The PGA Tour's New $40M Bonus Pool

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Friends,

In late 2019, rumors started to circulate around the PGA Tour that the World Golf Club, the Raine Group, and “Saudi interests” were teaming up to launch the Premier Golf League, a new tour designed to enrich the biggest names in the game.

The concept was simple: Rather than allowing superstar golfers like Tiger Woods & Dustin Johnson to compete for free each weekend — drawing TV interest but only winning money if they perform well on the course — the Premier Golf League would hold closed tournaments with $10 million purses.

Even more interesting?

By mid-July, despite top golfers like Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, and Brooks Koepka publicly rejecting the idea, the Premier Golf League sent formal offer letters worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” to a handful of players (Source).

Now, the PGA Tour has responded. Aggressively.

Earlier this week, according to Golfweek, the PGA Tour announced the Player Impact Program, a new lucrative bonus structure that will reward golf’s biggest stars regardless of how they perform on the course.

In simple terms, it’s a $40M annual prize pool that is distributed among the 10 most popular players that drive fan and sponsor engagement — think Tiger Woods, Bryson DeChambeau, and Rickie Fowler.

Here are the details:

• Begins January 1, 2022

• Total prize pool of $40M annually

• The prize pool will be distributed among 10 players

• The top golfer will make $8M, followed by $6M for the second, $3.5M for third through sixth, and $3M apiece for the rest.

How will players be ranked?

The 10 winners will be determined based on their “Impact Score,” a proprietary algorithm that generates a ranking based on six separate metrics that are designed to quantify that individual’s added value to the PGA Tour.

Here are the six metrics, per Golfweek:

1. Their position on the season-ending FedEx Cup points list.

2. Their popularity in Google Search.

3. Their Nielsen Brand Exposure rating, which places a value on the exposure a player delivers to sponsors through the minutes they are featured on broadcasts.

4. Their Q Rating, which measures the familiarity and appeal of a player’s brand.

5. Their MVP Index rating, which calibrates the value of the engagement a player drives across social and digital channels.

6. Their Meltwater Mentions, or the frequency with which a player generates coverage across a range of media platforms.

While it’s still unclear how much each of those metrics will be weighted, the document that the PGA Tour distributed to players simulated Impact Scores using 2019 figures to illustrate how the ranking will work.

Here is the rather unsurprising Top 10 for 2019:

1. Tiger Woods

2. Rory McIlroy

3. Brooks Koepka

4. Phil Mickelson

5. Rickie Fowler

6. Jordan Spieth

7. Dustin Johnson

8. Justin Thomas

9. Justin Rose

10. Adam Scott

As for Brooks Koepka’s opinion on the list?

Here’s what he told Golfweek:

Bottom line: The PGA Tour’s most popular golfers, both on and off the course, will be taking home even more money in the years to come.

Some people will inevitably refer to the PGA’s new Player Impact Program as a “rich get richer” scheme, but the reality is that legacy sports like professional golf must continue to innovate, especially as well-funded upstarts challenge their position.

My take?

Who cares if the top guys win extra money through the Player Impact Program? They deserve it. Not only are they an essential part of the sales pitch for increasingly more lucrative TV rights and sponsorships, but if it keeps the PGA Tour’s opened ended structure intact, I’m all for it.

Have a great day, and we’ll talk tomorrow.

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