The sports world was shocked Tuesday morning to learn that the PGA Tour, the DP Tour and LIV Golf would be merging, ending an ongoing litany of litigation over the upstart, Saudi-backed league.

In addition to the ending of the lawsuits, the three golf tours will now come together as one entity backed financially by the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

On his BetRivers podcast on Tuesday, Mike Francesa said the golf world now is in Saudi hands.

“This is the future of golf. It might not sit with you well, you might be very upset about it,” he said. “The bottom line is that it is over. The PGA sold out. There’s no other way to say it.”

There have been mixed reactions to the news, especially considering the PGA and its players spent a year railing against LIV Golf for poaching some high-profile names with tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in signing bonuses.

Francesa said the spending power of the PIF is unending.

“Your partner is a bottomless pit of cash, and the Saudis have made it very clear. Their stake in the world is through sports,” he said. “They have their eye on tennis, they’ve already gone into soccer in a big way, and now they have, for all intents and purposes, taken control of the world golf order.”

Now that the PGA has absorbed its one standalone competitor, pro golfers across the world no longer have other options to take their talents.

“There’s nowhere else to go,” Francesa said. “Now there’s only one tour going forward in 2024.”

Samantha Rivera became a star overnight. The reporter is covering the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final for CBS News Miami. Monday night, during a report from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, a fan tried to get in her live shot and was stopped in his tracks by a devastating stiff arm.

“I don’t know if I heard him or felt him, but I sensed him, and the second I did, my arm just came out,” she told Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina. “It’s not gonna happen! I was annoyed.”

The moment went viral on social media. Even the NFL took notice, drawing comparisons to Derrick Henry of the Tennessee Titans.

The stiff arm also elicited reactions from her colleagues at all levels of sports media.

The sports world was surprised Tuesday morning when LIV Golf signed an agreement to merge with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour (European Tour) to create a new for-profit company. The name of the commercial entity has yet to be determined, and the move was reportedly not communicated with its players. As part of the agreement, all litigation against LIV Golf is being dropped and a method is being determined as to how players who received sizable bonuses to join LIV Golf can return to the PGA Tour.

LIV Golf is owned by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, and those participating in the league have received criticism because of the country’s disheartening history of human rights violations. PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan will be the new chief executive of the group, while Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi wealth fund, will be its chairman. Moreover, the PGA Tour will be responsible for appointing the majority of the new board and garner majority voting power.

“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” said Monahan in a statement. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA Tour’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model, and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV – including the team golf concept – to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans. 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.”

The PGA Tour sued LIV Golf for beguiling its golfers to join the tour for lucrative bonuses, and had been in the court for nearly 10 months. Now, the litigation will come to a halt, and some in the sports media industry are viewing this outcome as a settlement of sorts sans punitive and compensatory damages. Many prominent figures from around the industry took to social media to express their thoughts on the convergence, and the implications it will have for the future of the sport.