The Saudi-backed LIV Golf league announced Tuesday that it would return to the Trump family’s Doral resort in April, the clearest sign yet that Trump family business deals using Saudi government financing will continue into the new presidency.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has been a vocal advocate of the breakaway LIV Golf, which was started by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in 2021 and emerged as a major challenger to the PGA Tour before the two sides struck a preliminary partnership deal in 2023.
The tournament at the Trump National Doral, near Miami, would be the fourth consecutive year that LIV has scheduled an event at the venue.
LIV Golf pays the Trump family for the use of the resort’s golf courses, and the event also drives thousands of ticket-buying fans to the resort, filling up hotel restaurants and guest rooms during the several-day event. LIV events also boost the international profile of the more than a dozen Trump family’s golf resorts around the world.
The Doral event will be the first LIV tournament that Mr. Trump’s company will host after his return to the White House; the league did not begin playing until after his first term.
The arrangement is one of several signs that the Trump family will continue to do business with Middle East-based businesses while president.
Mr. Trump’s son Eric Trump recently announced several new real-estate branding deals with Dar Al Arkan, a Saudi-based real-estate company that will build new Trump-named towers in Riyadh and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and in Dubai, in addition to a previously planned project with Dar Al Arkan in Oman. Dar Al Arkan, and its Dar Global subsidiary, are private companies, but they have close ties to the Saudi government.
In interviews with The New York Times at LIV tournaments over the years, Mr. Trump has defended his family company’s ties to Saudi Arabia and framed the Saudi wealth fund’s interest in golf as a genuine investment in sports.
“What they’re doing with LIV is very important,” Mr. Trump said at the 2022 competition at Doral. “They’re putting a lot of effort into it and a lot of money into it, as you see.”
Pressed about whether the kingdom’s human rights record gave him second thoughts about hosting LIV events, Mr. Trump replied, “We have human rights issues in this country, too.”
“They’re a very important ally in the Middle East,” he said. “And we’re blowing it, you know? Frankly, we’re blowing it with Saudi Arabia. But I know the people at the highest level, and I can only speak for myself, they’ve been tremendous people and they love the United States, but the United States is not treating them properly.”
Mr. Trump has been coy about how much he has earned from the relationship. In 2023, he told reporters at a LIV tournament at his Washington-area course that the contract was “peanuts for me” and suggested its value was seven figures or less. And he has insisted — with justification — that the courses that LIV has rented were among the world’s best, arguing that the Saudis brought their money to his company for athletic, not political, purposes.
He has in the past also brushed off questions about whether he would be severing ties with the league if he returned to power and deflected criticism from relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“I fully understand them and we love them,” he said in 2023, “but it’s tremendous economic development and a tremendous number of jobs.”
