What would a PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf battle be without a little cash up for grabs? Actually, a lot of cash.
Next month’s made-for-TV team golf match in Las Vegas will see Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler compete against Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka for a purse of at least $10 million, Front Office Sports has learned. And the purse will be paid in crypto.
On Tuesday, a new title sponsor was announced that will see the event officially named the Crypto.com Showdown. The announcement said the match would feature “a multimillion-dollar purse to be paid in CRO cryptocurrency,” which is the native token of the Cronos blockchain created by Crypto.com.
A spokesperson told FOS it is an eight-figure purse, but would not share details about exactly how it will be distributed among the winning and losing teams.
A figure of at least $10 million makes the prize money for the four-player event larger than most standard tournaments on the PGA Tour (outside of major championships and signature events), which typically range from roughly $8 million to $9 million, with winners taking home first-place checks of more than $1 million.
For most golf tournaments, the purse size correlates almost directly with the amount the title sponsor is paying.
McIlroy, Scheffler, DeChambeau, and Koepka will need to have Crypto.com accounts to receive their prize money, Crypto.com CMO Steve Kalifowitz tells FOS, but there are no obligations for them to hold the cryptocurrency for any amount of time. They’ll be free to sell or trade their winnings whenever they please. As of Wednesday, CRO was the No. 28 cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $4.28 billion, and has risen more than 90% from a year ago. (Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, was trading at $95,686 Wednesday.) Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency exchange based in Singapore.
TNT will air the 18-hole contest from the exclusive Shadow Creek Golf Course on Tuesday, Dec. 17 at 6 p.m. ET. Full competition details have yet to be announced, but the intention is to use some elements of the Ryder Cup, which features match-play rounds of alternate shot, four-ball, and singles.
Crypto.com’s sponsorship deal is only for this iteration of “The Showdown,” a new franchise created by Hollywood producer Bryan Zuriff’s BZ Entertainment and EverWonder Studio, which is backed by Jeff Zucker’s RedBird IMI (also the majority investor in Front Office Sports). Zuriff helped create “The Match” series, which featured pros and celebrities in one-off made-for-TV matches. EverWonder, which launched in 2023, was not involved in any of those previous editions.
The very first edition of “The Match” in 2018 saw Phil Mickelson beat Tiger Woods to earn a winner-take-all $9 million prize. Others have been focused on charity, but McIlroy did win $2.4 million in February against Max Homa, Lexi Thompson, and Rose Zhang.
BZ Entertainment and EverWonder had to get approval from the four golfers (who each have equity in “The Showdown” franchise) for the purse to be paid in cryptocurrency, but Kalifowitz says there was no hesitation and that the players were “excited” about the idea.
While this marks Crypto.com’s first golf sponsorship deal, Kalifowitz says his company has been looking at golf for a while, but that the PGA Tour–LIV Golf split had made it difficult to get involved. Crypto.com could be interested in sponsoring future iterations of “The Showdown” or one-off golf events, according to Kalifowitz.
