Goli Innocent 
Premier League Chief Executive, Richard Masters has told MPs he cannot comment on whether his organisation is investigating who has control of Newcastle and if it is re-examining its approval of the club’s Saudi takeover.
Newcastle’s takeover by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) was approved after “legally binding assurances” the Saudi government would not have any control over the club.
A San Francisco court approved the PGA Tour’s request to include Al-Rumayyan and the PIF as defendants in its lawsuit against LIV and ordered them to produce documents in the case.
However, the PIF challenged the order, arguing the fund and its governor Al-Rumayyan “are not ordinary third parties subject to basic discovery relevance standards”.
“The order is an extraordinary infringement on the sovereignty of a foreign state that is far from justified here,” a court document read.
“They are a sovereign instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a sitting minister of the Saudi government, and they cannot be compelled to provide testimony and documents in a US proceeding unless their conduct – not LIV’s or anyone else’s – is truly the ‘gravamen’ of the case.”
The PIF initially withdrew from its takeover bid for Newcastle in July 2020 as a result of an “unforeseeably prolonged process”, before the deal was revived.
The takeover was only approved in October 2021 after the Premier League received “legally binding assurances” that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would not have any control over the club.
The dispute had centred over who would have the controlling influence over Newcastle, and would therefore be subject to the league’s owners’ and directors’ test.
Master told reporters in November 2021 that if his organisation found evidence there was state involvement in the running of Newcastle “we can remove the consortium as owners of the club”.
The same year, Newcastle director Amanda Staveley told the BBC that the PIF was an “autonomous, commercially-driven investment fund.”
Masters also denied a claim by former sports minister Tracey Crouch that his organisation tried to frustrate and delay landmark plans for an independent football regulator.
When asked if the Premier League’s approach had been to “kick it into the long grass”, Crouch told MPs: “I feel that is one of the tactics that is being deployed.”
Later she said: “I haven’t seen that willingness to engage and recognise the challenges and vulnerabilities of football governance from the Premier League.”
Crouch’s fan-led review made a number of recommendations – including an independent regulator – on which the football governance White Paper was based on. And she said dealing with the Premier League throughout the process had been “disappointing” and “challenging, actually” and that she finds it “slightly confusing as to why the PL doesn’t support an independent regulator”.
However, Masters later rejected suggestions of delay tactics and said: “I don’t recognise that at all. We’ve done nothing else but engage with this process. There’s been an enormous amount of work.”
The plan for a regulator, recommended by the fan-led review last year, has been confirmed by the UK government. It aims to prevent clubs from going out of business, give fans greater input and introduce a more stringent owners’ and directors’ test.
