Who Owns The PGA Tour?
It was a few minutes after Camilo Villegas’ election to the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council was announced, giving him a three-year term on the tour’s board of directors, set to begin in January. He walked into the press room at the Cognizant Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and it was time for questions.
“Is it congratulations?” he was asked. “Or condolences?” These days, such a reaction is understandable. These are confusing times on the PGA Tour.
The arrival of the LIV Golf League, and the defections to it by former PGA Tour stars like Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm, Phil Mickelson and more, has made the business of pro golf more muddled than ever before. LIV is backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is considered one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, if not the biggest.
Who owns LIV? The Saudis, basically. It’s an easy answer.
In the PGA Tour world, it’s not so simple. The tour is massive, having generated $1.9 billion in revenue in 2022, up nearly 20 percent from what it did the previous year. The majority of that money comes from media rights deals, which generated almost $800 million in 2022. The tour has those deals with NBC, CBS, Golf Channel, ESPN+ and about four dozen international outlets.
But who owns the PGA Tour? Technically, nobody.
It’s always been a nonprofit largely to benefit charities, run by players. In actuality, thanks to a new equity structure, Jordan Spieth now has a different answer.
“I think the coolest thing about it is the players are now owners,” Spieth said. “So not only do they benefit with the Tour, they now are equity owners so they want to push it themselves. They want to make the product better themselves. Not that they didn’t before, but you directly benefit from owning a piece.”
Spieth is one of 13 people who sit on the board of directors for PGA Tour Enterprises. Are they owners of the Tour in the conventional sense? No. But that’s the group that will navigate whatever comes the Tour’s way, at least for the foreseeable future.
The list includes players, sports team owners and powerful business executives. Tiger Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Peter Malnati, Adam Scott, Webb Simpson and Spieth (whose term ends after this year and will be replaced by Villegas) are the players. Fenway Sports Group’s John Henry and Sam Kennedy are also on the board, along with Home Depot co-founder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank and New York Mets vice chairman Andrew Cohen, representing as directors from Strategic Sports Group (SSG). There is also former Tour player Joe Ogilvie, Tour Policy Board independent director Joe Gorder and, of course, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan.
The PGA Tour—which has tax-exempt status—still will run the events. PGA Tour Enterprises—a for-profit entity—will look to make the money. It’s a new day.
“Historically, our structure has limited our ability to make transformative investments into the sport,” Monahan said. “With PGA Tour Enterprises, with our 13-member board of directors now in place, and the partnership with Strategic Sports Group, we’ve changed that dynamic and unleashed our potential for future growth.”
SSG is where the equity structure comes in.
SSG, which is a group of owners of U.S. pro sports teams led by the Fenway group (which also has, among others, LeBron James as an investor), ed PGA Tour Enterprises late last year. SSG’s opening pledge was $1.5 billion, and it could double.
Put simply, the equity offering is one of the ways the PGA Tour is trying to fight back. The tour says the equity grants will vest over time and “will be based on career accomplishments, recent achievements, future participation and services and PGA Tour hip status.”
And it further opens the door to the big prize: If the PIF truly wants to invest in the PGA Tour, it now can do so. The Tour, after secret talks that left many PGA players angry and shocked, announced a deal last June for a proposed partnership with the Saudis. That partnership still hasn’t gone forward, though talks are ongoing and picked up in March with meetings in the Bahamas, reportedly at Woods’ home there.
“I think it’s really important that we’re all rowing in the same direction,” Cantlay said. “I think with this PGA Tour Enterprises board it’s really exciting that we do have a chance to kind of start with something new and all move together in the right direction.”
It has taken golf a while to get to this place.
LIV began play in 2022, and its list of players—Johnson, Rahm, Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and many more—has a serious depth of talent. The rumors of what drew each of them to LIV are stunning numbers, topping $100 million a player in many cases. (Tiger Woods reportedly turned down much more to .) On one hand, it’s life-changing money even for rich people. On the other, it’s money from the Saudis and raises questions of sportswashing—staging events to polish a tarnished image. Critics blasted those players who took the money, calling them sellouts or worse. The rhetoric was cranked up high on a weekly basis, it seemed, with the PGA vs. LIV rivalry overshadowing what was happening on the golf course.
Then came June 6, 2023.
That day brought word of an agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudis. The PGA Tour and European tour would merge with the Saudis, all the lawsuits involving LIV would be dropped and golf would be reunited again. Players reacted in stunned fashion on social media, clearly caught off guard by the news, bringing up the question of who truly runs the PGA.
“Very curious how many people knew this deal was happening,” wrote Thomas Kim. “Player run organization right?”
“I love finding out morning news on Twitter,” wrote Collin Morikawa.
Monahan held a closed-door meeting with players that has been described as heated. “I recognize people will call me a hypocrite,” Monahan told reporters on a conference call that day.
What happened next was as surprising. Monahan temporarily stepped away from his role about a week after the announcement, citing a medical condition. All that came at a time when players were still stunned about the secret deal Monahan struck with the Saudis. How Monahan will restore trust with players became a talking point for months (and really, still is one). McIlroy was one of LIV’s biggest critics and didn’t hide that he didn’t like how the merger deal came together. “I still hate LIV,” he said, after the news. “I hope it goes away.” His stance seems to have softened.
“I do believe that negotiating a deal with PIF is the best outcome,” Monahan said. “Obviously it has to be the right deal for both sides, like any situation or negotiation.
“The PGA Tour has been limited in our ability to invest back into some of those growth opportunities,” he added. “We no longer are with the formation of PGA Tour Enterprises, and I think an ultimate deal would be in the best interest of the game and ultimately would be in the best interest of the Tour, if it can be done.”
Money, money, money. LIV threw piles of it around to get started. Now, more of it than ever will be available to PGA Tour players. Which brings us back to Villegas’ successful election to the Player Advisory Council and if that was a good thing for him given how unusual these times are in the game of golf.
He spoke slowly, carefully, thoughtfully. Players like Villegas technically don’t own the Tour, but certainly have taken ownership of its future—and maybe the game in general.
“I think the game of golf is in an interesting situation,” Villegas said. “I think the rope is pretty tangled up. It needs to be untangled. It will get untangled. How long will it take? We don’t know. We wish we had a crystal ball. I truly believe the game of golf will win. I’m very excited to be part of this group. I know it’s going to be a lot of work. I know it’s going to be a big commitment, big responsibility, but that’s kind of how I have handled my life. I try to do the best at everything I do and won’t change anything for this new opportunity.”
