FOS With: Jordan Spieth. ‘Big Year’ For PGA Tour’s Financial Future

Jordan Spieth started his 2024 PGA Tour season with a strong third-place finish worth $1.36 million in Maui at The Sentry, the first of eight signature events featuring $20 million purses. This is the second year in which the PGA Tour is elevating the financial status of its top tournaments, as the rival LIV Golf— which poached defending Masters champion Jon Rahm at the end of last year—continues to offer $25 million purses. 

“I believe he saw two places that [sic] neither one was in a great situation right now, and he said, ‘May as well have the money,’ ” Spieth previously said of Rahm.

Spieth, a three-time major championship winner, is now on a break before playing a trio of tournaments in February, beginning with the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the next signature event on the schedule, its purse funding and name courtesy of the company that has sponsored Spieth since 2014. “It was pitched that you’ll pay a premium price, but you’ll get a premium product,” Spieth says of the PGA Tour’s signature event model, which aims to bring together the top-ranked players on a regular basis. We caught up with Spieth to talk about the business of golf before he hits the course again.

How would you compare the impact of winning a major championship versus a big-money signature event?

The Masters is probably in its own category—and the Open Championship, probably. As far as winning other big events, it sets you up for the year. Financially, the whole idea is that you’re delivering a premium product, and hopefully that’s what it shows, otherwise we’ll have to bounce back in a different direction. … You’re going to have a tournament that hopefully looks and feels better than any time you’ve had that tournament before, and that’s the idea to the sponsors. So to do that eight times during the season, that would improve our product, create better competition, and honestly, create better stories as we come into the weekend [of tournaments].

While AT&T is investing more this year, other sponsors like Wells Fargo and Farmers Insurance are exiting the PGA Tour. Does that worry you?

Certainly, if you lose sponsors that have been there a long time, that’s not obviously the end goal. The Pebble Beach Pro-Am has been the biggest charitable donor in the history of the PGA Tour, and now AT&T is stepping in to get it to a level that hasn’t been reached before. This is a big year because if we can actually deliver, like I’m saying, a premium product, then I think that that helps verify the investment that these companies are making. And if not, then we can figure out: What is the best path forward to hold on to these sponsors? Did we go too high? Do we need to sign something that everyone’s going to play? What exactly has to happen to make sure that our long-term sponsors stay committed to the PGA Tour? A lot of it’s going to be dictated by what comes out of these elevated events this season.

What would make for a successful run of signature events?

I imagine there’s a couple things that go into it: Do our sponsors feel like they got the value out of it at the event? And then, how are the ratings? Those ratings help the sponsors with their advertising dollars that are oftentimes more of what they’re thinking about in their investment than exactly what’s happening at the golf course. … If it’s not exactly what someone likes, then I think, as players, and our management, we should be open to having these conversations and just make sure that our product model going forward is going to be what everyone else wants.