The PGA Tour will begin asking tournaments for an additional purse fee starting in the 2025 seasongetty images
The PGA Tour will make a significant shift in how its tournament purses are funded in the 2025 season as prize money pools continue to rise, sources told SBJ this week.
The Tour held a call with more than 50 tournament officials on Tuesday, and on it discussed a new funding model that would see the tournaments put up an additional fee that would go toward event purses, sources said.
Tournaments and title sponsors already pay money that goes toward purses, in varying degrees depending on the event, but now the Tour is asking for more.
No specific figures were given; sources on the call said the Tour would be contacting each event to talk through details on how and why the changes are being made in the coming weeks.
The fee sought from each event is expected to change based on each market, with larger markets commanding bigger fees, sources said. The Tour is working on a three-year plan starting in 2025. In the first year, events will be asked to pay 50% of the fee. That number will increase in 2026, with a plan for events to be paying the full fee by 2027.
The Tour also is seeking a piece of revenue from events, again depending on market and event size, to boost purses. The Tour is holding in-person meetings with tournament directors in the first week of December in California, where the new plan is expected to be a focal point.
One longtime tournament director who was on Tuesday’s call questioned if charity money in the various markets would take a hit under the new plan.
“What’s going to happen, if you do this, it means there’s going to be less money to charity,” the source said. “The title sponsors aren’t going to put any more up, so now we have to take money from the charity. Is that what you want?”
Another tenured tournament official was taking a measured approach to the changes, noting the Tour’s longtime relationship with many events.
“Any new funding model will be figured out between all parties but we are definitely in the middle of figuring it out,” the source said.
Tournament purses on the PGA Tour have seen steep increases quickly since LIV Golf’s arrival on the scene in the last two years.
For the 2022-23 season, new “designated” events – called “signature” events now – were introduced and had massive $20M purses. For comparison, in the 2021-22 season, a pair of events that were made designated – the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Memorial Tournament – both had $12M purses.
Other increases were larger. The Wells Fargo Championship, which had a $9M purse in 2022, saw its number go to $20M in 2023 as it gained designated status.
The invention of the designated events in 2022-23 served a number of purposes: to keep the best players on the PGA Tour and also to bring them together at the biggest events.
The plan mostly paid off, with only a handful of big names leaving for LIV Golf. On TV, seven of the 10 regular-season designated events saw year-over-year gains in 2023.
But one source still questioned the sustainability of rising purse sizes, even with an anticipated influx of cash from Saudi Arabia’s PIF or another U.S. investor.
“Our TV ratings aren’t worth it,” the source said. “You’re playing in a sport that has a cap on it, and we’ve reached our cap.”
The PGA Tour declined to comment publicly for this story.