Jay Monahan earned over a staggering $23 million in 2023. This has managed to raise several eyebrows, as the Tour commissioner only has a base salary of $1,887,096. His bonuses and incentives have been added up to $1.21 million, and his retirement benefit has ranged to $2.5 million. That’s not all. His salary also has a long-term incentive of $6.7 million. It is true that not a lot of fans or pros are happy with the earnings, given that he has practically taken almost two years and has still not been able to do anything to resolve the rift in the golf world. Which, of course, should be one of his biggest concerns at the moment.

In 2022, Ron Price, the Chief Operating Officer of the PGA Tour, testified before Congress during a hearing on the state of professional golf. When asked about the financial standing of the PGA Tour, Price stated that the Tour’s total assets were “a little less than $3 billion.” This figure was a critical part of his testimony as he tried to underscore the Tour’s modest financial position in comparison to emerging competition like LIV Golf, which was backed by significant Saudi investment.

However, four months after the testimony, the Tour sold a portion of its stake to SSG Capital Management for $12.5 billion. This is where things have turned the other way. Recently, Golf.com published an article bringing Phil Mickelson’s remarks regarding it where he claimed that the Tour had multiple billions of dollars in NFTs. In 2022, Lefty wrote on X that the Tour has 1.6 billion in stocks, 700 million in cash, and 1.15 billion in nonliquid assets. He noted that all of this is from the nonprofit section, and the for-profit section hasn’t been stated since 2012 but surely was way more than the nonprofit part at that time. The golfer was quick to question the article and said that his comments have been taken out of regard here. 

He wrote on X, “In this article you dismissed my claim that the tour is sitting on billions of dollars in nft’s and digital moments. Let me point out that when Ron Price testified in front of of congress he was asked how much assets does the Tour have. He said a little less than 3 billion. 4 months later they sold a stake to SSG on a valuation of 12.5 billion. Where do you think the 9.5 billion discrepancy came from? That’s right, digital moments and nft’s. Open your eyes and get your facts straight please.”

To which the author of the article pointed out that the Tour got the SSG deal because of its goodwill; “Assets and goodwill are two different things A business can be worth $10B with only $3B in assets. The other $7B is “goodwill” aka the intangible brand and the name.”

Phil Mickelson’s accusations against Jay Monahan date way back. He has held the commissioner responsible for a lot of other things, which includes losing the trust of the players.

Phil Mickelson blames Jay Monahan for the current scenario in the golf world.

Back in 2022, when Phil Mickelson helped LIV Golf launch, he stated that the Tour was not giving the players the money that they truly deserved. “They are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of digital content we could be using for our social media feeds. The players need to own all of that. We played those shots, we created those moments; we should be the ones to profit. The tour doesn’t need that money. They are already sitting on an $800 million cash stockpile,” said Lefty. He also suggested that it was illegal to be keeping such a hefty amount of money in cash. 

Additionally, several rumors said that once the agreement between the PIF and the OGA Tour was finalized, Jay Monahan would be released from his duties. Commenting on these rumors, Mickelson tweeted, “Golf is in this situation entirely because of [Monahan].” He also revealed that before leaving the PGA Tour, he had secured a $1 billion commitment from an existing partner to create a series of elevated events where players would have equity. However, according to Mickelson, Jay Monahan declined the proposal, expressing doubt that the league would come to fruition and stating that the Tour would not pursue the idea.

What do you think about the hefty sums being involved? Let us know in the comments section below!