ATLANTA – The PGA Tour’s pot of gold is about to get a lot bigger.
In March of 2020, the PGA Tour announced a new nine-year agreement with CBS Sports, NBC News and ESPN that would run from 2022 through 2030.
Well, the payout begins this fall.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in his annual gathering with the media ahead of the Tour Championship, the FedEx Cup Playoffs finale, that official prize money will increase by approximately $35 million and the FedExCup and Comcast Business Tour top-10 bonus pools combined will grow by $15 million to $85 million. The roughly $633 million in comprehensive earnings up for grabs this coming season marks an 18 percent increase year over year.
The 2021-22 season begins Sept. 16 with the Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa, California. A few of the fall events will have purse increases but the lion’s share of the new money will begin in 2022.
When asked about the potential for a rogue league being established that could syphon away some of the game’s biggest stars, Monahan would only say his focus is on the PGA Tour and the alliance between the Tour and the European Tour.
“I’m 100 percent focused on our business and excited to be here at the Tour Championship to complete this unbelievable season, to go into 2021-2022 with not only an incredibly strong schedule with great committed tournaments, but to be fully sponsored coming through a pandemic,” he said.
“That’s what I have been focused on, that’s what I’ll continue to be focused on and I think in life you always have to be cognizant of, No. 1, there should be zero complacency to anything you do, and No. 2, someone is always going to try and take, compete and take something away from you. And I’ve operated that way every day of my life and I think that’s why, with the great team I have surrounded by me, we’re going to continue to grow this great Tour.”
The 2021-22 season will include for the first time three co-sanctioned events with the European Tour – the Barbasol Championship, Barracuda Championship and the Genesis Scottish Open will count in both the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup standings and the European Tour’s Race to Dubai.
“This is just the first step in a strategic alliance that we will continue to build on in the coming years,” Monahan said.
In other news
The 2021 WGC-HSBC Champions has been cancelled.
“Although it’s unfortunate to have to do so, we must ensure that we abide by the epidemic prevention policies of different markets which may cause inconvenience to the players and make tournament operations very challenging,” Monahan said.
The Bermuda Championship will be played as a stand-alone event with full FedExCup points and an increase in the purse size.
And the PGA Tour will continue to deal with COVID.
“We’re still not without our challenges and we’re still looking at those challenges day-to-day, market to market, and making the best decisions we can alongside community partners, health officials, and medical experts,” Monahan said. “We recognize that we were going to need to learn to live with this and we were going to need to continue to make adjustments as we went forward. I think that’s exactly what we did, and that’s exactly what we’ll continue to do as long as we’re forced to continue to deal with this pandemic.”