Agent On Current PGA Tour Structure: "Tiger Woods can sell a million dollars' worth of tickets...and he has to shoot scores to get paid"
/Bob Harig of ESPN.com provides an “everything you need to know about the league trying to challenge the PGA Tour” perspective. Of note, he focuses in on the building sense that top players and their agents see the stars in golf as severely underpaid, something the Premier Golf League appears to have tapped into.
Said an agent who wished not to be identified: "How can an organization negotiate hundreds of millions of dollars of TV contracts and someone like Tiger or Rory goes out and has the same chance of making the same money as some guy who has come off the Korn Ferry Tour? There is no arbitration panel. And no judge would say that is a fair economic model."
Right or wrong, that has always been a successful model of the PGA Tour. Golf fans have enjoyed the democratic nature of the sport, including the occasional unknown taking down a star. In return, the star has benefited from the opportunity to play via endorsement income that the Tour does not see one penny of after giving them a platform.
But in recent years a few things have changed. The schedule is now year-round and the stars are increasingly asked to tee it up more, including “playoffs” after major season when they would like to be recharging their batteries. The top players are called up every year to play a Cup event. In return? A small donation to their pet cause and free merch they’ll never wear again.
With this added “inventory,” the sense of obligation to play has swollen to untenable levels in the eyes of the elite. Which is how we’ve gotten to this messy place where the Premier Golf League can come along and look attractive to top players by countering the current model.