In light of this week’s great sports news that several top European clubs chose to form a Super League, information leaked through Golf Week on Tuesday about the PGA Tour’s efforts to prevent the star golfers from breaking elsewhere for bigger payouts. The PGA Tour later confirmed to ESPN that it has created a $ 40 million pool to reward its top stars as it continues to bring down the long-rumored Premier Golf League.
The allure of the proposed PGL is that it would guarantee significant cash for the best players in the world. In a very meritocratic sport like golf, where only 5-10 players actually bring in TV viewers and large groups of fans, it is attractive to be guaranteed a significant salary when you are one of those biggest names in the game.
Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy receive a guaranteed income of exactly $ 0 each season. This would not be the case in the proposed PGL. While the details of the hypothetical competition are weak, the pitch is that essentially everyone would have some measure of wealth, regardless of success on the track.
That’s where the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program comes into play. According to Golf Week, 10 players will receive money from a pool of $ 40 million. The program, set up to “compensate players who are supposed to drive fan and sponsor engagement, such as Tiger Woods, Bryson DeChambeau and Rickie Fowler” began Jan. 1, the PGA Tour was confirmed during Golf Week.
Since the statistics for determining who will receive a share of the $ 40 million are not based solely on tournament play, it will be difficult to determine the exact formula the PGA Tour will use. The algorithm used to supposedly rank the players includes popularity in Google Search, Nielsen ratings for brand exposure (how often they are on TV at tournaments), Q ratings (how well known they are to the general public), MVP- index ratings (social media engagement) and Meltwater mentions (how often they are covered by the media).
It was initially reported that FedEx Cup points would be included in the formula, but the PGA Tour later confirmed to GolfWeek that this would not be the case.
If this sounds like a ruse or a joke, it isn’t. And in some ways this should have been expected. Of course, the PGA Tour would aim to guarantee top players more money to avoid jumping into a new league. There is a logic behind the move that makes sense.
However, this can get messy. Does Tiger Woods get a bonus for people googling his name based on a car accident instead of playing golf, even if he never set foot on a course again for 12 months or more? In Tiger’s case, he should actually be paid considering how much money he’s put into the sport over the past 20 years, but the same can’t be said for everyone.
There is (and will) a lot to unwind, but the PGA Tour clearly sees this as a stabilization of its primary infrastructure in light of both what has happened on the European football front and what lies ahead in the coming months with the PGL. It’s a $ 40 million gamble, which could turn out to be a great deal for both the PGA Tour and the players who will make that money.