PGA Tour taps Rolex, Amazon as sponsorships surpass US$1 billion - The Straits Times

World No. 2 Rory McIlroy taking part in PGA Tour’s BMW Championship in August.

The PGA Tour continued to show how much it’s rebounded from the threat posed by LIV Golf as it approaches a record haul in sponsorships.

This year, revenue from such deals rose 14% to more than US$1 billion (S$1.29 billion), the PGA Tour said. Rolex, which has renewed its deal with the Tour, has led the growth with other sponsors including Amazon Web Services, Raymond James and AbbVie. 

“The marketplace seems to be validating the future direction of the PGA Tour,” said Dhruv Prasad, the entity’s chief commercial officer, in an interview.

The PGA Tour unveiled a new competitive model in June that will split it into two separate series. The Championship Series will have approximately 130 players competing across about two dozen events, with a minimum prize pool of US$20 million for each tournament. A step down is the Challenger Series, which is slated to have 20 events with winnings of at least US$4 million for each tournament and will offer players the chance to be promoted. This set-up will debut in 2028.

“There was a lot of painstaking work done over the last year to develop the new competitive model,” said Prasad, who previously worked at the NFL and oversaw 32 Equity, the league’s investing arm. “We’re all anxious to see how fans and commercial partners will react to it, and by all indications that we have seen, there’s been a lot of enthusiasm.”

Earlier this decade, LIV Golf, backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, challenged the PGA Tour by luring players away with big contracts. A merger of the two leagues was considered in 2023, but did not happen. Since then, the PGA Tour has been gaining momentum, with higher viewership and rising revenue, while LIV filed for bankruptcy and last week said it would wind down operations after a deal to reboot the league failed.

The PGA Tour has already signed sponsorship deals for almost every event in the Championship Series. Prasad said the organisation is also in active conversations with multiple sponsors about Challenger Series tournaments. 

The PGA Tour has yet to spend the US$1.5 billion that was invested into its commercial arm, PGA Tour Enterprises. The investment was made by Strategic Sports Group, which is led by Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, Fenway Sports Group’s John W. Henry and Tom Werner and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen. 

Prasad said the money could be spent on investing in facility improvements for different courses, hospitality, catering and ticketing. BLOOMBERG