The Business Side of the PGA Tour Has Gotten Weird

The Fried Egg Golf Podcast

thefriedegg.com

Golf, Sports

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A lot has been going on with the business side of the PGA Tour recently, all of it pretty weird. The Tour is trying to form a for-profit entity, supposedly called "PGA Tour Enterprises," with the backing of various investors, including commissioner Jay Monahan's frenemies at the Saudi Arabian PIF, which funds LIV Golf; purse sizes are spiraling out of control, and title sponsors are being asked to bear some of the burden; and in general the proudly non-profit Tour is moving awkwardly toward a for-profit model. To get some clarity on these matters, Garrett sits down with Josh Carpenter (@JoshACarpenter) of Sports Business Journal. Garrett and Josh discuss the PGA Tour's recent adventures in business, including its battle/partnership (?) with LIV and the PIF, the effect of Jon Rahm's departure, Rory McIlroy's world tour dreams, and the Tour's increasingly precarious relationship with its own tournaments and title sponsors.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker I'm really upset and when I find my ball in a fried egg
0:06.8	fried egg fried egg fried egg fried egg fried egg fried egg fried egg lie
0:11.8	I'm about ready to run off the golf course Welcome. Welcome to the Friday Golf Podcast, I'm Garrett Morrison and today we're talking
0:39.6	about the weirdness of the business side of the PGA tour. There's been a lot going on on this
0:46.2	front. I frankly don't understand all of it. I'm trying to understand more of it and this episode is part of that.
0:55.0	Basically everything that's going on with the business of the PGA Tour right now has to do
1:00.5	what the two are trying to pay for its fight with Live and with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund or the PIF.
1:09.0	Right, this is an extremely well-funded rival.
1:12.6	You could hardly get a better-funded rival.
1:16.5	And the tour is just having enormous difficulty
1:19.8	retaining its members and spending enough to remain viable in this new professional golf ecosystem.
1:29.3	And one of the reasons that's difficult for the tour is that it is a nonprofit member organization and that has worked for the
1:37.2	PGA tour quite well so far but lately it hasn't been working as well. So one of its strategies, one of the tourist strategies,
1:46.1	has been to explore forming a for-profit company
1:50.2	funded by the Public Investment Fund itself, along with an array of wealthy investors and private equity types,
1:57.0	this new entity is going to be called PGA Tour Enterprises, as far as I know. This is it's such a significant and interesting move but it can be a little bit
2:08.8	hard to wrap your mind around right away. What you need is a good sports business reporter to
2:15.2	explain it to you and fortunately that reporter exists and his name is
2:19.6	Josh Carpenter. Josh is an assistant managing editor at Sports Business Journal and his recent reporting has really focused almost exclusively on golf, which is very fortunate for all of us in the golf world.
2:32.0	He has broken several big stories related to the
2:36.1	PGA Tours recent business dealings. I have a bunch of things I want to get into with
2:40.5	Josh that you know I want to get into the negotiations between the
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