Starting in 2023, a lot of changes will be taking place on the PGA Tour to combat the rival LIV Tour. Despite the stern thoughts early on that this was not about money, but rather legacy, financial changes are being made including some tournaments getting a big purse increase.
Sentry: $15m from $8m
Genesis, Arnold Palmer Invivational, Memorial and WGC: $20m from $12m
Players: $25m from $20m
FedEx St Jude and BMW: $20m from $15m
And you can expect more confirmations coming soon on major changes taking place.
"Operating reserve. They had it, or a significant portion of it, available.
Well, they were basically forced into changing, so any moral high ground was bulldozed and made into a pool.
A cesspool to be specific.
You’re welcome
You took the words out of my mouth.
Hopefully throwing money at it isn’t the extent of the changes to the tour. It seems like the easy thing to do, and they could/should have done it sooner.
“It’s not public knowledge, all that goes on,” Mickelson said. “But the players don’t have access to their own media. If the tour wanted to end any threat [from Saudi or anywhere else], they could just hand back the media rights to the players. But they would rather throw $25 million here and $40 million there than give back the roughly $20 billion in digital assets they control. Or give up access to the $50-plus million they make every year on their own media channel.”
why?
On June 12, we were told that it was all about legacy and teeing it up against the best in the world. At least that is what the Commissioner emphatically told Jim Nantz. Now 10 days later, the Commissioner tells us it’s really about money. And from operating reserve, we can come up with all this money to fund existing events and create new events.
So, good, the tour is spending/offering money to the field in making purses bigger. Will this be enough – it may keep some from leaving, but then again, if it’s really about money – and everyone gets a trophy (54 Golf), then, it’s only partly about money – mainly sure, but extra days off, signing bonus(es), fewer events, guaranteed payouts, no cuts.
Anyway, good on the Tour adapting, but face palm for being forced to do what appears to have been available and right – until cornered.
Nobody ever said legacy was free.
not speaking for Danny, but my guess is this comes across a bit duplicitous, since their stance this whole time was "The tour is more about the money, we have legacy and offer something no other tour can"
while some of that might be true, the moral stance and money part holds no water anymore.
This is a very important note. Nothing really changed.
They have been planning this for over a year and probably longer, so I don’t think the money just magically appeared. It is a mystery as to why they were reactive rather than proactive though. That was not very smart and makes it look bad.
what a joke.
Yes, in addition to legacy and being able to tee it up against the best in the world, the Commissioner brought the specter of 9/11 into play. And the media including arguably some of the most powerful in the country went along with him. "The bone saw tour" was how one opinion article referred to LIV. It only took Monahan less than10 days from his interview with Jim Nantz to admit that it really is about money.
They sit on a large chunk of $ and have done nothing to improve TV coverage or take care of the caddies and lower level tours. Hey, let’s do events for the top players with guaranteed money…isn’t this what the WGC was suppose to be???
All PGA Tour events are helped with volunteers who has to pay out of pocket so they can help "volunteer".
Danny
It must be nice to have the operating reserve to fund these events.
And pay for their "uniforms" and a portion of their food and beverage. At least that was how it was the last time I looked at being a volunteer.
On which Tour?
It just goes to show you that you never know where these threads will lead us.
I am not understanding why everyone keeps saying it’s money that is magically found? It is very very very poor timing on the PGAT, but this has been in the works for awhile now. Its been known or at least assumed as players and people in the know have spoken out about it.
And the commissioner himself sent this to the players "These increase will be funded by sponsorship support and supplemented in the short term by operating revenue." This found money isn’t all coming from extra revenue that the tour is hiding.
Timing is a thing.
Been saying this all along. His reaction wasn’t to "Protect the integrity of the game of golf and of the PGA Tour", it was to protect the revenue stream of the PGA Tour.
With respect to that, just because they put out more money doesn’t mean it is or isn’t about money. It’s certainly not all about money but the media narrative (for right or wrong) has been a big focus on the money that is going to the LIV players. Something needed to happen to address it, we all knew it was coming.
For the PGA to hold or get talent they are going to need to move at least a little bit. I’m not saying it’s right but it is part of horse trading.
I still don’t agree with it if the purses are going to be again skewed to the top I would rather than 5 million or 8 million added go to the missed cuts and to help balance everyone who’s not top 3. The top of the curve doesn’t need this additional money, but that’s who it is aimed at yet because they have to recognition. They need to continue to pay all levels and make it a reasonable living with all of the added expenses.
You are correct. You have a volunteer application fee then on top of that uniform fees. Question is where does all those application fees go?
Granted I got to play TPC Sawgrass for a cart fee.
so everybody, including volunteers should get paid? I’d love to see the P&L from the volunteers paying.I’m assuming their money goes to the charitable contributions….
I’ve heard of people paying to volunteer at majors and I don’t know about other tournaments on the PGA tour but I suspect the tournament committees for each event are responsible for their own volunteers. Since the PGA doesn’t control the majors as everyone here loves to point out, I can only assume the USGA is responsible for staffing the US Open and the PGA of America is responsible for staffing the PGA.
EDT: I also got tickets for free meals that could be used at the course concessions stands for my time since I didn’t actually work at the course much during my volunteer sessions.
I volunteered twice for the USGA. Bought my own shirts, kept them, badge got me in when not working and food tickets for when I did.
Curious what a better look (within reason) would have been at this point with so many players jumping ship.
If they made the changes a long time ago on their own accord by listening to the player’s issues and worked with them better. I’m sure it has been a long time well before LIV that the players have wanted a lot of changes. Also obviously, they are not taking out loans and running themselves financially thin to dump more money into the tour, and they have a ton of money laying around (about 1 billion in cash). So, it really looks like they didn’t want to make any changes until LIV came around.
This ^^