GBR Pro | The Prize Money Race: Majors vs. PGA Tour
The majors are the pinnacle of golf. However, can they keep up financially with the PGA Tour's signature events and can the PGA Tour keep its major sponsors?
$398,900,000
It’s a big number. Can you guess what it relates to?
If your answer is the total prize fund for the 2024 PGA Tour minus the Tour Championship, you’d be correct.
It’s been well documented regarding the PGA Tour’s desire to create richer tournaments to stave off the threat of LIV Golf. But how much more can purses grow? Should regular tour events, even if they are given “signature” status, be more valuable than the majors?
The last question is an important one. The four majors have always been classed as the pinnacle of the sport in terms of the prestige that winning one of them brings and where it places a golfer in the pantheon of the greatest of the game.
A golfer’s position in the halls of the greatest of all time is still based on how many major championships they have won in their career.
During his last press conference at The Open Championship, The R&A’s CEO, Martin Slumbers, was confronted with the fact that the oldest major in golf only has the 28th-highest total purse in 2024.
Slumbers didn’t seem bothered. As reported in this week’s GBR, his view is that the current arms race to create ever-bigger prize funds isn’t sustainable. He added that he believed prize funds would plateau out in the near future.
Under The Financial Bonnet of Tournament Golf
However, if the majors are the pinnacle of ambition in golf, should they still not also carry the largest paydays since they are the most difficult to win?
For 2024, the major championships carried the following total prize funds:
The Masters - $20,000,000
The PGA Championship - $18,500,000
The U.S. Open - $21,500,000
The Open Championship - $17,500,000
There’s little chance that golfers who have the opportunity would not play in The Open Championship simply because there was not enough money on offer. In reality, golf’s oldest major doesn’t even compete financially with the PGA Tour’s eight signature events for 2024.
