The Ryder Cup Makes Big Money for the PGA of America. Here's Where It Goes

PGA sections across America receive annual payments from Ryder Cup revenue, but that's not all, as a past PGA president tells Sports Illustrated.

Ryder Cup tickets for tournament days at Bethpage are $750, highest in the event's history. / Gary Kellner/PGA of America via Getty Images

Former PGA of America president Ted Bishop was involved in the selection of Bethpage Black for the next Ryder Cup and is keenly aware of how big of a deal it is that the competition is headed to the New York City area.

And he’s well aware of the criticism of the ticket prices, which will be $750 per person for the competition days.

“If you’re going to a major sporting event, I don’t care where it is, this is kind of what the market for tickets are,” Bishop told Sports Illustrated in a wide-ranging interview 10 years after his ouster from his position at the PGA. “My daughter lives in New York and wants to go to the World Series and they are going for $1,100 in the upper deck.

“Besides the Masters, it’s probably one of the most coveted tickets in golf. It’s once every four years (in the United States). I’m not going to criticize the PGA of America in any way, shape or form. It’s a very crucial part to the operating budget. When we made the decision in 2013 to play the Ryder Cup and the PGA Championship there (in 2019), the Ryder Cup was really the crown jewel. We knew it was going to be this kind of a Ryder Cup.”

As to its importance on the bottom line, Bishop says that the PGA of America a decade ago would typically net about $10 million on an international Ryder Cup and about $25 million for a domestic event—not including the television rights fee revenue.

“What we would do is take that $35 million and allocate it over a four-year period of time. And when you break that down, the PGA of America when I was president had an annual budget of $156 million,” Bishop says. “So that was $8.75 million a year and an important engine for our association.”

How much of it goes to the PGA of America pros throughout the country? None of it directly. But Bishop said that each of the 41 chapters gets an annual payment that was increased from $90,000 to $180,000 plus an annual percentage increase in the aftermath of the 15-year, $440 million television deal (through 2030) that was negotiated during his tenure.

What about the players who compete? They, too, get no direct compensation aside from $200,000 charitable gifts they can direct where they want.

But Bishop pointed out that the PGA Tour gets 20% of the PGA of America’s Ryder Cup TV revenue, or approximately $88 million over the length of the contract. That comes to just under $6 million a year.

“I don’t know if back then the players really understood that money was coming back to the Tour, but Tim Finchem (then the commissioner) did a good job of explaining it,’’ Bishop said. “Those 12 guys are not getting paid directly but the Tour as a whole got paid pretty well.”

The Tour has said previously that the money it receives from the PGA of America is used for compensation across the Tour, including the retirement plan.