The PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf announced a merger Tuesday in a stunning end to their bitter rivalry on the fairways, in the courts and on the geopolitical stage.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, who once said playing in LIV events would warrant an apology, said the deal would benefit the sport.

“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” Monahan said in a statement. ‘Going forward, fans can be confident that we will, collectively, deliver on the promise we’ve always made — to promote competition of the best in professional golf and that we are committed to securing and driving the game’s future.’

Monahan told CNBC the move was necessary to grow the sport.

‘There’s been a lot of tension in our sport for the last couple of years. But what we’re talking about today is coming together to unify the game of golf and to do so under one umbrella,’ he said.

‘Together, we’re going to move forward, and we’re going to take efforts to grow and expand this great game and take it to new heights.’

Golf legend Phil Mickelson, who had led prominent players away from the PGA Tour to help form LIV, tweeted his approval of the news Tuesday morning.

And former President Donald Trump, a backer of LIV, took a victory lap Tuesday, declaring he had predicted that the PGA Tour would have to come to an agreement with the Saudi-backed golf operation.

Loved ones of 9/11 victims have protested outside of LIV events, drawing attention to Saudi connections to the 2001 terrorist attacks.

‘PGA Tour leaders should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and greed,’ 9/11 Families United Chair Terry Strada said in a statement Tuesday.

‘Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money — it was never to honor the great game of golf,’ Strada said. 

While the deal carries some risk for the PGA Tour, George Washington University sports marketing professor Lisa Delpy Neirotti said players, consumers and golf sponsors ultimately have short memories and just want to see the world’s best tee off every weekend.

“Players just want to get paid, and they want to play against their top competitors — and fans want it, too,” she said. “They don’t want to not have the top players playing in the PGA.” 

The agreement will also end all litigation prompted by the PGA Tour’s suspension of players who had ignored its threats and played in LIV events.

Brooks Koepka hits from the fairway during the PGA Championship golf tournament in Pittsford, N.Y., on May 21.Eric Gay / AP

The desire to end lawsuits was most likely a key factor in the unusual union, though University of Buffalo sports law professor Hellen ‘Nellie’ Drew said new lawsuits could come into play from sponsors unhappy with Saudi involvement.

‘Typically these agreements have some kind of good faith morals clause,’ Drew said. ‘You [a sponsor] want the goodwill associated with the PGA Tour. Now that PGA Tour’s goodwill is substantially connected to human rights issues, that’s a whole different animal. That’s not what you’re paying for.’

LIV was formed in 2022 with 48 players led by Mickelson, along with Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, with a prize fund of $405 million; they and other high-profile players reportedly got deals of at least $100 million to leave the PGA Tour.

Tuesday’s announcement came nearly a year after Monahan blasted players for signing up for LIV events, saying association with the Saudi fund would leave a moral stain.

A dramatic and stern-faced Monahan said last year he knows families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks and told LIV golfers to take a long look in the mirror before they accepted Saudi government money.

“I would ask any player that has left or any player that would ever consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?’” Monahan said from Toronto on the CBS telecast of the RBC Canadian Open.

The merger didn’t come as a complete surprise to veteran U.S. diplomat Richard N. Haass.

‘I thought it was near-inevitable, as LIV was not going away, given Saudi financial support and strength of several LIV golfers,’ said Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

‘Plus, efforts to isolate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were fading in the wake of the president’s visit to and subsequent developments,’ he said.

Sports has been an increasingly important tool of the Saudi government’s efforts to ingratiate itself on the world stage and gloss over the kingdom’s human rights record. Critics of the kingdom have called the practice “sportswashing.”

While advancing in age, 38-year-old soccer legend Cristiano Ronaldo could still play in an upper-tier world league. But he opted for playing in the Saudi Pro League this past season.The venerable English Premier League club Newcastle United was bought by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.The kingdom boasts of the world’s richest horse race, the Saudi Cup, with a purse of $20 million.Saudi interests, among other Middle Eastern entities, have become increasing major players in Formula One racing.

“PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sportswashing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation,’ said Strada, whose husband, Tom, an avid golfer, was killed in the North Tower nearly 21 years ago.

‘But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones. Make no mistake — we will never forget.” 

Neirotti, of George Washington University, said she doesn’t expect Saudi money to go away any time soon.

‘I mean, the EPL sold out, they took blood money,’ she said, referring to the English Premier League. ‘And trust me, many American companies are doing work in Saudi Arabia. Deloitte, name every big consulting company, you don’t think they don’t have their hands in Saudi Arabia?’

CORRECTION (June 6, 2023, 7:30 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the organization that merged with LIV Golf. It is the PGA Tour, not the PGA, which is a separate organization.

The PGA Tour announced Tuesday it would merge with LIV Golf, a Saudi-backed men’s golf organization that formed last year to compete with the PGA.

News of the merger sent shock waves through the sports world and even reached the highest echelons of the U.S. government, after a reporter sought comment from the Biden administration about the Saudi government’s taking such a large stake in men’s golf. Biden spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment.

Here’s what it all means.

What is LIV Golf?

LIV was created in 2022 by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) alongside two of the world’s most prominent players, Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman, and others.

Norman was appointed CEO, but it was Mickelson who helped LIV come into existence. Mickelson accused the PGA Tour of not fairly compensating players for things like highlight clips and other media rights, accusing the organization of ‘obnoxious greed.’

Eventually, Mickelson helped persuade 48 players to abandon the PGA Tour for LIV.

The merger has shown that Saudi Arabia and its interests cannot be isolated, veteran U.S. diplomat Richard N. Haass said.

“It’s not as big as the Biden visit or agreement with Iran, and it doesn’t offset their recent failure to raise oil prices,” said Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘But it does send the signal they are a player who cannot be ignored.’

Why did the PGA Tour initially bar players from participating in LIV?

The PGA Tour immediately viewed LIV Golf as a direct competitor — and many in the golf world agreed, often referring to it as a “breakaway league.”

So the Tour decided to force players to pick a side, creating harsh divisions in the golf world.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan also seemed to disparage the presence of the Saudis in LIV, asking rhetorically in a June 2022 interview, “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

And in response to a lawsuit from players who’d joined LIV and said the PGA Tour had retaliated against them, lawyers for the organization condemned LIV as “a strategy by the Saudi government to use sports in an effort to improve its reputation for human rights abuses and other atrocities.”

So why is the PGA Tour merging with LIV?

The two leagues ended up suing each other — but acrimony and lawsuits ultimately proved bad business for the PGA Tour, which made the calculated decision to endure the blowback of turning 180 degrees in exchange for a unified effort with its former rival.

Lawsuits filed by suspended players and a federal probe into possible antitrust actions by the PGA Tour against LIV may also be moot in the wake of Tuesday’s announcement.

‘We’ve recognized that together we can have a far greater impact on this game than we can working apart,’ Monahan told CNBC, seated next to his LIV counterpart, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. ‘And I give Yasir great credit for coming to the table, coming to the discussions with an open heart and open mind.’

Despite the vast financial resources at its disposal thanks to its Saudi backing, LIV had failed to secure major TV deals to broadcast its events, which were often instead relegated to livestreams on YouTube.

With its commercial viability in doubt, LIV officials may have decided it was better to cut their losses and approach the PGA Tour with an offering of peace — and money.

How much money is involved? What are the financial incentives on both sides?

Terms of the merger haven’t been disclosed, but LIV Golf players were reportedly being promised eight- and nine-figure earnings to join the league, thanks to the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is worth about $676 billion.

CNBC’s David Faber, who helped break Tuesday’s news with an exclusive interview with Monahan and Al-Rumayyan, said the PIF plans to invest ‘billions’ into the newly formed entity while it retains a minority stake.

How will major golf events be affected?

They won’t.

The Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open (now known as The Open) and the PGA Championship (which, despite its name, isn’t actually owned by the PGA Tour) are all separate entities from the PGA Tour.

Nor does the Tour control the biennial team-based Ryder Cup tournament — though heading into this year’s event, there were questions about whether U.S. team captain Zach Johnson would forgo selecting LIV members.

Have there been mergers in professional sports before?

All four of North America’s major professional team sports leagues have some kind of merger in their histories, most notably the NFL-AFL union that led to the Super Bowl.

The first World Series in 1903, the 1976 NBA-ABA deal and the NHL’s 1979 takeover of the upstart WHA, though, all pale in comparison to the geopolitical stage where the PGA Tour-LIV drama played out.

What are people in golf saying?

As expected, reaction to the stunning deal ran the gamut — from LIV backers’ spiking the ball to 9/11 survivors’ criticizing the PGA Tour for merging with the Saudi-backed LIV, which they likened to “terrorists,” with others resigned to money’s simply ruling the day.

Former President Donald Trump typed in all caps on Truth Social, boasting that he predicted that the PGA Tour would have to come to terms with LIV.

A key Sept. 11 support group, 9/11 Families United, said it was ‘shocked and deeply offended’ and claimed the merger is ‘bankrolled by billions in sportswashing money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.’ It added: ‘Saudi operatives played a key role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and now it is bankrolling all of professional golf.’

George Washington University sports marketing professor Lisa Delpy Neirotti verbally shrugged her shoulders and said the deal shouldn’t have been a shock.

‘I ask my students how to spell the word ‘sports?’ It’s m-o-n-e-y,’ she said. ‘Fans have a short memory. They really want to see their stars. They want to see a better product.’

Boeing on Tuesday warned about a new defect on its 787 Dreamliner planes and that it will delay deliveries of the wide-body aircraft, the manufacturer’s latest production issue.

“We are inspecting 787s in our inventory for a nonconforming condition related to a fitting on the horizontal stabilizer,” Boeing said in a statement. “Airplanes found to have a nonconforming condition will be reworked prior to ticket and delivery.”

The issue Boeing detected relates to tiny spacing in the horizontal stabilizer. Boeing said it isn’t related to flight safety and that planes in service can continue operating. Near-term deliveries will be delayed by about two weeks, Boeing said.

The problem is the latest in a spate of manufacturing issues on Boeing planes that have slowed if not paused deliveries of certain aircraft outright, just as airlines are clamoring for new planes to capitalize on the travel boom.

Boeing had paused deliveries of the planes for several weeks earlier this year because of a separate problem on a fuselage component on certain 787s. The latest issue currently doesn’t affect Boeing’s full-year outlook for Dreamliner deliveries, the company said. Boeing has estimated that it would deliver between 70 and 80 of the planes this year.

The company has also had to rework some of its bestselling 737 Max planes this year because of an issues with fittings in some planes’ aft fuselages, made by Spirit Aerosystems.

Boeing shares fell sharply on the news but largely recovered, and were recently down less than 1% in afternoon trading.

Embattled CNN Chief Executive Chris Licht apologized to the news organization’s staff Monday morning during the cable news network’s 9 a.m. ET call, according to people familiar with the matter.

Licht told staffers he didn’t recognize himself in a 15,000-word profile story in The Atlantic that published Friday. The story documented his views on CNN’s coverage and his attempts at winning over staffers during his first year on the job.

Some CNN staffers saw the Licht magazine profile as showing poor judgment at a time when ratings are falling and employees are openly rebelling against his decision last month to air a Donald Trump town hall with hundreds of his cheering fans. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav wasn’t pleased with the profile, titled “Inside the Meltdown at CNN,” and agreed it was mishandled, according to people familiar with his thinking.

Licht said during the call he understands staffers’ frustration and is intent on earning his employees’ trust, said the people. He didn’t specifically speak to why he participated in The Atlantic profile, in which reporter Tim Alberta spent months with Licht, including joining him at the gym during a personal training session and attending backstage CNN programming rehearsals. Licht’s remarks were short, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

A CNN spokesperson declined to comment.

Licht announced the hiring of David Leavy on Thursday as the network’s new chief operating officer. Leavy will be tasked with taking over marketing, public relations, advertising sales, facilities and other logistics.

The move will allow Licht to focus more on programming, which is his background. Licht helped launched MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” as its executive producer in 2007 and later became executive producer and showrunner of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on CBS.

Tesla may face a class-action lawsuit after 240 Black factory workers in California described rampant racism and discrimination at the electric automaker’s San Francisco Bay Area plant, including frequent use of racial slurs and references to the manufacturing site as a plantation or slave ship.

The testimonies filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court comes from contractors and employees who worked on the production floor of the factory in Fremont, roughly 40 miles (65 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. The vast majority worked at the site between 2016 to the present. Lawyers suing Tesla, Inc. estimate at least 6,000 workers could be part of the class.

The individual testimonies are part of a 2017 lawsuit brought by Marcus Vaughn, who complained in writing to human resources and to Tesla CEO Elon Musk of a hostile work environment in which he was called slurs by co-workers and supervisors. No investigation was conducted and he was fired for “not having a positive attitude,” according to his lawyers.

The lawsuit is just one of several lawsuits alleging racism, harassment and discrimination at the Fremont plant.

Last year, California regulators sued Tesla in state court, alleging the company turned “a blind eye” to abuses and that Musk told workers to be “thick-skinned” about racial harassment. In April, a federal jury awarded another former Tesla employee $3.2 million for racial abuse he suffered.

Bryan Schwartz, one of Vaughn’s lawyers, said the case has dragged on for years as Tesla sought to force the lawsuit into arbitration. Instead, the California Supreme Court in April allowed Black workers to seek a public injunction in court that would require Tesla to change its work environment.

“To have this scope of egregious harassment right here in Silicon Valley, it’s disgusting,” Schwartz said, adding that it’s shocking that “Tesla has allowed this kind of pervasive harassment to go on as long as it has.”

Attorneys for Tesla did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

All of the declarants said they heard use of one particular racial slur, with more than half saying they heard supervisors and managers use that word, according to a declaration summarizing the statements.

Dozens also said higher-ups direct the racial slur toward them, the summary stated, and nearly half said they experienced or saw other Black workers tasked with more physically laborious work and disciplined more frequently.

Production associate Albert Blakes said in his statement that it was difficult to go to work, knowing he would face racist slurs, references to slavery and offensive graffiti for 12 hours at a time. He said he made a verbal complaint to human resources in late 2021, but never heard back and nothing changed.

“Something needs to be done to hold Tesla accountable for the racism that takes place at the Fremont factory to set an example that this racism is not tolerated in workplaces in California,” he said.