Ever since the Saudi golf tour started the American Professional Golf Association has been playing catchup. The PGA has watched as many top-rated US and foreign players opted for the higher prize money, relaxed atmosphere and shorter season offered by the Saudi tour. So far–not so good. Defections and threats of defections continue to plague the US and foreign tours. The Saudi tour (AKA The LIV Tour) continues to increase its prize money from the Saudi Wealth Fund–a seemingly bottomless pot of oil money. Unfortunately for the non-Saudi competitors (the US tour), their prize money is dependent on advertising dollars funneled through TV networks. And advertisers have budgets that will only go so far. Our point: the PGA and others will soon reach a point where they will need to show a commercial interruption every 90 seconds to earn enough income to pay inflated prize purses or they will lose all the best players to the Saudi tour–making advertisers less willing to shell out the big bucks when the top players aren’t playing the US tour. As advertisers bail or severely reduce their payments to networks more players will opt for the Saudi tour. The result will be a spiraling down and systematic elimination of the PGA and its control over golf play. THE ONLY POSSIBLE BARGAINING CHIP FOR THE US PGA MAY BE ELIGIBILITY TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MAJOR GOLF TOURNAMENTS LIKE THE MASTERS, THE US AND (BRITISH) OPENS AND THE PGA TOURNAMENTS. But even that is shaky at best. If the best players are denied access to those events ad sponsors will boycott or reduce their sponsorship and the “gems” of the golf schedule will suffer. Since money supply is the life-blood of this situation we see the Saudi tour winning and the US PGA becoming a figurehead. As of today, the cooperative agreement between the US PGA and the Saudi Tour is termed a “combination”. Soon we will see it as a Saudi “domination”….as the world turns.
Comments are closed