With the entry of LIV Golf into the golf ecosystem, money in the sport has skyrocketed. Players have been signed for hundreds of millions of dollars to shift allegiances and others have made major moolah winning and performing in the PGA Tour. The upcoming Dunhill Links Championship will be another step in the charging train that is the LIV Golf-PGA Tour merger as the chiefs of the two previously warring tribes play a few rounds of golf together at the home of golf.

The increase in money happened almost overnight. LIV Golf spent huge cash to both sign and keep players and the PGA Tour responded by increasing their prize money and installing other changes. If we look at the comparison between years of prize money in the PGA Tour, one thing stands out starkly and that is the prize money made a huge jump from 2022 to 2023. The so-called PGA Tour Signature events are a list of tournaments that stand as benchmarks for the amount of prizes they offer. Their purse has more than doubled from 2022 to 2023.

This may be the norm from now on as the LIV Golf-PGA Tour merger talks go on with both parties determined to come to mutual understanding on both their involvement in the top tier of the professional golf. LIV Golf in particular with their millions of payout in prize money is incredibly lucrative. Jon Rahm was the top earner in 2024 with more than $34,000,000. In comparison, Scottie Scheffler made over $29,000,000.

Although the gap isn’t large between the highest earners, it is in the rest of the earners’ list that we see that there is a slightly larger difference. The second highest earners in LIV Golf and the PGA Tour are Joaquin Niemann and Xander Shauffele and here Niemann has won more than $28 million while Shauffele has earned over $18 million. That gap, though, could be reduced with the injection of cash brought on by the Saudi PIF-backed LIV Golf merging with the PGA Tour. The recently reported proposal for changes in the format could also pave the way for higher payouts for top golfers, as now they have gotten used to earning the ludicrous amounts that they do.

What are the proposed changes for the PGA Tour?

A huge swathe of changes are being proposed by the PGA Tour policy board which include reducing the overall field size to 100 in regular season events, reducing sponsorship exemptions, medical exemptions, and other reductions that will bring about a much smaller and more exclusive PGA Tour.

The Korn Ferry Tour is also being given fewer spots for golfers to qualify from. This is speculated to mean many things such as reintroducing LIV Golf stars back into a unified season but one thing is for sure – there is a much lower chance of new golfers being promoted into the PGA Tour from 2026 onwards.

It would seem that the increase in money does not mean an increase in equal distribution and probably is the converse in this case. It is a testament to the hoarding of money by the few and the ceaseless endeavors to make a higher profit.