international reputation and say like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're doing evil things to human beings with our left hand.
Speaker 4: Look at us. We also have the golf at our
Speaker 4: right hand, so pay attention to that hand.
Speaker 3: But ben are they being very publicly forward in branding
Speaker 3: and the like associating the country with they are Okay,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I want to hear more about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, We're get do great. Great quote Ardi.
Speaker 4: So there's a news conference ahead of Live Golf's first event,
Speaker 4: and reporters were to the thing about journalistic ethics and integrity.
Speaker 4: Reporters were asking questions like Phil Mickelson, who we mentioned
Speaker 4: just a few moments ago. He was asked directly, quote,
Speaker 4: isn't there a danger that you're seeing as a tool
Speaker 4: of sports washing and the sports washing question came up
Speaker 4: over and over again in these Western press conferences, and
Speaker 4: then another human rights group released a great study. They're
Speaker 4: called Grant Liberty and their report on Saudi Arabian sports
Speaker 4: washing efforts. They take it as a given. They just say, look,
Speaker 4: because of all the money the potential in this sports
Speaker 4: as if you think about it, well it's not on
Speaker 4: the level of fossil fuel, but it is a multi
Speaker 4: billion dollar industry. They said, now they're trying to lighten
Speaker 4: their image. I don't know, that's the thing. This is
Speaker 4: the question I have for you guys. We we know
Speaker 4: people try to start new sports orgs all the time.
Speaker 4: It's a huge coup to host a global sporting event,
Speaker 4: from racing to the World Cup in the Olympics. Is
Speaker 4: it inherently sinister?
Speaker 3: Well, that was the question that I think I was
Speaker 3: our Devil's advocating for earlier. You know, just the idea
Speaker 3: that it can at very least be explained away, that
Speaker 3: it is not inherently sinister. This just makes sense. We
Speaker 3: love this stuff, we love the sport. We want to help,
Speaker 3: you know, make it better. And I believe that group
Speaker 3: that you quoted, Ben or that you cited Grant Liberty
Speaker 3: kind of summed it up exactly that way. Sports has loved,
Speaker 3: they said, and played around the world. That is a
Speaker 3: giant unifying force, and it's also a multi billion dollar industry.
Speaker 3: By associating themselves with sport, leaders are seeking to position
Speaker 3: their country in line with that magic. They want to
Speaker 3: bask in reflected glory and like you said, ben lighten
Speaker 3: their image.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, there's also a convenience factor. Maybe I don't
Speaker 4: think this applies to Saudi Arabia's rulers, to be honest,
Speaker 4: but if you have the big global event for any
Speaker 4: particular sport in your country, you get national pride. And
Speaker 4: also everybody who lives there doesn't have to spend thousands
Speaker 4: of dollars, you know, on plane flights or traveling by
Speaker 4: cargo ship or rail, and they don't have to spend
Speaker 4: thousands of dollars on hotels. I don't know if that
Speaker 4: applies to the ruling powers of Saudi Arabia. I don't
Speaker 4: think they're worried about like getting the cheapest flight on
Speaker 4: Delta or whatever.
Speaker 3: No, probably not.
Speaker 2: I want to point one thing out, guys, because I
Speaker 2: think I think it has exactly to do with this.
Speaker 2: There's this group called nine to Eleven Families United, and
Speaker 2: it's shared by someone named Terry Strata, whose husband was
Speaker 2: killed in the nine to eleven attacks. And when Live
Speaker 2: Golf was first announced back in twenty twenty one, this
Speaker 2: group came forward and began protesting and writing and speaking
Speaker 2: publicly about it because of the at the time in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, more and more information that was coming
Speaker 2: out right before that about how Saudi Arabia's intelligence arms
Speaker 2: or at least government officials likely had something to do
Speaker 2: with the September eleventh attacks. And we're talking actual intelligence,
Speaker 2: not like just people writing conspiracy theories online. This was
Speaker 2: a real news story that was starting to happen. If
Speaker 2: you look at pro Publica, they put out a story
Speaker 2: this year on September eleventh titled at least two Saudi
Speaker 2: officials may have deliberately assisted nine to eleven hijackers. New
Speaker 2: evidence suggests this is one of the primary stories that
Speaker 2: exist in the Western world and especially in the United States,
Speaker 2: when it comes to when you think about Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 2: what do you think about? And if this stuff is
Speaker 2: in the news cycle pretty consistently, then live Golf is
Speaker 2: one way as we're saying here, So just shift what
Speaker 2: people are thinking about. The first couple of things they
Speaker 2: think about. When they hear Saudi Arabia, right, or the
Speaker 2: kingdom or the prince or the king or something like that,
Speaker 2: you think, oh, yeah, so that's a live golf guys, right,
Speaker 2: not this.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, that's definitely one of the criticism or that's
Speaker 4: the fundamental piece of sportswa washing, you know, going into
Speaker 4: the timing of something just like soachy and just like
Speaker 4: the Nazi Olympics. But we also have to ask, you know,
Speaker 4: with something in the magnitude of nine to eleven, how
Speaker 4: much could golf move the needle or is it more
Speaker 4: death by a thousand paper cuts? Because we know, you know,
Speaker 4: it reminds me of the pr moves on a much
Speaker 4: smaller level that different agencies will do where they want
Speaker 4: something to get off the first page of search results,
Speaker 4: so they figure out something else to happen, right, like
Speaker 4: a new news story to be manufactured and appear to
Speaker 4: go viral.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: But the PGA Commissioner J Monahan, when live golf was announced,
Speaker 2: basically jumped on with the exact talking points the nine
Speaker 2: to eleven families United was saying, saying, this is basically
Speaker 2: a moral issue, more so than even a money issue
Speaker 2: or appearance issue. It's just crazy to think that that
Speaker 2: is where it existed, at least in the minds of
Speaker 2: the people behind the PGA, when they were looking at
Speaker 2: a competitor like Live showing up.
Speaker 4: I'm glad that points brought up there, because yes, the
Speaker 4: international public renown is a huge factor. But we have
Speaker 4: to ask, in all fairness, all the evil corruption and
Speaker 4: conspiracy vivisection of journalists aside, what makes Saudi Arabia different.
Speaker 4: This is a question I have, and I think it's
Speaker 4: a very important question to that note about the PGA.
Speaker 4: How much of the criticism is valid spoiler a lot?
Speaker 4: And how much is being propagated by older forces in
Speaker 4: those organizations like the PGA. How much are they acting
Speaker 4: out of self preservation versus out of noble aspirations for
Speaker 4: human rights. As sticky as it is to say, I
Speaker 4: will posit that both things can be true at once agreed,
Speaker 4: So in our notes we have this as the part
Speaker 4: that might get us banned from Saudi Arabia, the one
Speaker 4: that might get us jammed up at Saudi Arabian customs.
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia is not just getting into golf. They're going
Speaker 4: into sports overall in a big, big way. Some controlling
Speaker 4: stakes were in various other industries were mentioned earlier, and
Speaker 4: we tease that there was more than just golf of
Speaker 4: foots here. But you can look at the links. The
Speaker 4: Public Investment Fund owns controlling stakes, not just minority stakes,
Speaker 4: controlling stakes in Newcastle United, for Saudi domestic football or
Speaker 4: soccer teams. It had a stake in Formula One's parent company,
Speaker 4: McLaren Group. And then they're they're getting big into esports too, Right,
Speaker 4: what's the difference between esports? Guys, this is such a
Speaker 4: dumb question, but I'm not afraid of dumb questions. What's
Speaker 4: the difference to esports and sports video games?
Speaker 3: Isn't esports like professional league like leagues? Oh that's okay, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, you're right.
Speaker 2: Esport is any game first version, shooters, you know, like
Speaker 2: those Dota games, any of that stuff.
Speaker 3: On a competitive, like professional level.
Speaker 2: Right, you can have sports games esports.
Speaker 4: That makes sense. And they also got a some of
Speaker 4: us in the crowdle like this. They also have a
Speaker 4: mind already stake in a rival to the UFC, the
Speaker 4: US Professional Fighters League. So yet again we see the
Speaker 4: letters play. There's the PFL and the UFC their ideas.
Speaker 4: They're going to launch an MMA league and a super
Speaker 4: fight division, all located in Saudi Arabia. Oh. Also, pro
Speaker 4: wrestling is big. We know some folks who work for
Speaker 4: WWE and have traveled to Saudi Arabia to stage events
Speaker 4: there were It's pretty much everything boxing, horse racing, sailing, tennis.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm excited about, Saudi Arabian sumo wrestling.
Speaker 4: Maybe you finally get a ticket that's not I don't
Speaker 4: know if that's happen.
Speaker 3: Isn't that cool? I mean, so that's the thing that's
Speaker 3: interesting to me too. It's like sports aren't considered cultural
Speaker 3: appropriation because it's like, even if a sport was invented
Speaker 3: in a certain country, after a certain point, it becomes
Speaker 3: kind of this universal thing. But like sumo wrestling, I
Speaker 3: mean like that, I know you're sort of joking, but
Speaker 3: where where did the line get drawn in terms of like,
Speaker 3: but culture is associated with a particular type of event.
Speaker 4: That's a good question, man, because we know that there
Speaker 4: are non Japanese national folks who have become professional sumo wrestlers.
Speaker 4: I'm now I'm becoming the problem because I'm wondering if
Speaker 4: it would just be easier to get a ticket to
Speaker 4: a sumo event Saudi Arabia took over.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean, answer if it was like a
Speaker 3: bicultural sort of exchange and it was like we agree
Speaker 3: that we want to proliferate the sport beyond Japan and
Speaker 3: include you know, I mean, I don't know. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I didn't mean to get into the weeds there. It's
Speaker 3: just that is interesting because for certain things like you know,
Speaker 3: baseball or basketball or football, you know, really he certainly
Speaker 3: it's American, I guess. But it's also like soccer is
Speaker 3: huge in Europe and it's a huge in South America,
Speaker 3: and only just recently has it become a more of
Speaker 3: a phenomenon here in the States.
Speaker 4: So the cultural side of it is interesting to me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's I think that's a deep question too. I mean,
Speaker 4: we know, all in all Saudi Arabia's eighty five major
Speaker 4: separate events, and at every turn in all of these events,
Speaker 4: you'll hear people accusing athletes, managers, and coaches of being
Speaker 4: functionally complacent, right of essentially taking the thirty pieces of
Speaker 4: silver to betray humanity right and distract from these serious,
Speaker 4: very real human rights abuses. So what's the motivation really?
Speaker 4: It depends on who you ask why all this recent
Speaker 4: massive investment Before we get to monopolization that we wanted
Speaker 4: to mention, I think we go directly to the Crown
Speaker 4: Prince Mohamed Salman to ask about this. He is pretty
Speaker 4: blunt about it in interviews, and he makes no secret
Speaker 4: of the massive financial motivations of play. He was speaking
Speaker 4: to Fox News and said he didn't care about the
Speaker 4: debate around sports washing. He was interviewed by Brett Bahar,
Speaker 4: the same guy who earlier interviewed VP Harris. Quite recently,
Speaker 4: as we record, and this is in September twentieth of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three, the Crown print says, Look, I don't
Speaker 4: care if sports washing is going to increase my GDP
Speaker 4: by one percent, will continue doing sports washing. I don't care.
Speaker 4: I have one percent growth in GDP from sport and
Speaker 4: I'm aiming to get another one point five percent. Call
Speaker 4: it what you want, we are going to get that
Speaker 4: one point five percent.
Speaker 3: Well, and while that's like mega blunt and I think
Speaker 3: that's interesting in and of itself. It is exactly that
Speaker 3: kind of diversionary explaining away of like the no, duh,
Speaker 3: we're gonna do this. It's like really good for our
Speaker 3: gross domestic product and whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 3: You call it that, but that's not why we're doing it.
Speaker 2: We're just making money over here.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it was even more so that he's
Speaker 4: just not going to even countenance the conversation, right, dignify
Speaker 4: it with a response? Right, would the old media training
Speaker 4: thing answer the question you wish you were asked? And
Speaker 4: the Kingdom is still an extremely dangerous place for those
Speaker 4: seen as violating its laws. We can't forget that eighty
Speaker 4: one people were executed there on a single day just
Speaker 4: back in twenty twenty two. These are very recent events.
Speaker 4: So what happens next in golf specifically? I think we
Speaker 4: wanted to talk about some more mergers and acquisitions.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, for since Live Golf was established and they
Speaker 2: got Phil Mickelson and several other high profile people, they
Speaker 2: were investing billions and billions of dollars starting this new thing. PGA,
Speaker 2: the PGA Group or the PGA Tour and Live Golf
Speaker 2: have been embroiled in a legal battle, and it's been
Speaker 2: ongoing and ongoing, and all of a sudden, and by
Speaker 2: the way, there are clear sides that were taken, especially
Speaker 2: amongst the professional golfers. We talked about that a little bit.
Speaker 2: There are clear sides for supporters who are just of golf,
Speaker 2: some people going over to live golf and totally fine
Speaker 2: with it in its new version of what golf is,
Speaker 2: or could be other people who want that old who
Speaker 2: want that old golf feeling and hanging out with PGA.
Speaker 3: Right, like Tiger and right he stayed behind. Yeah, is
Speaker 3: just a big name that like went over. Let's see
Speaker 3: that became CEO Greg Norman.
Speaker 2: Right, So that you've got these and they were there
Speaker 2: were like fighting sides, right, mean things are being said,
Speaker 2: bad things are being said about each other basically. Then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden in June there's a huge announcement
Speaker 2: made by the same guy that I mentioned a quote
Speaker 2: from earlier, Jay Monahan, who's the PGA Tour commissioner. He
Speaker 2: came out and basically said, okay, guys, we've come to
Speaker 2: a deal Live Golf, the PGA Tour as well as
Speaker 2: this thing called the dp World Tour. We're all coming
Speaker 2: together and we're going to function as one thing. We're
Speaker 2: going to unify golf across the world as one thing,
Speaker 2: basically by merger efforts and money, which was crazy to everybody,
Speaker 2: for everybody, because well especially people on the PGA side,
Speaker 2: because it was a battle that was being fought to
Speaker 2: prevent this very thing from happening, right from either live
Speaker 2: golf overtaking the PGA Tour or from merging with a
Speaker 2: bunch of Saudi Arabian money to turn the pg Tour
Speaker 2: into something else. And now the commissioner, who was publicly
Speaker 2: fighting back and fighting legal battles, just said, now it's cool, guys,
Speaker 2: we're all going we're all coming together. Here's a quote
Speaker 2: from Jay. What we're talking about today is coming together
Speaker 2: to unify the game of golf, and to do so
Speaker 2: under one umbrella. We've recognized that together we can have
Speaker 2: a far greater impact on this game than we can
Speaker 2: working apart. The game of golf is better for what
Speaker 2: we've done here today. Very reverent, Well, you know, it
Speaker 2: sounds like to me, it sounds like somebody who skied.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, he's spouting a line. For sure, I'm saying the
Speaker 3: tone of that though, is so self congratulatory it kind
Speaker 3: of makes you throw up in your mouth a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a little weird.
Speaker 4: And for now, the story continues. We didn't say much
Speaker 4: about the human rights abuses other than to refer to them,
Speaker 4: but we have mentioned notable moments. You can learn more
Speaker 4: about that in past episodes of our show, as well
Speaker 4: as your own searches. The specific initiative for sports overall
Speaker 4: and Saudi Arabia acquisition thereof continues at a rapid pace.
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia has recently won the rights to stage the
Speaker 4: finals of the Asian Champions League football tournament, then the
Speaker 4: twenty thirty four Asian Games, the twenty twenty seven Asian Cup,
Speaker 4: the twenty twenty nine Winter Olympics, and is going to
Speaker 4: host the twenty thirty four World Cup, by far, one
Speaker 4: of the biggest sports events on the planet. So a
Speaker 4: lot of people believe more Olympic bids are only a
Speaker 4: matter of time. To put it simply, Saudi Arabia's riches
Speaker 4: are transforming the landscape of sporting and there's a controversial,
Speaker 4: profound shift and influence taking place. While people are going
Speaker 4: to raise concerns continually, I think it is highly unlikely
Speaker 4: that the sporting world is gonna somehow unanimously turn away
Speaker 4: from billions upon billions of dollars.
Speaker 3: That's just not how.
Speaker 4: Sports or business works, right, Nope, it's not really the
Speaker 4: m O. And so with this we'll keep an eye
Speaker 4: on the story. We hope you do. Two folks, we
Speaker 4: would love to hear your thoughts. We don't always do
Speaker 4: sports episodes, but we try to make them special when
Speaker 4: we get to it. Is this on the up and up?
Speaker 4: Or is something else afoot on the on the global
Speaker 4: course of golf something they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: Tell us your thoughts. We can't wait to hear your experiences,
Speaker 4: especially in just to help us out on some other things,
Speaker 4: especially if you can name your favorite weird sport and
Speaker 4: maybe tell us what the Saudi government should invest in next.
Speaker 4: We tried to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: That's right. You can find us all over your Internet
Speaker 3: platforms of choice at the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist,
Speaker 3: on Facebook, where we have our Facebook group, Here's where
Speaker 3: it gets crazy, on x FKA Twitter, as well as
Speaker 3: on YouTube, where you can find glorious quantities of video
Speaker 3: content for your perusal. If you'd like to find us
Speaker 3: on Instagram and TikTok. However, we are conspiracy stuff show
Speaker 3: on those platforms.
Speaker 2: If you want to call us, call one eight three
Speaker 2: three STDWYTK. Call us after you've checked out that ABC
Speaker 2: News article PGA Tour Live Golf DP World Tour unify
Speaker 2: under one umbrella. What do you think about this as
Speaker 2: a conclusion? What are you going to keep watching golf
Speaker 2: now that it's something different?
Speaker 3: Do you even like golf?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Just call us and tell us things
Speaker 2: about golf this time or tangentially related. Please, when you
Speaker 2: call in, give yourself a cool nickname. Say whatever you'd like.
Speaker 4: Just do.
Speaker 2: Let us know if we can use your name and
Speaker 2: message on the air. If you've got more to say,
Speaker 2: then can fit in one voicemail. Why not instead send
Speaker 2: us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4: We are the entity is you read every single piece
Speaker 4: of correspondence we receive. It's one of our favorite ways
Speaker 4: for you to contact us. Give us the links, give
Speaker 4: us the photographs, no word limit. Go as long as
Speaker 4: you want. A cool nickname is great. We've got your back.
Speaker 4: Let us know if you need to be anonymous, and
Speaker 4: if you want to learn about sports washing overall. Check
Speaker 4: out that study we mentioned by Grant Liberty. It's pretty
Speaker 4: in the weeds, but it's worth the time, perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 4: for unrelated reasons, again your favorite weird sport? Have you
Speaker 4: ever heard of? Toe wrestling? Just the phrase makes us uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: But there's a lot out there and we can't wait
Speaker 4: to hear your stories about it. So join us out
Speaker 4: here in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.