⛳️ The Business Behind the Ryder Cup

Europe just beat Team USA in the most one-sided Ryder Cup I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.

It was over on Friday. The American’s did not show up and it cost them dearly.

This edition of the tournament however has been the most lucrative in history. This week, we break down how the Ryder Cup makes money and the why they might have to re-consider their payment structure to the players in future years.

The Ryder Cup is the pinnacle of golf. 24 of the best golfers in the world descended on Rome this past weekend as the 44th Edition of the prestigious tournament took place at the Marco Simone Country Club.

For those that are a little unfamiliar the Ryder Cup is a little like the golfing Olympics. It’s a historic tournament which takes place every 2 years and makes hundreds of millions for its organisers.

Despite this, the players participating receive nothing!

This week, The Long Play explores the three key ways in which the Ryder Cup makes money. Those three are:

• Sponsors

• Merch and Ticket Sales

• Broadcasting Revenue

1. Sponsors

In recent editions, the Ryder Cup has taken a different approach to how it picks sponsors. Previously, sponsors were chosen strategically to mirror the location the tournament was hosted in.

However, in 2018 the PGA and the DP World Tour decided to create a global suite of sponsors who will represent the tournament regardless of its host.

This time round, there are seven global sponsors at the Ryder Cup paying anywhere from £5m-£8m for their logo to appear widely across the venue. Those seven global companies: Aon, BMW, Capgemini, Citi, DP World, Hilton and Rolex

A pretty strong list!

There were also 30 smaller sponsors present across the weekend too including Titleist, Moët and Chandon, Pepsico and many more.

Recent sources cite that with this new suite of sponsors, sponsorship revenue has increased 153% since the 2019 edition of the Ryder Cup. A very shrewd move by the organisers.

2. Merch and Ticket Sales

in 2019, 150,000 people attended the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in the USA. This year? The game got bigger:

To put this into perspective, the cheapest ticket was £45 to buy, with the most expensive being upward of £1,000.

Whats even better is the Merchandise Tent. The Merch Tent has been erected on 40,000 feet of land with this tweet from Thursday morning (before the tournament has even started) giving an idea of the popularity of the gear.

It’s scary to think about how much money was made in there this week adding to the total revenue haul.

The real money though, comes from…

3. Broadcast Revenue

In the USA, NBC struck a deal worth $440m to show 15 editions of the Ryder Cup to US viewers.

In the UK, Sky Sports have been the rights holders for every edition of the Ryder Cup since 1995 and recently extended their deal through to 2025.

In 1991 the Ryder Cup was famously very close to not being aired on TV at all.

30 years later, NBC are paying $55m every two years to air each tournament!

Global broadcast revenue has more than 4x’d since 2000 and shows no sign of slowing down.

Interestingly enough, with all this revenue being generated the players do not get paid for being here. As mentioned earlier The Ryder Cup is a little like the Olympics where the players themselves get covered in glory but not in cash.

Patrick Cantlay (pictured), current World #5 expressed his disappointment at the lack of player pay this weekend. Patrick believes that a tournament generating this much in revenue should distribute some of those takings to the playing party.

His views reportedly caused a rift among the camp, potentially explaining why Team USA had such a poort showing.

Victor Hovland may not mind. He finished this season on the winning team and ended the season as the highest paid player on the PGA Tour this year with $32.4m in 2023 winnings alone.

Not bad eh?

See you next week.

The r