Real Big Three for Tour: Money, TV and Schedule

By THOMAS BONK

Aug. 25, 2005 12 AM PT

There are 48 PGA Tour events this year, so you don’t need a calendar or a calculator to figure out that there aren’t too many weeks without a tournament. And for Commissioner Tim Finchem, whose job is to make money for the players who hired him, he’s on the right track.

The total prize money for all these events is about $252 million, or about $50 million more than in 2002, the last year before the tour’s $850-million television deal kicked in.

That four-year agreement is finished after next year, and though it’s difficult to see fallout before an event even occurs, that’s exactly what is happening right now.

From the PGA Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., to the executive suites of the television powers in New York, to the boardrooms of corporate tournament sponsors, to tournament directors across the nation, there are three hot topics of conversation right now, all of them related.

Money. Television. Schedules.

What’s the latest? Nobody’s talking, not much about 2006, much less about 2007, the first year of whatever TV deal Finchem is able to coax out of the tour’s “broadcast partners,” as he calls them.

Partner, chances are they’ll be some changes made.

It’s complicated, but no one should be surprised by that, since the release of next year’s schedule, which isn’t even affected by the TV deal, has been delayed a couple of weeks already.

The landscape of the PGA Tour is probably going to look a lot different, and soon.

First, there’s the money factor. Finchem and his skilled negotiating team, which includes Executive Vice President Ed Moorhouse, had their day in the sun when they made the last four-year deal, the $850-million contract that ends when the last putt falls in the hole in 2006.

That sum is the biggest pro golf has seen, and by a lot -- the five-year TV contract in place before Tiger Woods turned pro in 1996 was worth $300 million -- but it doesn’t come close to the immense numbers that the NFL commands from its broadcast partners.

For instance, “Monday Night Football” was worth $1.1 billion a year to ESPN in a deal made in April. The entire television revenue for the NFL will bring about $4 billion a year beginning in 2006.

There are suggestions that the PGA Tour is probably due for a pay cut in its next television contract, largely because the marketplace has changed and the ratings have flattened out, and partly because the networks overpaid last time.

But there’s more than money being counted here. Even if no one, including Finchem, is talking about what’s likely to happen in 2007, there is no shortage of hints. One is that the schedule will look a lot different, with the likelihood that the Players Championship will move from March to May, after the Masters, and the Tour Championship will move from early November to the middle of September.

Although some say that a Players Championship shift is to try to ensure better weather and place one of the Tour’s showcase events between the Masters and the U.S. Open, a better reason is that no one wants it to run up against NCAA basketball’s March Madness. As for the Tour Championship, it would move so that it doesn’t bump into the heart of the NFL season.

Woods and Phil Mickelson bumped into something this year by saying that the schedule is too long, which leads some tournament directors to wonder whether their events might wind up on the chopping block -- such as the Reno Tahoe Open, which just celebrated its seventh, and possibly last, birthday without a title sponsor.

Meanwhile, corporate sponsors are trying to figure out whether they’re spending their money in the right place.

Finchem would prefer to be at least a year away from the start of a season with a deal in place, but that’s not the way it’s shaking out. And so the behind-the-scenes process continues.

It’s highly involved, the effects are going to be far-reaching and the money is huge. It might not be NFL-sized, but golf remains a niche sport on television, which will ultimately set the price on what the PGA Tour is worth to broadcast.

There is a long list of issues that will be cleared up in the process: Is the season too long, are the tournaments scheduled in the right manner, are the sponsors happy, are there enough sponsors, are the players happy?

For players, money counts, so that seems like the place to start. Where it ends, that’s anybody’s guess.

PGA TOUR:

Buick Championship

* When: Today-Sunday.

* Where: TPC at River Highlands (6,820 yards, par 70); Cromwell, Conn.

* Purse: $4.4 million. Winner’s share: $792,000.

* TV: USA (today-Friday, 4-6 p.m., delayed) and Channel 2 (Saturday-Sunday, noon-3 p.m.).

* 2004 winner: Woody Austin.

* Next week: Deutsche Bank Championship in Norton, Mass.

LPGA TOUR: Wendy’s

Championship for Children

* When: Friday-Sunday.