PGA Tour Announces New $40 Millon Bonus Structure For Its Star Players
- Updated: April 20, 2021
Golfweek: The PGA Tour has created a lucrative bonus structure that will reward golf’s biggest stars regardless of how they perform on the course. The new system is designed to compensate players who are judged to drive fan and sponsor engagement, like Tiger Woods, Bryson DeChambeau and Rickie Fowler.
Known as the Player Impact Program, the concept is seen as a direct response to Premier Golf League, a proposed splinter tour funded by the Saudi Arabian regime that has tried to lure golf’s biggest names with the promise of a massive guaranteed payday. PGL has spent years trying to gain traction but seems no closer to signing a sufficient number of elite players to be viable. The stuttering PGL effort nevertheless forced the PGA Tour to devise a means to reward stars for the value they add to the overall product rather than solely for their on-course performance.
A PGA Tour spokesperson confirmed that the Player Impact Program began January 1 to “recognize and reward players who positively move the needle.” At the end of the year, a pool of $40 million will be distributed among 10 players, with the player deemed most valuable receiving $8 million.
Somewhere on some commercial shoot, Rickie Fowler is smiling. The PGA Tour has implemented a new bonus structure that rewards players not just for their performance on the course, but their performance off the course as well.
Wait. What? Yeah, it’s true. Ever since the infamous Premier Golf League appeared on the tour’s radar, they kicked it into high gear to ensure their star players stayed members instead of walking…like European soccer has seen recently with their super league idea.
So if we’re not judging them based on their results on the course which we used to do because technically they do play golf for a living, what exactly is the tour basing this $40 million bonus system on?
The 10 beneficiaries will be determined based on their “Impact Score,” a number generated from six separate metrics that are designed to quantify that individual’s added value. According to a document the PGA Tour distributed to players, the metrics on which players will be ranked against their peers include:
1. Their position on the season-ending FedEx Cup points list.
2. Their popularity in Google Search.
3. Their Nielsen Brand Exposure rating, which places a value on the exposure a player delivers to sponsors though the minutes they are featured on broadcasts.
4. Their Q Rating, which measures the familiarity and appeal of a player’s brand.
5. Their MVP Index rating, which calibrates the value of the engagement a player drives across social and digital channels.
6. Their Meltwater Mentions, or the frequency with which a player generates coverage across a range of media platforms.
Basically, we now know that when Bryson complains about a cameraman “hurting his brand”, he actually may have a point. Complaining about fire ants is a different story…
Quick side note: Spieth’s dad founded the MVP Index rating so he’s got that going for him, which is nice.
Is this program a good idea?
On one hand, yes. Your product is only as good as your players…and you need to keep your best. This new system allows the most marketable players the opportunity to thrive even when they aren’t playing their best.
The tour knows their most popular players are still important enough to push their own agenda. Plus it will give the best players in the world an incentive to be more active and engaging with fans, which seems like a tour sticking point.
Is it a bad idea?
For the guys who aren’t popular and have no shot at winning this probably ever, the answer is a resounding yes. It’s just another cash grab in addition to other cash grabs the tour actively hosts for the best players in the world.
While the tour said they will be “providing extra resources to help all players manage their social media and branding, including charitable foundations, and to maximize their off-the-course business opportunities,” we doubt it’s going to help some of the not-so-popular players.
Gotta wonder who is going to be the first player to hire an SEO manager to complement their social media manager. As Justin Rose would say, it takes a team.
Could the tour allocate this $40 million to improve the television coverage and app functionality? Wouldn’t hurt. Never a great look when you see the scoreboard not updating on Sunday afternoon, but you can watch Rickie on PGA Tour Live on a random Tuesday.
Tiger is and will always be the needle.
But if we are being real, Big Cat should win the full $40 million each year for the first decade of its existence.
None of this rating, brand exposure bullshit can remotely do justice to what Tiger did for the game and tour players’ bank accounts.
“Tiger should be No. 1 on that list no matter what,” Koepka said when asked about the new bonus plan. “He’s the entire reason we’re able to play for so much money, the entire reason this sport is as popular as it is, and the reason most of us are playing. Not even close.”
Guess we’ll have to see how it goes. Hopefully, we’ll never have to debate who’s the Q-rating GOAT: Jack or Tiger?
(The answer is Tiger….)
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