PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan earned over $23 million in regular and deferred compensation in 2023, according to a copy of the golf league’s most recently-filed tax return.
That tally includes $12.1 million in bonus and incentive compensation, $2.5 million in estimated post-retirement benefits and $6.7 million in post-2023 long-term incentive compensation. Monahan’s base salary was $1,887,096.
A little more than $9 million of those earnings are deferred to future years and could therefore change in value based on long-term interest rates, a PGA spokesperson said in an email.
In addition to Monahan, Ronald Price, the PGA Tour’s chief operating officer, also joined the nine-figures club, earning a little over $13 million in regular and deferred compensation, including bonuses and incentives worth $7.8 million.
The non-profit PGA Tour Inc. brought in $1.82 billion in revenue last year, which covered the six-month periods before and after the league shocked the world—and many of its own players—by announcing last June that it had signed a framework agreement to partner with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), the financial backer of LIV Golf. In addition to its earned revenue, the PGA Tour reported $2.52 billion in sales of non-inventory assets, bringing its yearly gross receipts total to $4.33 billion.
PGA Tour Inc.’s 2023 tax return, a copy of which was provided to Sportico upon request, disclosed $18.7 million legal expenditures after the tour spent just under $21 million on outside lawyers the year prior. Monahan has said that legal fees were a major factor in the organization’s decision to settle its lawsuits with LIV Golf and strike a truce. At the time, according to the The Wall Street Journal, Monahan told PGA Tour staff that he expected legal fees could climb to as high as $50 million.
In June 2023, the PGA Tour, PIF, and European circuit DP World Tour announced a commercial alliance, ending months of recriminations between the American and Saudi leagues. But the process has dragged along since, blowing past its original deadline the parties had set for a deal to be completed by Dec. 31, 2023.
At the start of this year, the PGA Tour announced a new commercial venture, PGA Tour Enterprises LLC, funded by Strategic Sports Group (SSG)—a consortium of U.S. pro team owners led by Fenway Sports Group’s John Henry and Mets owner Steve Cohen—which could take on a co-investment from PIF. (The entity had been originally incorporated as a Delaware LLC in October 2023.)
The PGA Tour’s 2023 return lists PGA Tour Enterprises and PGA Tour Enterprises Holding Co. as “inactive” disregarded entities.
PGA Tour Enterprises has a 13-member board of directors that consists of all nine PGA Tour and four SSG appointees. The former includes all six of the association’s current player directors: Patrick Cantlay, Peter Malnati, Adam Scott, Webb Simpson, Jordan Spieth and Tiger Woods. As player directors, the 2023 PGA-related compensation for Rory McIlroy ($24,941,352), Woods ($20,648,992), Spieth ($16,289,765), Cantlay ($13,774,987), and Malnati ($1,608,077) are also listed on the return, capturing their tournament and FedEx Cup earnings and off-course bonuses. The tax filing also lists $27.9 million and $22.8 million of tournament earnings for golfers Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm, the latter who announced he was joining LIV Golf at the end of last year.
LIV Golf is expected to soon name Scott O’Neil, the former Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment CEO, to replace Greg Norman as its next chief executive.
(The story has been updated in the fifth and seventh paragraphs to clarify the nature of the PGA Tour’s agreement with PIF, and in the second-to-last paragraph to provide additional context about the compensation listed on the PGA Tour’s tax return for player directors.)
