Raphael Stevens

The PGA Tour defended its controversial deal with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league during a Senate hearing.
PGA Tour officials Jimmy Dunne and Ron Price told senators that the PGA Tour’s previous standoff with LIV posed an existential threat to professional golf.
Critics of the agreement say it is anti-competitive and that it helps with Saudi “sportswashing” to gain political influence through investments in sports.

The PGA Tour on Tuesday defended its controversial deal with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league before senators, as scrutiny of the agreement intensifies.
PGA Tour operating chief Ron Price and policy board independent director Jimmy Dunne testified Tuesday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s investigations subcomittee, while representatives from LIV Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund weren’t present.

LIV CEO Greg Norman is out of the country, according to a spokesperson. A representative for the subcomittee said it is preparing to hear testimony from Norman as well as tour golfers in the future.
Dunne and Price said they believed the PGA Tour would benefit the most from the proposed deal. Dunne said that if a deal were to get done, the tour would “definitely stay intact and becomes more powerful,” and added he hoped PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan would have “a more productive role in the game of golf” in a more constructive way.

Ron Price, chief operating officer of PGA Tour, during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, DC, US, on Tuesday, July 11, 2023.
Sarah Silbiger | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Price also said the tour didn’t seek out the Saudis. “We are in a situation where we faced a real threat … you could go elsewhere for $1 billion, $3 billion, maybe $50 billion,” he said. “We could do it but if we went down that path, we would end up giving up total control.”
The Senate panel is probing the agreement, which would merge the commercial operations of the golf leagues. The proposed deal with LIV has triggered questions regarding the future of the tour and its players’ sponsorships.
The tour rakes in billions of dollars between sponsorships and media rights deals that air its events on television. The PGA Tour has a nine-year deal, which began in 2022, with Comcast, Paramount Global and Disney that brings in $700 million in annual fees, according to previous reports. The PGA tour also signed a 12-year $2 billion deal with Warner Bros. Discovery in 2018 for international TV rights, although it was restructured earlier this year.

In a framework agreement, the proposed deal shows it would create a for-profit subsidiary of the PGA Tour, and the new entity would manage commercial assets for all the tours. The PGA Tour would manage competitions, and has said it is leading the negotiations to reach a finalized deal.
Documents obtained by the subcommittee show that PCP Capital Partners, an investment firm headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, proposed a long-term agreement to PGA Tour Policy Board Chairman Edward Herlihy and Dunne as early as April.
The proposal included an idea that would have superstars Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy own LIV Golf teams and participate in at least 10 league events. McIlroy is one of the most outspoken critics of the PGA Tour’s LIV deal.
The subcommittee also discovered that PGA Tour officials requested to dismiss Norman and golf marketing agency Performance54 from LIV Golf after the completion of the deal. It is unclear which professional players, including McIlroy and Woods, had knowledge of the negotiations before the agreement was unveiled last month, according to the documents.
The June merger announcement shocked the sports world, with many critics on Capitol Hill accusing LIV, which is funded by the PIF, of “sportswashing,” or spreading government influence through sports.
“A regime that has killed journalists, jailed and tortured dissidents, fostered the war in Yemen, and supported other terrorist activities, including 9/11. It’s called sportswashing,” subcomittee chairman Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement.

Jimmy Dunne, board member with PGA Tour, during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, DC, US, on Tuesday, July 11, 2023.
Sarah Silbiger | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Concerns about Saudi influence

Critics have also pointed to the Saudi government’s ties to the 9/11 attacks, which the Saudis have denied, and the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, accusing the Saudis of “sportswashing.” Since its inception, LIV has faced such criticism, and protesters have targeted its events, particularly family members of those who perished in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers that day were from Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks, was born in the country. It has been concluded by U.S. officials that Saudi nationals helped to fund the terrorist group al-Qaeda, although the investigations didn’t find that the Saudi officials were complicit in the attacks.
Former President Donald Trump took heat from 9/11 families over hosting LIV events at his courses. The league this week said it would hold its final event of the 2023 season in late October at Trump’s Doral course in South Florida, moving the competition from Saudi Arabia. Trump is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
While Blumenthal is a critic of the deal, subcommittee ranking member Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., took a softer tone.

Ron Price, chief operating officer of PGA Tour, left, and Jimmy Dunne, board member with PGA Tour, during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, DC, US, on Tuesday, July 11, 2023.
Sarah Silbiger | Bloomberg | Getty Images

“The PGA was faced with an existential threat and this is what they’re trying to do to preserve the game of golf and the purity of the competition at the highest level,” Johnson told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” before the hearing Tuesday.
“Listen I have the deepest sympathy for the 9/11 families. I understand the issue of ‘sportswashing.’ I don’t think there’s enough billions of dollars for the Saudis to wash away the stain of the brutal [Jamal] Khashoggi murder,” Johnson added. “But the reality is we all buy oil. We drive cars. We are the ones filling up the coffers of the [Public] Investment Fund. I would rather have the Saudis invest their oil wealth in the U.S., rather than China or Russia, that’s just a reality of the world.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Blumenthal called out the Saudi ties and how a year before the deal was announced PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan spoke out on such controversies. Blumenthal, like the group 9/11 Families United, pointed to Monahan’s comments during an earlier interview with CBS Sports, when he said he had discussed these controversies with tour players.
“I think you’d have to be living under a rock not to know there are significant implications,” Monahan said during the interview. “I would ask any player who has left or any player who would consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA tour?'”
Following the deal announcement, Monahan said he expected to be called a hypocrite and that he accepted the criticism, especially after PGA Tour players voiced their shock and anger. Monahan has been on a leave of absence, due to an unspecified medical condition, but is expected to return Monday.
While the tour has defended the proposed deal as being the best foot forward for the game of golf, especially in light of the expensive litigation and severe competition presented by LIV, it had yet to acknowledge the controversial ties to Saudi Arabia until Tuesday’s hearing.
“Of course, we expect many questions about who we are dealing with,” Dunne said before the subcommittee on Tuesday. He went on to say he lost 66 friends and colleagues at his firm during the Sept. 11 attacks.
Dunne then added that if the deal goes through he has “nothing to gain except the sense of pride that we helped unite the game we love.” More

Only around one-third of patients prescribed weight loss drugs such as Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster injection Wegovy continued to take it a year later, according to an analysis shared with CNBC.
But annual health-care costs for all patients who took the Wegovy injection or a similar treatment soared.
The findings highlight the hefty price tag of the highly popular medicines, which are also known as GLP-1s.
The analysis also suggests that adherence to treatment is poor beyond the one-year mark, which is when patients typically see substantial weight reduction.

A selection of injector pens for the Wegovy weight loss drug are shown in this photo illustration in Chicago, Illinois, March 31, 2023.
Jim Vondruska | Reuters

Only around one-third of patients prescribed weight loss drugs such as Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster injection Wegovy continued to take it a year later — but total health-care costs for the entire group soared, according to an analysis shared with CNBC on Tuesday.
The annual health-care cost for patients before they started a weight loss medication was $12,371 on average, said the analysis from Prime Therapeutics, one of the largest pharmacy benefit managers in the U.S. 

That cost of care jumped by nearly 60% to $19,657 on average after patients started treatment, the analysis said.
And a group of patients in the analysis who didn’t take a weight loss drug saw their health-care costs decrease by 4% on average during the same time period. 
The analysis reviewed U.S. pharmacy and medical claims data for more than 4,000 people with commercial health-care plans who received new prescriptions for weight loss drugs between January and December 2021.
Those patients had a diagnosis of obesity, prediabetes, or a body mass index of 30 or higher.
Weight loss drugs are also known as GLP-1 agonists, which mimic a hormone produced in the gut to suppress a person’s appetite.

The new findings highlight the hefty price tag of the highly popular weight loss medicines, most of which can cost more than $1,200 per month out of pocket. 
That cost may also be a burden for insured patients, who likely see copayments and deductibles charged by the health plans for the drugs add up over time. 
“While the industry is poised to see broader approval of GLP-1a drugs for weight loss by the Food and Drug Administration in the near-term, our analysis shows that a large, upfront financial investment is required when treating weight loss with these drugs,” said Dr. Joseph Leach, Prime Therapeutics’ senior vice president and chief medical officer. 
Pharmacy benefit managers such as Prime Therapeutics are middlemen who negotiate drug discounts with manufacturers on behalf of health insurers, large employers and others that contract them.
The company’s analysis also suggests that adherence to treatment with Wegovy or similar drugs is poor beyond the one-year mark, which is when patients typically see substantial weight reduction.
Wegovy, for example, leads to 15% weight loss after 68 weeks, according to clinical trials on the drug.
Prime Therapeutics’ analysis does not indicate why patients stopped taking weight loss drugs. 
But many users have said that the ongoing shortages of Wegovy have forced them to discontinue treatment. 

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Novo Nordisk’s clinical trials have shown that some patients stop treatment due to unpleasant side effects like gastrointestinal issues.
Novo Nordisk did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Prime Therapeutics’ analysis.
The Danish company’s stock price fell nearly 3% on Tuesday after Reuters first reported the analysis.
Pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly and Pfizer started zeroing in on the weight loss industry after Wegovy and diabetes drug Ozempic, also made by Novo Nordisk, catapulted to the national spotlight in recent years.  
Social media influencers, Hollywood celebrities and billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk have reportedly used the popular injections to get rid of unwanted weight.   
But experts say the medicines may further perpetuate a dangerous diet culture that idealizes weight loss and thinness.
More than 2 in 5 adults have obesity, according to the National Institutes of Health.
About 1 in 11 adults have severe obesity. More

Boeing handed over 60 new aircraft to customers in June, the most since March.
The company won orders for 288 new aircraft last month, net of cancellations and conversions.
Much of that was from a massive order Air India announced earlier this year.

A Boeing 737 Max is displayed during the Farnborough Airshow, in Farnborough, on July 18, 2022. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP) (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
Justin Tallis | AFP | Getty Images

Boeing handed over 60 new aircraft last month, the most since March, as the manufacturer tries to ramp up production of some of its bestselling planes.
So far this year, Boeing delivered 266 aircraft to customers, shy of the 316 rival Airbus has handed over. Both manufacturers have struggled to increase output fast enough to avoid delays to airline customers eager for more planes during a boom in air travel.

Boeing said Tuesday it logged orders for 288 aircraft, net of cancellations and conversions, in June, most of them from the massive order Air India announced earlier this year and firmed up at the Paris Air Show last month. The 470-jet order was split between Boeing and Airbus. Boeing’s June tally included nearly 40 787 Dreamliners for new Saudi carrier Riyadh Air, part of a deal announced in March.
Boeing’s total net orders for the month came in at 305 aircraft after it added some planes to its backlog. The company routinely removes or adds planes to its backlog for reasons including whether a customer is likely to have financing to buy the aircraft.
Boeing is scheduled to report second-quarter results on July 26, when it will update investors on its plans to increase production of its 737 Max planes and 787 Dreamliners. More

Astranis recently signed a deal to provide dedicated service to the Philippines, a first for the archipelago nation.
“We estimate that we will get up to 2 million people connected, having access to this broadband internet that they didn’t have before,” Astranis CEO John Gedmark told CNBC.
The San Francisco-based company has an alternative approach to providing internet access, using small, low-cost satellites that operate in the geosynchronous orbit of traditional players.

A visualization shows an Astranis satellite over the Philippines in orbit.

Astranis, a San Francisco-based company with an alternative approach to providing internet access from satellites, recently signed a deal to provide dedicated service to the Philippines, a first for the archipelago nation.
“They are going to use this capacity to connect hospitals, schools and other enterprises, as well as set up community Wi-Fi centers,” Astranis CEO John Gedmark told CNBC. 

“We estimate that we will get up to 2 million people connected, having access to this broadband internet that they didn’t have before,” Gedmark added.
The satellite that will provide service to the Philippines is scheduled to launch in 2024. It represents the latest exercise in Astranis’ campaign to bring service to underserved communities around the world, with its first small satellite dedicated to bringing service to “hundreds of thousands of people” in Alaska, and another upcoming satellite that’s expected to bring service to 3 million people in Peru.
Astranis will own and operate the satellite, with services provider Orbits Corp. buying capacity through a long-term contract for a local Philippine internet service provider, HTechCorp. Astranis declined to specify financial details of the contract, but Gedmark emphasized the service comes at “a very low cost.”
The Philippines has a population of more than 100 million people, spread across more than 7,000 often-mountainous islands. That makes broadband service “one of their biggest problems to date,” Gedmark said.
Astranis pointed to a recent third-party study that estimated bringing broadband access to the Philippines, also known as “closing the digital divide,” would create economic value in the country of over $100 billion by the end of this decade.

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Astranis launched its first satellite in May. Its currently preparing to launch two more batches of satellites – which Astranis calls “Block 2” and “Block 3.” Block 2 is launching in the fourth quarter and will feature four satellites, one of of which is for Peru, and Block 3 is launching in mid-2024 and will feature five satellites, one of which is for the Philippines.
The company is one of a number of next-generation broadband satellite systems in development, as companies race to meet a growing global demand for data — including SpaceX’s Starlink, British-owned OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile and others.
But the company’s approach marks a unique way of providing broadband service from space, Gedmark has previously said. The company’s dishwasher-sized satellite combines the small form factor of satellites such as Starlink in low Earth orbit with the distant, geosynchronous orbit of traditional players such as Viasat.
Geosynchronous orbit, or GEO, is about 22,000 miles away from the planet’s surface — a position that allows the spacecraft to stay above a fixed location, matching the Earth’s rotation.
Astranis will be able to “cover the entire Philippines with this one satellite,” Gedmark noted. More

General Motors is positioning two new crossovers from Chevrolet and Buick as its answer to affordability issues left by discontinued, cheaper sedans.
GM’s new 2024 Buick Envista and redesigned 2024 Chevrolet Trax crossovers start at $23,495 and $20,400, respectively.
Executives from Buick and Chevrolet say they expect the vehicles to be among their bestsellers as production ramps up at plants in South Korea.

2024 Buick Envista

DETROIT – General Motors is positioning two new crossovers from Chevrolet and Buick as its answer to affordability issues left by discontinued, cheaper sedans.
Affordability has increasingly become a concern among investors and consumers. Cox Automotive reports the average price paid for a new vehicle this year has ballooned to upward of $48,600. That’s up about $5,200 from two years ago and up $11,700 from five years ago. The higher prices have pushed roughly 10% of traditional new car buyers out of the market, according to Cox.

GM, like its crosstown rivals, has largely discontinued traditional sedans in favor of popular, larger crossover vehicles. The problem is those smaller vehicles were among the cheapest in the industry and have yet to be replaced by anything close in size and price.
While nondomestic automakers such as Toyota Motor and Hyundai Motor continue to offer sedans, the prices have steadily increased and those options have been in low availability in recent years due to supply chain problems.
“Automakers have made a choice to focus, especially during the chip crisis, to focus on bigger more expensive, more profitable vehicles,” said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst at Cox Automotive. “But there clearly is demand for less-expensive vehicles.”
GM’s new 2024 Buick Envista and redesigned 2024 Chevrolet Trax crossovers start at $22,400 and $20,400, respectively. That makes them competitively priced with sedans from other automakers.
The Trax and Envista are sedan-like in silhouette and style but roomier on the interior like the company’s current smaller crossovers.

2024 Chevrolet Trax (left) and 2024 Buick Envista
Michael Wayland / CNBC

Executives from Buick and Chevrolet say they expect the vehicles to be among their bestsellers as production ramps up and the crossovers are imported from factories in South Korea.
“If every vehicle you sell is $60,000, you’re really limiting the ability to attract new buyers to the brand. A vehicle like the Envista is strategically important … this just opens an entirely new audience for us,” Sam Russell, marketing director of Buick, told CNBC.
The Envista is expected to be among the top-selling vehicles for Buick, according to Russell, who described some of the potential customers as “segment orphans” amid the dearth of sedans.
Chevrolet, which cut all of its sedans except the Malibu, expects the Trax – a familiar name for the brand, but an all-new car – to be its third best-selling vehicle. That would put the Trax behind the Silverado full-size pickup and Equinox compact crossover but ahead of the Chevy Tahoe that posted sales of more than 105,000 units last year.
“We’re super bullish on the car, no doubt, but I’m really bullish on this notion of that Chevrolet hasn’t lost our mind,” Steve Majoros, head of Chevy marketing, said of cutting its least expensive vehicles. “These are the vehicles that Americans want, and Chevrolet hasn’t forgotten about that.”

New Envista and Trax

The Envista and Trax feature a number of standard safety and convenience features, above what GM has historically offered on entry-level vehicles. Both vehicles are powered by a 1.2-liter turbocharged inline three-cylinder engine, producing 137 horsepower and 162 pound-feet of torque.

2024 Buick Envista 

The new Trax and Envista are sibling vehicles as they share the same platform and have similar interiors and silhouettes. The vehicles are differentiated through front and rear design tweaks as well as controls in the vehicles.
“The entry vehicle is evolving from the typical sedan and hatchback with frumpy styling to compelling alternatives. GM reimagined the roles of the latest Trax and Envista and resulted in expressive options for entry-level buyers,” said Paul Waatti, manager of industry insights for AutoPacific. “They should both revive GM’s sales at the lower end of the portfolio and start to backfill some of those entry-level models that have been broomed away.”
Both vehicles are priced under more traditional, smaller crossovers for both brands: the Chevy Trailblazer and Buick Encore GX. Those vehicles sit more upright and have more of a compact look compared with the longer and arguably more spacious Trax and Envista. However, the Trailblazer and Encore GX do not offer all-wheel drive.

2024 Chevrolet Trax (right) and 2024 Buick Envista
Michael Wayland / CNBC

Executives for both Chevrolet and Buick said they believe the new vehicles will attract a significant number of new buyers to the brands, assisting in growing sales and market share for GM.  
“The Encore GX is what we call our loyalty play. The role it has to play is build off the success of the first generation,” Buick’s Russell said. “The Envista, the vision is this is our conquest champion.”
GM’s U.S. sales through the first half of this year were up more than 18% to roughly 1.3 million vehicles sold, as the auto industry’s supply chain problems stabilize. More