The PGA Tour’s purses are increasing, but its ratings aren’t. It’s a difficult conundrum for the Tour and commissioner Jay Monahan, who spoke (vaguely) about this issue during his end-of-the-year press conference at the Tour Championship last month.
“I think when you look at 2024, it’s important to note, and I’m going to note it, that overall consumption across our platforms in aggregate is up,” Monahan said. “That’s a really good sign for the PGA Tour and the engagement that we have with our fans.” (As our James Colgan notes, though, there are layers to that answer.)
The sport’s inflated purses and lackluster TV ratings were a major topic on the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers,” a GOLF production — and pro golf’s current divide is correlated to both.
Peter Kostis brought up the fact that World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler earned more than $62 million in 2024, which (adjusted for inflation) was about double Jack Nicklaus’ career earnings. And today’s growing purses largely are due to the Tour needing to compete with LIV Golf’s mega money. Kostis wondered if it was all sustainable.
“Everything’s been thrown out of whack and I think in part that’s one of the things that caused people to lose interest in watching the game,” Kostis said. “It’s lost a little bit of its speciality.”
Kostis added that the different tiers of the sport also are an issue.
“We have a Tour with the ‘A’ league and the ‘B’ league,” he said. “We have the top 50 playing in their Signature Events and then the B league scrambling around to do whatever. It’s utter chaos right now; we have to figure out our way out of this and we got to do it soon. I think Rory was spot on when he said we need a resolution to this sooner rather than later because I don’t think the public is going to put up with it very much longer. In my opinion, under the believe it or not category, will it happen or won’t it happen, I think [a merger with LIV] will never happen right now. I think we are headed toward two leagues. I think we are headed toward a league that is primarily internationally focused and then we have obviously the PGA Tour, which is domestically focused. Maybe they’ll figure out a way for them to play the majors and a couple other events. I don’t see this coming to a resolution anytime soon.”
Added McCord: “I wish someone would come and ring and bell and say, ‘OK, here’s what we are going to do. In six months we’re going to merge, we’re going to do this, or we are not going to merge,’ whatever. But this vagueness that’s going on now in this sport completely overshadowed Scottie Scheffler’s year; he had one of the great years in the history of golf.”
