PGA Tour Breaks Through $1 Billion Barrier In Sponsorship Deals

Brian Rolapp — (Image credit: Getty Images)

The PGA Tour has seen a big increase in sponsorship revenue this year with major deals seeing the total cross the $1bn threshold.

It's been a tumultuous time in golf over recent years with the PGA Tour at loggerheads with LIV Golf, but shortly after the team tour's bankruptcy and collapse Ponte Vedra Beach officials have revealed a 14% increase in its sponsorship income.

Big changes are coming on the PGA Tour under Brian Rolapp from 2028 with the new Championship and Challenger Series and revamped Tour Championship all aimed at making a slicker, more competitive, easier to follow season.

There's also big changes in terms of tournaments and sponsors, with long-time playoff backers FedEx coming to the end of its title sponsorship and a huge deal with Visa reportedly being lined up for the Tour Championship and other events.

The PGA Tour announced on Wednesday that Rolex had signed a multi-year renewal of it's deal as a blue chip sponsor - and thanks to that and agreements with Amazon Web Services and Raymond James along with many others has seen total sponsorship income break the $1bn barrier.

"The marketplace seems to be validating the future direction of the PGA Tour," said the Tour's chief commercial officer Dhruv Prasad as quoted by Bloomberg.

PGA Tour boss Brian Rolapp pictured alongside a Visa sign

Like CEO Rolapp, Prasad previously worked at the NFL - which has dominated sponsorship dollars like everything else in American sports - and both are keen to use that experience to improve the PGA Tour both on and off the course.

The upcoming Championship Series will see the top 130 players taking part in 24 tournaments each with a $20m prize fund - and the vast majority of those already have sponsortship deals lined up.

Challenger Series tournaments come with smaller prize pots and are a tougher sell to sponsors, but Prasad says there is interest as the new PGA Tour looks to impress would-be partners.

"There was a lot of painstaking work done over the last year to develop the new competitive model," said Prasad.

"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."

LIV Golf proved a real headache at times on the player front by luring away top names on huge contracts, but in terms of TV and sponsorship cut through it never really rivalled the PGA Tour.

Now without that challenge the PGA Tour looks to be thriving in terms of sponsorship and looks to be flush with cash, as the Bloomberg report also states that it has yet to spend the $1.5bn investment in PGA Tour Enterprises from Strategic Sports Group.

Paul Higham is a sports journalist with over 20 years of experience in covering most major sporting events for both Sky Sports and BBC Sport. He is currently freelance and covers the golf majors on the BBC Sport website. Highlights over the years include covering that epic Monday finish in the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor and watching Rory McIlroy produce one of the most dominant Major wins at the 2011 US Open at Congressional. He also writes betting previews and still feels strangely proud of backing Danny Willett when he won the Masters in 2016 - Willett also praised his putting stroke during a media event before the Open at Hoylake. Favourite interviews he's conducted have been with McIlroy, Paul McGinley, Thomas Bjorn, Rickie Fowler and the enigma that is Victor Dubuisson. A big fan of watching any golf from any tour, sadly he spends more time writing about golf than playing these days with two young children, and as a big fair weather golfer claims playing in shorts is worth at least five shots. Being from Liverpool he loves the likes of Hoylake, Birkdale and the stretch of tracks along England's Golf Coast, but would say his favourite courses played are Kingsbarns and Portrush.