Monahan Pledges Tour Events Will Raise $100 Million Over Next Ten Years To Help Social Injustice Causes

Reading Jay Monahan’s State of the PGA Tour press conference, it’s tempting to pull out a calculator to comprehend some of the dollar figures bandied about. Particularly given recent news of the PGA Tour letting go or retiring 50 lower-pay staffers not on the executive, Dr.-Conformity-in-Atlanta track to a Ponte Vedra Boulevard (ocean side) residency.

Virtually all of the money mentioned by the Commissioner will be on tournaments to raise, an interesting task with so much uncertainty about pro-ams and spectators. Monahan sounded a very cautious note on that front, which was a refreshing take given some other major sports pushing to get people in seats despite being way less conducive to a safe situation than golf spectating.

When we feel like it's safe to return fans out here, that's when fans will return. We owe that to them, to make sure that we feel like -- and we're supported locally in every market we play in, that that is supported by the local government authorities.

Now to the money.

Monahan said in the press session today at East Lake that the Tour has raised $35 million this summer for COVID-19 related charities.

Now tournaments are going to be instructed to add another component to their fundraising:

And so since we've started, you know, kind of redoubled those efforts and really thought through the recent incidents and how we can make a bigger impact, we worked very closely with our Tournament Advisory Council led by Steve Wilmot, and all of our tournaments are going to be identifying racial and social injustice causes in their local markets going forward.

Because, again, they know their markets better than anybody else. They're going to know the organizations that can make a big impact, and they're going to make that part of their charitable program and charitable platform, so that in every community you look at on the PGA TOUR, every tournament is committed to doing so, particularly once we return to tournament golf as normal.

And I think it's a big statement that with the number of tournaments we have they all quickly have responded and said that they are excited for this opportunity, excited for this challenge. And I think as you look out over the next 10 years, I think that we would project it to generate at least $100 million for those causes over the next 10 years, and that's something that we're going to hold ourselves accountable to.

The money is one thing, but being engaged in the community and being part of the solution through the tournament host organizations is something that you're going to see us make a lot of progress on.

This prompted a follow up question about finances and purses. It’s a long stall of an answer with a surprise ending twist.

Q. Following up on the question about the finances thing, I think people would have understood even this year if purses were decreased in light of other sports and athletes having taken a little bit of a hit. How were you able to maintain purses at this level? And we get to this closing event, which is played for so much money, how sensitive are you to playing for that kind of money in this kind of environment?

JAY MONAHAN: Yeah, I think -- listen, what I'm most sensitive to is are we being the great partner that we have always been in the markets where we play, and are we accomplishing in this really challenging environment all that our sponsors and our community partners want us to accomplish. I think our players have done a remarkable job of that since we returned.

You go back to when we were trying to stand the TOUR back up and reset the schedule, and going back to your earlier question, at that point in time we set out a schedule, but we also weren't sure how long we could sustain that schedule, and we're still not sure of that going forward.

But I think that when you're an organization that generates the amount of money that we have generated and will continue to generate for the communities where we play and we continue to just do our job as a great community partner, I'm proud of the fact that the purses that we play for continue to attract the best players in the world that are allowing us to continue to do that work.

I step back and say, you know, this week, $3½ million for the East Lake Foundation. I was on the phone with Mr. Cousins and Ron Price numerous times over the last several weeks and that was really important to him, and we've done that, and hopefully we'll exceed it.

You go back through our tournaments, I think the response that we've had -- of all the uncertainty, what we could do in the communities was one of our biggest concerns, and we've done a really good job of that.

To answer your question directly, you know, to be the No. 1 Tour in the world, to get players to play here and to play the schedule that we play and to be able to generate the dollars we have, it's a competitive marketplace, and we feel like it's really important for us to be able to present the best possible opportunities.

As the only other “major” circuit on the planet has resumed with severely reduced purses at the moment, I’m not clear what the competition is?

Since the pandemic forced increased testing and safety expenses—with the Tour succeeding against the odds—coupled with Tour job cuts and sponsors paying for diminished perks, why do the market forces require everyone to take a hit but the players?

Surely playing for $6.5 million instead of $7.5 million would not be noticed by fans, but appreciated by sponsors, partners and local charities?