Michigan Resort Faces Criticism For Hosting Saudi-Backed Golf League Stop

Michigan Advance

August 19, 2025

The LIV Golf team championship is set to host professional stars and international music acts this weekend at The Cardinal at Saint John’s Resort in Plymouth, Michigan – but with it comes criticism from at least one of the resort’s patrons over the league’s connection to the Saudi Arabian government and its noted record of corruption and human rights abuses.

LIV Golf was founded in 2021 and is owned by the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. The mammoth $941 billion sovereign wealth fund was created in the 1970s as a means to invest the Saudi royal family’s money on the government’s behalf.

Much of that funding has gone to prominent Saudi business families with strong ties to the royal family, all controlled by the nation’s Crown Prince, according to reporting from The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Current Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the nation’s prime minister and its de facto ruler, has been described as an authoritarian leader who has since taken power created an oppressive regime that stifles women’s and human rights activists, and tortures and kills political dissidents.

The U.S. The Central Intelligence Agency also concluded that the bin Salman regime was responsible for the brutal assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was highly critical of bin Salman and helped amplify progressive Saudi political thought.

All those noted instances of political violence and repression have raised questions about Saint John’s Resort hosting the event.

The resort is owned by the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation, which prides itself as a key funder of humanitarian initiatives through nonprofit organizations and education institutions across the globe.

Some of that work focuses on the basic human needs of marginalized people, socioeconomically disadvantaged youth, seniors, people with disabilities and impoverished people.

The resort in Plymouth is also one of the foundation’s three “Humanitarian Hotels,” which delivers all of its net profits to Pulte’s charity work.

David Chrzanowski, a California-based filmmaker and actor who was born and raised in Michigan, is a frequent patron of the Plymouth resort. For him, the foundation’s charity work and the stated mission of the hotel don’t appear to jive with the LIV Golf event and the Public Investment Fund’s connection to an oppressive regime like the one that rules Saudi Arabia.

“They have the literal word humanitarian embossed on their front desk,” Chrzanowski said in an interview with Michigan Advance. “The question of ethics and money when you’re using a lot of that money for charity is an age-old discussion. Is it OK to take 100 percent of your money going toward charities [from an organization like the Saudi Public Investment Fund]? I don’t know the answer to that question, but what I do know is that we need to be talking about it.”

The Advance asked the Pulte Foundation if it viewed its decision to host the LIV event in conflict with the hotel’s mission and its charity work. Pulte was also asked if it weighed the ethical concerns of hosting a Saudi-backed sports event before agreeing to embrace the league, and if it would consider making a public statement disavowing the human rights abuses of the Saudi government.

In an email, the foundation said the resort was “deeply committed to giving back, with 100% of our net profits supporting communities in need – both in SE Michigan and around the world.”

The foundation said that mission was at the heart of everything it did in terms of its charity work. Quixotically, while the Pulte Foundation said that hosting the LIV event was part of that mission, it did acknowledge that it was “aware of the broader discussions around LIV Golf’s funding.”

“Our participation in the tournament is focused solely on the charitable impact we can make through an event of this scale,” the foundation said. “The LIV Golf tournament presents a unique opportunity to highlight our Humanitarian Hotels and Foundation’s broader charitable mission on a global stage, offering unprecedented exposure and the chance to amplify the important work we do.”

The foundation also went to bat for the LIV Golf league, saying it works with dozens of nonprofit organizations “to uplift underrepresented communities, make the game of golf more accessible, and support local charitable efforts around the world – including programs at Saint John’s Resort.”

“Not only will this event allow us to expand our local charitable programs, but it will also drive local business growth and provide a strong economic boost to the region,” the foundation said. “LIV Golf events drive an average estimated $40 million in economic impact within each local community, and to date, have generated over $1 billion in economic impact across the globe.”

The foundation went on to say that it believes it “can bring a deeper purpose to the LIV Golf tournament, beyond the completion,” and that it remains committed to “upholding our values as a foundation during this event and all events held at our property.”

Although the resort highlighted ways that LIV Golf also works with charities and humanitarian causes, several critics have accused Saudi Arabia’s various engagements with the sports world through its Public Investment Fund, like LIV Golf, as ways for the government to “sportswash” its image.

The term is self-explanatory, defined as the act of a nation or a company to use sporting events or teams to improve the reputation of the nation and to distract from its ongoing and past human rights abuses.

According to testimony provided to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Investigations in 2023 by Joey Shea, a Saudi Arabia researcher with Human Rights Watch, the nation’s Public Investment Fund reportedly owned a 93% controlling share in the LIV Golf league.

Calls for LIV Golf to develop a strategy to limit the laundering of the nation’s reputation through the league’s events have gone unanswered, Shea said, adding that LIV Golf’s proposed commercial merger with the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, with an aim to form a new for-profit entity to unifying the game, has enabled the Saudi government to have a position of major influence across the entire golf world.

The deal has not yet been inked yet, however, due to significant delays, but some professional golfers on the PGA Tour, including Tiger Woods, and the tour’s top brass, have publicly stated their opposition to joining the league and taking Saudi money.

The Center for a New American Security, an independent bipartisan nonprofit organization that focuses on national security and defense policies, has also been sharply critical of the Saudi government’s attempts at cloaking its human rights abuses through the fanfare of sports.

Sarath Ganji is the director of the center’s Autocracy and Global Sports Project, which was launched to investigate the role of malign finance in global sports leagues. He was featured in a 2023 discussion about the LIV Golf league and its attempts to merge with the PGA Tour produced by WBUR-FM, Boston’s NPR station.

The host of that discussion, WBUR’s Meghna Chakrabarti, noted that PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan at first banned his players from engaging with LIV, questioning the movies and ethics of the league.

Monahan later embraced the ongoing merger with LIV when it was announced, throwing away his earlier criticisms.

Ganji said the Saudi interest in LIV and galvanizing the larger share of the golf world was a clear example of sportswashing.

“If we think of sports and entertainment as a singular sector, there are two qualities about it that make it really attractive to investors in general, but to autocratic investors in particular,” Ganji said. “The first is its high visibility. We know about the English Premier League. We know about the World Cup. We know about the Dustin Johnsons and the Cameron Smiths and the Phil Mickelson’s of the world. These are all leagues and franchises and players and nine-figure broadcasting and sponsorship contracts that have global reach.”

Ganji added that visibility might serve a purpose for nations with “dirty, stained reputations and are looking to district audiences from those games by linking themselves with highly positive brands.”

The low bar of access helps wealthy firms, families and nations help those bad actors latch on to ownership stakes in those leagues, Ganji said, because they often are unregulated environments.

As some nations try to keep abuses buried beneath stadiums and flashy trophies, Chrzanowski told the Advance that he just wants host sites for LIV, much like Saint John’s Resort, to acknowledge the issue in a transparent way.

After visiting the resort for the last three years with his family, Chrzanowski, who also plays golf, also sought answers from the Pulte Foundation when he visited Saint John’s this year.

In response, the Pulte Foundation told Chrzanowski that the foundation remains “committed to transparency and to upholding our values as a Foundation during this event and all events held at our property.”

The line about transparency, without engaging further in a discussion about whether the foundation should reconsider the event given its mission and stated values, irked Chrzanowski.

“A simple search on my end showed that the foundation made no public statement about this, and they’re hiding from it,” Chrzanowski said. “They know what they’re doing and they’re just taking the money. That made me really question going back to stay at that place again.”

An offer to discuss the matter further was floated to Chrzanowski, which he told the Advance he was eager to take up. But when he inquired about when they could have that conversation, Chrzanowski said he never heard back from Pulte.

“They say they want to talk about it, and they say they want to be transparent, well then, great, let’s do that,” he said. “Let’s talk about the human rights abuses and where the money is coming from. … They’re playing a billion dollars, they’ve got four really good pros. Look, I’m not trying to take money out of their pockets, but in the same sense, I don’t take money for doing shady [things] in my life.”

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