It was an offhand comment made to me by one of my golf-writing colleagues. We were discussing the money players are now getting, more like major sports money, and wondering how the PGA Tour can keep coming up with the sponsor cash to pay for the elevated events?
We tossed the new Signature Event at Doral into the conversation and wondered whether the Tour would shrink or grow.
There are different views on that. He said shrink. I said they couldn’t shrink because if they used fewer weeks, someone would come in and have a tournament, which is the reason all players sign a release for use of their likeness in PGA Tour events every week. And they have to agree to this to be a Tour member. There are other rules against being in non-PGA Tour events, too.
He said LIV Golf could come in and use the other weeks. I said the Tour is not going to let that happen. He agreed on that.
Well, we went back and forth for a while and realized that, factually, we don’t know what’s going to occur, but if the Tour released some weeks, other organizations would be creating golf events for television. It has always been so. That’s how Mark Rolfing got his tournament started in Kapalua.
The Tour didn’t have a tournament during a particular week in November, and Rolfing was involved with the ownership of the resort. He knew a lot of the players and wanted to get them to this new and lovely golf course.
Different players, but it’s similar to how the original Shark Shootout got created, again, in an off week in November. And that’s how The Skins Game found a way into our living rooms on Thanksgiving weekend.
Even Tiger’s TGL events are on Mondays and Tuesdays, when the PGA Tour isn’t playing, and it now has a weekend date in December when there is no PGA Tour event.
This concept, flooding the weeks, is one of many utilized by golf genius Deane Beman in building the Tour into what it has become. Cover the ground with PGA Tour golf. Become the best, what everybody wants. He did a great job, and his successors continued to carry the torch.
But now the money is getting stratospheric. And even the WM Phoenix Open, with its skyboxes and huge crowds, probably can’t raise the kind of cash to make it a $20 million event every year. However, there are sports marketing people who can.
Enter SSG, Strategic Sports Group, the folks who have bankrolled the PGA Tour’s for-profit arm to the tune of $1.5 billion if they need it.
SSG, along with several like organizations run by billionaires who made their money in other industries, are on the hunt for sports assets that they can “own.” They are buying up women’s soccer and basketball teams like they are M&Ms because people want to watch.
And because not every billionaire wants to pay the freight for an NFL, NBA, or MLB team if they are available. Some former pro franchisees have sold them, so they have money waiting for a place to go.
This is the reason the TGL will succeed. Sports marketers are buying up city franchises for TGL because it’s available. And for other reasons.
Today, every PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions event is its own entity, but who is to say that is what will happen in the future? Who is to say that, for example, the PGA Tour, in conjunction with the Thunderbirds in Phoenix, won’t partner with a huge and well-heeled sports marketing group, like an SSG or IMG (International Management Group) to increase the purses, to upgrade the facilities even more, to increase the charity money raise and to keep the purses more elevated than elevated?
With golf growing by leaps and bounds, attracting all manner of other sportspeople and entertainers, as it always has, won’t it continue to be a magnet for excellence?
Who is to say that every tournament won’t have its own Berckmans Place, the premier hospitality offering at The Masters, with $10,000 tickets and the chance to shake hands with the rich and famous?
Some complain about high purses and throw terms like money grab and such, as if there’s something wrong with grabbing money. (I’m all for money, by the way. It’s handy to have for food and such.)
Even with the recent addition of the humongous purses for the Signature Events, the PGA Tour is still probably the lowest on the pay scale of regularly occurring sports. However, at the top, it’s starting to seem a little more like an NFL, NBA, or MLB salary. The big difference is that golfers aren’t guaranteed a payday. They have to earn it every week. Or not.
It's only recently that players have had a shot at making the big bucks that they could only dream of in decades past. And having franchises operating under the PGA Tour umbrella may be a way to lift all boats.