Phil Mickelson, other LIV golfers file antitrust suit against PGA Tour
Unlike some of the other players who left for LIV Golf, the 11 players who filed the lawsuit — Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Talor Gooch, Hudson Swafford, Matt Jones, Ian Poulter, Abraham Ancer, Carlos Ortiz, Pat Perez, Jason Kokrak and Peter Uihlein — have not forfeited their PGA Tour memberships, meaning they still hoped to play on both tours. But the PGA Tour did not give them permission to play in LIV tournaments and issued multiple-year suspensions after they did so.
The lawsuit alleges that the PGA Tour not only has threatened golfers who sought to play in LIV tournaments, it also “threatened sponsors, vendors, and agents to coerce players to abandon opportunities to play in LIV Golf events”; “orchestrated a per se unlawful group boycott with the European Tour to deny LIV Golf access to their members”; and “leaned on” groups that put on golf’s four major championships, pressuring them into banning LIV golfers from competing in the sport’s most high-profile events.
“The Tour’s conduct serves no purpose other than to cause harm to players and foreclose the entry of the first meaningful competitive threat the Tour has faced in decades,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland.
Mickelson, one of the world’s most beloved golfers and a six-time major winner, has long been a proponent of starting a breakaway organization, admitting to a biographer that he had helped pay for attorneys to draw up its operating rules. The lawsuit contends that the PGA Tour suspended Mickelson for at least two months March 22 for, among other reasons, “attempting to recruit players” to join LIV Golf. (Mickelson’s last PGA Tour event was in late January, before news of his involvement with LIV broke.) It then denied his application for reinstatement June 20, saying he violated PGA Tour rules by playing in LIV Golf’s first tournament in London, and suspended him through March 31, 2023. That suspension was lengthened to March 31, 2024, after Mickelson played in LIV’s second tournament in Oregon, the lawsuit contends.
“Mr. Mickelson’s unlawful two-year suspension from the PGA Tour has caused him irreparable professional harm, as well as financial, and commercial harm,” the lawsuit reads. Though Mickelson lost a number of sponsors after he downplayed Saudi human-rights violations ahead of LIV’s launch, he also reportedly has received more than $100 million simply for joining the series, in which the 52-year-old has played poorly over three events. He and the rest of the LIV golfers get paid no matter how poorly they may play because LIV tournaments have no cuts.
For the LIV players’ lawsuit to be successful, they would need to prove they have suffered actual harm and that the PGA Tour’s actions reduced competition in violation of federal law. Jacob S. Frenkel, the chair of government investigations and securities enforcement at law firm Dickinson Wright in Washington, told The Washington Post last week that proving harm “would not be particularly easy when they’re being compensated in a manner that may be greater than the ultimate compensation from the PGA Tour.”
“They made a personal decision to dissociate from the PGA and affiliate with a competing tour. They weren’t forced to do that,” Frenkel said. “As a PGA Tour participant, they also agreed to certain standards, not just standards of the organization but standards of personal conduct.”
PGA Tour golfers are required to receive permission to play in non-sanctioned tournaments, and traditionally were allowed three such instances each season (usually to play in events on the European tour, which has an operating agreement with the PGA Tour). The lawsuit contends the tour “weaponized” this “Conflicting Events Regulation” to prevent its golfers from playing in any non-sanctioned tournament and that this system does not “permit meaningful competition by other tours.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating the PGA Tour for potential antitrust violations, according to the Wall Street Journal, which is at least the second time federal officials have looked into tour dealings. In 1994, antitrust lawyers at the Federal Trade Commission tried to get the U.S. government to nullify the rule that requires golfers to receive permission to play in conflicting events — and another that said players needed to get…
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