Forgive my cynicism—it’s been a very long past three years in professional golf—but I don’t like how money is dominating the Ryder Cup conversation.
The gold standard for dramatic, big-time events in professional golf, the Ryder Cup is undoubtedly one of the great spectacles in all of sports. Nobody could argue that.
It’s about love of country and continent. In a game known for diplomacy, the intense competition regularly boils over traditional boundaries. It’s a team sport in an individual game, a match that makes millionaires cry tears of joy and sorrow. The American and European fans play prominent roles in the proceedings, cheering and jeering with a certain ruthlessness that transfers back to the players.
In any sport, we just want the athletes to care. We want to see them nervous and passionate. The Ryder Cup has regularly delivered on that, creating riveting drama in a sport that often struggles to do so.
One would assume the Ryder Cup stays that way forever. What could slow it down?
Greed, for one.
Will players start to get paid?
While nothing official has come out as of this writing, there is a lot of smoke in the air that American Ryder Cup players are going to be paid for participating in the 2025 event.
This report by James Corrigan of The Telegraph indicates that U.S. players could receive $400,000 each for playing next year at Bethpage. This proposal apparently needs approval from the PGA of America board of directors which is in the process of hiring a new CEO after Seth Waugh left the organization in July.
This isn’t that much money in the grand scheme of things. That would be $2.4 million for the players and you would assume the captain and assistants would get something as well. Even if the total is something like $4 million, that is only equivalent to the purse of an opposite-field PGA Tour event.
The PGA of America can surely afford it. It has a 15-year, $440-million TV deal with NBC—about $29 million per year—that runs through 2030. It’s estimated the PGA makes at least an additional $30 million on top of that when hosting a Ryder Cup.
It’s not a question of affordability but whether the Ryder Cup might be diluted by money talk.
The whole point of the Ryder Cup is that it’s a pure event. These players feel more nerves competing alongside each other than they do on the Sunday of a major alone.
Last year, reports circulated that Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele were pushing to get players paid. Although the validity of those reports became murky, Schauffele’s father, Stefan, gave numerous interviews during the week questioning the system.
In the past, American players have received $200,000 earmarked for a charity of their choice. They are also treated like royalty before, during and after the event. Famously, wives and girlfriends have an exorbitant fashion budget—several thousand dollars—for the gala.
Now that money would be doubled and they can do whatever they want with it.
Here is my opinion: Getting to play in the Ryder Cup is not exactly a hardship. This isn’t the NCAA of old where college football players played entire careers without (officially) benefitting financially for their services. These are all elite professional golfers who are swimming in purse increases week after week.
This $400,000 surely won’t make that much of a difference. Not to mention that the Ryder Cup is the biggest platform in golf—playing well could easily lead to endorsement deals and other financial benefits.
I understand where the players are coming from in that the PGA of America is making a ton of money off this event and has not been sharing a piece of the pie with the men who are the event.
But I fear the Ryder Cup’s magic is going to slowly get sucked out. The match is supposed to be isolated from everything else happening in golf. It’s your best 12 players against our best 12 players. Getting to participate is a privilege. Players should be honored to be a part of it rather than holding the event hostage so they can increase their already bloated bank accounts by a few thousand dollars.
Fair or unfair, that makes it seem like the players have some obligation to be there—like it’s a mandatory all-star game and the only way to get them motivated enough is to pay for their services. As a viewer, that feeling turns me off.
Just once every couple of years, why can’t we come together and play without money on the line? There is so much else already on the line with a Ryder Cup.
“I personally would pay for the privilege to play on the Ryder Cup,” Rory McIlroy told the BBC. “The two purest forms of competition in our game right now are the Ryder Cup and the Olympics, and it’s partly because of that, the purity of no money being involved… I don’t think any of the 24 players on either team needs that 400 grand. Every two years, there are 104 weeks and 103 weeks you can play golf and get paid.”
Exactly. He gets it.
Now it’s a distinct possibility that American players will get paid and European players won’t get paid which creates a dynamic where too much of the conversation could be about money. Instead of history and competition, we’ll be talking the financial imbalance between the teams.
And this is the one event where that should never happen.
Even Ryder Cup tickets are worse than we thought
Talk of money hasn’t stopped with the players, as the PGA of America is enveloped in yet another PR nightmare.
A couple of years ago, the organization was charging $19 for beer at the PGA Championship, about double the average for a beer at an NFL game.
Looking to squeeze every penny out of their customers once again, the PGA of America decided to charge $750 tickets to next year’s Ryder Cup. No major championship for 2025 has set prices north of $219 (also the PGA of America with the PGA Championship). Most major tickets can be found for around $150.
The price gouge doesn’t end there.
The original allotment of $750 tickets quickly sold out, and many of the people who were selected in the lottery said they never had a chance to buy tickets at that price. Now when you go to the official Ryder Cup site, you are directed to Seat Geek, a third-party ticket distributor selling $1,423 tickets for Saturday and Sunday. The “ticket fee” (which I assume is a service fee) is a staggering $289.
Friday tickets are “only” $1,163 with $238 of that being a service fee.
However, if you go to other third-party sites like StubHub and Vivid Seats, the resale tickets are cheaper than the PGA of America-to-Seat Geek route.
A Saturday ticket on Vivid Seats is $1,147. There is a Saturday ticket on StubHub for $1,014.
You can call this market value but the market was heavily dictated by the PGA of America setting its original prices at $750—three times more expensive than the 2023 Ryder Cup. And most people couldn’t get that $750 price before being directed to SeatGeek where tickets are almost double.
The PGA of America defended this move by saying the Ryder Cup is a top-tier sporting event akin to the Super Bowl and World Series but it’s also an event where there are only a few groups on the course. Everyone is crowding around the same holes. (Did I also mention the Ryder Cup hasn’t witnessed a dramatic finish since 2012? And the home team has won eight of the past nine matches with the only exception being a miraculous comeback?)
And I’m not sure you can call it an event on par with the Super Bowl when you are talking about 130 million TV viewers (Super Bowl) against 3.7 million TV viewers (Ryder Cup). The American audience for the Ryder Cup was down significantly in 2023.
The PGA of America is clearly trying to get everything it can out of this to fund operations for the next four years, especially with the pressure to pay the players.
I can see the atmosphere being diluted because of this. Will enough rabid New York sports fans pay more than $1,000 a pop to heckle the Europeans? Food and drink is included in those prices but I’m not sure the heaviest of drinkers could make a dent in the ticket price by saving on not having to pay for $19 beers.
If you ask me, this is all a shame—but it’s not surprising.
Players want their money. The PGA of America wants their money.
And you know who loses? Fans.
The fans have to pay crazy ticket prices. The fans get a TV product littered with commercials (you didn’t think that $440-million TV deal would pay for itself, did you?). Instead of talking about which team will win, the fans might now be talking about money heading into the 2025 Ryder Cup—talking about how one team isn’t getting paid and another team demanded to get paid.
When will golf learn that putting fans last is not an effective strategy? This bubble of increasing purses, ticket prices, concessions and every other element of a golf tournament is not going to last as fans are starting to turn away from watching professional golf.
We’ll see what happens but I’m worried about the Ryder Cup.
Top Photo Caption: Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele compete in the 2023 Ryder Cup. (GETTY IMAGES/Patrick Smith)
Gary
1 year ago
It’s a non issue. They are professionals and get paid to play. That’s how they earn a living. Olympic athletes get paid, college students get paid, we get paid to work. Few of us would offer our skills for free. Especially when you see the PGA making millions based of off the efforts of the players. Back in the day the Ryder Cup didn’t generate the kind of money they do now, so you can’t compare “the good old days”. I can’t see any player on either side playing harder now because of money. And for some of the players they’re not the highest paid in the sport, so that money can make a difference. In today’s sport it’s a lot to ask someone to donate their time so others can make millions.