The PGA Tour struck a massive investment deal this week with a group of U.S.-based sports team owners, which tour officials hope will help stabilize the organization’s finances, further reward tour golfers and provide a pathway to a more sustainable future for professional golf, even as negotiations with potential Saudi investors continue.

The tour’s policy board approved the investment at a meeting late Tuesday night, and its commissioner, Jay Monahan, briefed golfers on details of the deal on a conference call Wednesday morning. The deal will allow the tour to create a for-profit company called PGA Tour Enterprises that will oversee its commercial interests, the tour said in an announcement, with the Strategic Sports Group (SSG) serving as a minority investor. The tour’s six player directors, including Tiger Woods, unanimously supported the partnership, the tour said.

The tour originally planned to create the entity alongside the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, which owns LIV Golf, a rival team-based circuit, but the sides have yet to agree to terms nearly eight months after announcing their intention to join forces. Though they faced a Dec. 31 deadline to reach a final deal, the sides are still negotiating and remain hopeful the PIF will become an investor in the new commercial entity. The tour said SSG “has consented to an investment by PIF, subject to any necessary regulatory review and approvals.”

Tour officials spent the past several weeks deep in parallel negotiations with the PIF and SSG, which is led by Fenway Sports Group, the Boston-based private holding company that owns the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park, Liverpool Football Club of the Premier League and the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins. The initial SSG investment is for up to $3 billion, and players will have the opportunity to receive more than $1.5 billion “in immediate and future equity,” the tour said.

The news comes as the PGA Tour continues its early-season schedule and days before LIV Golf stages its season-opening event in Mexico. For now the tour and LIV Golf remain locked into a rivalry that has splintered the golf world, competing for talent, fans and sponsors.

The tour has spent much of the past two years trying to shore up the shaky economics underpinning the sport, particularly following the launch of LIV Golf, which lured many of the tour’s biggest names and set off a legal fight that cost the tour millions in fees. The PGA Tour couldn’t match some of the offers made to notable golfers, such as Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith and Dustin Johnson, and had been seeking to mitigate the threat posed by LIV Golf while shoring up its own rocky finances.

The investment group includes Red Sox owners John Henry and Tom Werner; Arthur Blank, who owns the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons; Mark Attanasio, owner of MLB’s Milwaukee Brewers; Steve Cohen, owner of the New York Mets; Wyc Grousbeck, owner of the Boston Celtics; and Marc Lasry, the former co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks.

The tour has promised to give players an equity stake in the new venture, which would be a first among top-tier U.S. sports leagues. The tour said in its announcement that the equity grants will vest over time, and “will be based on career accomplishments, recent achievements, future participation and services, and PGA Tour membership status.”

While the Saudi PIF could still be an important stakeholder, the tour and SSG are expected to begin immediately mapping out next steps for professional golf, which could impact everything from the competition schedule to tournament purses to the role team golf might play.

The Saudi PIF was aware of the talks with SSG but continued negotiating separately with the tour, according to two people familiar with the situation. The tour and the Saudis shocked the golf world June 6 when they announced their plans to partner. They secretly negotiated the basic framework of a deal to combine their commercial interests under one umbrella, drop their litigation against each other and begin working cooperatively. While the dueling lawsuits were dropped in June, the sides had until the end of last year to hammer out a final agreement but struggled to overcome hurdles, including a congressional probe and scrutiny from the Justice Department.

The June announcement surprised and upset many players, and immediately drew the interest of Congress and Justice Department regulators who oversee mergers and were investigating the PGA Tour for possible antitrust violations. The turbulence was immediate; tour officials told lawmakers at a Senate subcommittee hearing last year that it was difficult to negotiate with so much public scrutiny. Those officials also warned that final terms were still a ways off.

As they hammered out details, tour officials have tried to avoid any appearance of collusion – they even amended the preliminary agreement with the PIF to remove a provision that barred poaching players – and repeatedly told players the tour was negotiating separately with the SSG after fielding investment inquiries from a handful of other groups.

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