Written by Stephen Moloney (www.twitter.com/TheCheeky9)
Now, I don’t want to alarm you, but I’ve spent the last few days doing some ‘important research’. And through said ‘important research’ I’ve uncovered something that could quite possibly be the biggest revelation to hit the golfing world since we all learned that perhaps white belts don’t look as great with everything as we once thought they did.
So, you ready? Ok … here it is.
You can potentially make more money playing on the PGA Tour than the European Tour.
I know. I was shocked too. But don’t worry – I’m going straight to Keith Pelley with my findings.
This fact, of course, is already well-known to my fellow ‘glasses enthusiast’ and CEO of the European Tour, Mr. Pelley, as it’s probably been one of the biggest bugbears he’s had to deal with since taking over the job in 2015 from one, George O’Grady.
Trying to entice Europe’s top stars to spend more time playing golf over here as opposed to America has always felt like it’s been near the top of Mr. Pelley’s ‘to-do-list’ and, in reality, it’s something that hasn’t appeared to have gotten all that easier in the time that he’s been in the job. Every year it seems like it’s getting tougher and tougher to get those stars – ‘stars’ who, more-often-than-not, make up the core of our Ryder Cup team – to make that arduous flight back across the Atlantic to tee it up in front of European fans for anything more than a week or two around the time of the Open, the odd Rolex Series Event or the big money events in the UAE. And when they do turn up, it can often feel as though they’re merely fulfilling an obligation or almost ‘crossing the t’s & dotting the i’s’ to make sure they can qualify for an upcoming Ryder Cup team.
And yet, though that may give off the impression that I’m somehow “having a go” at these players, let me make myself perfectly clear in saying that I am 100% not doing that. If those European players in question want to predominantly play in America and make their homes in America, then not only is that their prerogative, but more power to them. The weather over there is more conducive to being able to play and practice all year round. The way courses are set up and the faster greens probably preps them better to perform in the three Major championships held Stateside each year. And, like I already mentioned, there is the opportunity to make far more money playing in the States – and, from someone who has been broke, if you spy a chance to make some cool, hard cash, you’re dead right to go get it.
But, chances are, you already know all of this. So, if I’m not telling you anything new, you may be wondering why exactly I’m writing this article at all. Well, it’s because over the last fortnight, with the BMW PGA and Alfred Dunhill going back-to-back, it felt like we got a glimpse of what the European Tour could look like if all those top, homegrown stars were playing regularly over here – and it’s great.
I mean, to turn on your television or check a leaderboard and see names like Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, Tommy Fleetwood, Francesco Molinari all playing in a European Tour event, makes what you’re watching feel just that little bit more special.
And, look, with the way the yearly schedule is now set out between the PGA and European Tours, with the new FedEx Cup season just getting underway as the Race to Dubai is entering the final furlong, we may just be seeing this every year as, comparably, the events over here at this time of the year are, surely, going to be more of a draw to those America-based Europeans.
Yet, the fact remains that once 2020 comes, those players will, inevitably, be back across the ocean after their nostalgic sojourn in the Old World and we’ll be settling back into the same routine of seeing them every now and then – like a buddy who emigrated to Australia and comes back for Christmas … maybe.
But it was this realisation that made me wonder the following: “If ‘better money’ is one of the reasons why people prefer to play in America, just how much better is it really?”.
So, I found out:
| European Tour | PGA Tour | |
| Full Season (46 events) | $208,617,579 | $343,600,000 |
| Season w/o Majors($45,750,000) | $162,867,579 | $297,850,000 |
| Season w/o WGC Events($41,000,000) | $167,617,579 | $302,600,000 |
| Season without WGC’s & Majors | $121,867,579 | $256,850,000 |
| Average Purse Size | $4,535,164 | $7,469,565 |
Now, to give a little context to those numbers, what I did was look at the purse sizes for each of the tournaments – including all four Majors & WGC’s – to be played during the 2018-19 season on both the European Tour and the PGA Tour (up until the penultimate FedEx Cup playoff event, ‘The BMW Championship’ in Chicago), converted all amounts to US Dollars and, after tallying up all the numbers on my window to make myself feel like a mathematician, filled the results into the above table.
And even the most cursory of glances at that table shows just how stark the difference is in the money on offer between both tours. I mean, to have the gap between a full season over here and in the States (and, again, in this instance a ‘full season’ includes all four Majors and all four WGC Events) be $134,982,421 is seismic, to say the least.
But the crazy thing is, like I said above, I only included the purses up until the Tour Championship on the PGA Tour. So, that figure of $343,600,000 doesn’t include the bonus pool of $60,000,000 which gets divided up – from $15,000,000 right down to $70,000 – amongst the Top 150 in the FedEx Cup rankings come the end of the Tour Championship, nor does it include the $10,000,000 which gets divided up amongst the Top 10 in the FedEx Cup rankings at the end of the regular season; two figures which, if I had included them, would see the total potential money on the PGA Tour swell to a mind-boggling $413,600,000.
Even the five ‘alternate events’ on the PGA Tour, i.e. those events played the same week as the Open Championship and during the four WGC’s (tournaments like the Barbasol Championship & Puerto Rico Open for e.g.), get hefty purses, with the smallest purse of those tournaments being $3,000,000. Like, if you had a purse of $3,000,000 for a tournament over here, you’d be looking at one of the biggest purses on offer throughout the entire year.
So, in conclusion – because I could just stay going through the numbers and comparing how vast the differences are all day – if I were to answer my original question of, “Is the money really that much better over in America than it is over here?”.
Yes, it is – and by quite a margin too.
Does this mean that the PGA Tour is inherently better than the European Tour, however?
For me? No. But it is one of the main reasons why everyone will consistently want to wind up playing over there.