OPINION: The PGA Tour’s $40 Million Participation Trophy

It’s no secret the PGA Tour is a cash cow.

With weekly events for basically three-quarters of a calendar year, the myriad of sponsors, broadcast deals, event hosts, fees, content rights, you name it…they all add up to serious bank. That also leads to serious expenditures because it’s a constantly traveling road show that requires an intense amount of coordination, work hours, and more. This isn’t money for nothing, which we’ll address at the end of this article.

That plethora of prosperity also goes for so many of the TOUR stars, the ones who are the big names who also bring home serious coin because of corporate partnerships, athletic wear, product commercials, and manufacturer deals. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by R I C K I E (@rickiefowler)

I will never, ever, bemoan any company or person for being successful in bringing in a large amount of money so long as they do so in a moral, honest way. Based on the news broken by Golfweek and confirmed by officials with the PGA TOUR, it’s pretty obvious the top level league of golf in the world is so wildly successful that it has too much money and is running out of ways to spend it.

If you missed the story, the PGA TOUR has quietly developed a new $40 million a year special compensation pool to reward the golfers who drive business to the TOUR in terms of engagement, social media following, sponsor dollars to the TOUR, and publicity. Known as the Player Impact Program, the top 10 players who move the needle for the PGA TOUR (based on their own internal metrics) will be further compensated not for winning but for being media darlings.

Congratulations, PGA TOUR. You’ve just Kardashian’d the world’s elite golf league.

Also, I can’t believe I just used the word “Kardashian” as a verb. We’re all screwed.

Why would the PGA TOUR consider this? The answer is the continued threat of a potential Premier Golf Tour launching and using a similar incentive program for its top players who card more ad dollars even if it means fewer titles won. This wouldn’t be the first time the PGA TOUR, or any company for that matter, took something from a threat or another operator and it certainly won’t be the last. But this time they’ve taken the worst possible idea and gave it legs.

There are a ton of reasons why I think this is a bad idea, so we’ll go with my big one:

The reward is not performance or merit based. 

Yup, this is the participation trophy of all participation trophies but it comes with a big, fat check attached because the player’s image made the TOUR money. And based on perceptions of who is doing what in the public eye, the TOUR could be stroking a pretty meaty check to a player who right now couldn’t sink a birdie if the cup opening was similar to that of a Home Depot bucket. (I’m looking at you, Rickie Fowler). 

The PGA TOUR cut almost 50 office jobs among what was predicted to be a $90 million operating loss in 2020 because of COVID-19 impacts. Charitable giving was maintained to the best of their abilities but was also impacted by the pandemic.  With all of these problems and all of these challenges, the TOUR still found a way to keep purses level and now, all of a sudden, has a cool $40 million to toss around for doing nothing but being a face or a voice in the game. 

I often say that having too much money and not enough things to do with it is a great problem to have in business. That also being said, throwing Brinks trucks worth of cash to players to just be an advertising or social media darling after they’ve already been cut handsome checks to do so.

If there is this extra pool of cash just laying around in their Florida HQ (well, Florida HQ for now), the PGA TOUR should be further investing this money into growing the game from the youth level on up, improving financial payments on their lower tier tours to better grow purses and ease a bit of the grind that goes into that life, returning additional funds to areas impacted by the pandemic where the charitable aspect came up short, and returning their employment levels back to pre-COVID-19 levels.

Instead, the PGA TOUR is compelled to create a financial participation trophy akin to an old Dire Straits tune.

That’s money for nothing.

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