The grade of an LPGA commissioner is largely attached to one thing: the schedule.
How many tournaments are being staged and how big are the purses?
But there’s another bottom line that’s important and less public, and that’s the tour’s operating budget. Multiple sources have confirmed to Golfweek that the tour is slated to lose around $2 million this year. LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan said two weeks ago in her annual address that the tour’s total staff had increased by 35 percent in recent years, spanning communications, broadcast, marketing, content, creative, business intelligence and ticketing. The marketing and content department alone expanded to 39 people.
The commissioner, who announced on Monday that she’s stepping down on Jan. 9, invested heavily on increasing exposure for the tour but, so far, has come up short in the return. The former Princeton athletic director said she was “building the infrastructure in order to build our global fan base.”
That the tour could lose money at a time of unprecedented growth in women’s sports – especially during a lucrative Solheim Cup year – set off alarm bells for some.
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LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan speaks to the media prior to the CME Group Tour Championship 2024 at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Florida. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
LPGA Player Director Ashleigh Buhai wasn’t too concerned about the loss, however, saying “you’ve got to spend money to make money.”
“Everybody who comes into a lead position is going to try to do things their own way to make their own mark,” said Buhai, “and sometimes you pull it off, and sometimes you don’t.”
Given the starry headlines of 2024 – with the dynamic one-two punch of Nelly Korda’s seven-win season and Lydia Ko’s fairy-tale run into the LPGA Hall of Fame – some players were surprised to see a schedule come out that showed little growth. Official money for 2025, thus far, is up $3.6 million from last season.
“We’re moving in the right direction all the time, but the schedule is very much major heavy,” Ireland’s Leona Maguire said two weeks ago at the CME Group Tour Championship.
“The purses in the majors do disguise some things, I feel like, and the gap between us and the men seems to be growing rather than us catching up. … There couldn’t possibly have been any better…
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