EOTO 2: How foreign money effects sports

     In recent news, Phil Mickelson has been in the spotlight a lot because of his gambling habits and other acts that have taken place on and off the golf course. However, his most notable is his outward support for the LIV golf tour. The whole concept of this tour is it is less golf and a lot more money however, there is a moral dilemma facing each player that goes and plays on this tour. All of the money that is provided to the players is originating within the Saudi Arabian government. To start off they do have a lot of money because most of it is not regulated and there is just so much of it in circulation that they have far more money to offer a player like Phil Mickelson a lot of money. Morally, having American players go play in a country that provided the majority of the nine eleven hijackers will be met with scrutiny and anger from the public. The whole idea of this blog post is to measure the efficacy of taking foreign money from a country like Saudi Arabia, a known country that does not follow the most ethical guidelines with how they treat their citizens. 

    The first thing that would have to be looked at is how a certain country treats its people. In particular, Saudi Arabia is not known to treat citizens that may have different beliefs, sexual orientations, or religions very harshly. This opens up new realms of possibilities for foreign governments to interfere with American sports which would affect our society in many ways. The early-on success of this tour and how much money is being thrown around to players that go and play on it should serve as an implication or warning that this can happen to any sports organization at any time. The economic effects that a foreign entity such as Saudi Arabia could have on American society would be astronomical. 

    Overall, I would say that the ethics of taking foreign money in the first place is wrong for so many reasons. The first would be that America and American money gave these players the platform to grow their names, brand, and likeness to the point where they could even be offered this large sum of foreign money. It would feel to me like this new foreign tour would be hurtful to the American economy because at this rate they have not only affected one sport greatly, but they have laid out a blueprint for another entity to come for a larger sport such as football by offering a platform where there is less asked of the players and they receive more money. The first thing that would have to be thought of is the number of jobs that could be lost if for example there was another country that offered an American Football league with more foreign money than any American franchise could ever offer them. Thousands of people would be out of jobs and the American entertainment or television franchises would take major losses.