Is $23 Million Too Much To Pay Jay Monahan?

I’m not a first or second bucket guy, but a advocate of the third bucket.

My issue is not how much the PGA Tour commissioner makes; it's more about what he did, which is worth $23 million.

Ultimately, with a thumbs down for Monahan.

As an aside, I noticed that Ron Price, PGA Tour’s Chief Operating Officer, made a little over $13 million.

If you watched Price in the Senate hearings when Monahan was on medical leave in 2023, you wouldn’t trust him to walk your dog, so that amount makes anyone with a brain wonder how this is possible.

Back to Price’s boss. Why doesn’t Monahan deserve such an amount?

It starts and ends with LIV golf.

I could go back to the overused fact that Monahan wouldn’t take the call from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

It would have taken a Google search to understand the depth and breadth of the PIF and how much money they had to invest in golf.

If a computer wasn’t available, you could call your good friend Keith Pelley, the Chief Executive of the European Tour.

Pelley met with the Saudi’s in Malta and what exactly happened or was offered during that meeting in unclear, what is clear was the PIF was serious about moving forward in golf and they had the money behind them.

Okay, so Monahan made a mistake—a big mistake, a $50 million plus mistake, just in legal fees.

It gets even more expensive to operations and growth of purses, that didn’t need such meteoric growth.

But looking past the major blunder, we could look at Monahan’s effort to repair the damage and went with a mea culpa move, making a deal with the Saudis called the Framework Agreement.

Monahan and PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan ballyhooed the June 6, 2023, agreement on CNBC that Tuesday morning.

Still, Monahan made another mistake: he caught his players and some of the PGA Tour Policy Board off guard, disclosing nothing to his contingency and instead having to apologize almost immediately to the players at the event in Canada that week for his omission.

The blunder emboldened the players to take a more fundamental role in the PGA Tour's management. Eventually, the players took control of the board and put Monahan in timeout.

This explains why a deal is still not done. Talking to anyone who has an opinion, everyone says the deal is imminent, but it's December 2^nd, and there’s no deal.

Instead, the PGA Tour has raised purses to compete against the LIV purses, something that Monahan said he would never do.

Next, in January, Monahan did a deal with the Strategic Sports Group for $1.5 billion, selling off almost 12% of the PGA Tour Enterprises, the new for-profit company.

And what have they done with the money? Provided grants to players that are worth almost $1 billion.

While the PGA Tour has been raising money and giving in to its players, LIV has gone in another direction, building up its executive suite.

All the additions on the Saudi backed tour come with major sports experience, but maybe the most impressive move is still in the works, Scott O’Neill.

O’Neill has widely been reported to be the next CEO of LIV, with Greg Norman stepping down.

With an announcement reported to be eminent, if accurate, the addition of O’Neill, the former CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, where he oversaw the NBA”s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL New Jersey Devils, would be impressive and experienced in the major North American sports.

When you compare the experience of the new crop of executives at LIV or soon-to-be additions, the organization heft in more significant than to those at the PGA Tour, it’s just no contest.

Monahan’s contract expires in mid-2025, and while many question how he’s stayed in his job this long, the bigger question is who would want the job if the PGA Tour Policy Board does not renew Monahan.

Let me just offer up with a bit of whimsey that if O’Neill does, in fact, come to LIV, he would be an even better CEO for the PGA Tour.

If LIV and the PGA Tour links up with some type of agreement, than a simple move from CEO of LIV to CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises would be fairly simple.

You laugh, but as crazy as this LIV, PIF, and PGA Tour situation has been, I would not be surprised by anything.