Ok, I might be a little biased given that I work in the golf industry, but to me, the Ryder Cup is one of the best sporting events in the world. It’s certainly the best event in golf.
I’m not a diehard European fan, I don’t bleed blue and yellow, and I won’t lose a minute of sleep if the Americans recapture the trophy at Bethpage. In fact, I’d much rather see the United States win a contest that goes right to the wire than watch Europe wrap it up with a session to spare.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t love the competition. The competition is exactly what I love. I love the passion the players display, I love the aggro, I love seeing boys become men right before our eyes and I love seeing supposed men crumble in the heat of the moment.
But what I don’t love is what the Ryder Cup is becoming. Over the coming year, my inbox will be inundated with press releases informing me of corporate partnership after corporate partnership. We’ve already got BMW as the official car of the Ryder Cup, Citibank as the official bank of the Ryder Cup, Rolex as the official timekeeper, and Aon as the official whatever the hell it is Aon does.
But that’s all fine. As a business, nobody is expecting the Ryder Cup to turn down the financial support. As corrupt Maryland State Senator Clay Davis says in The Wire, “I’ll take any mother f***er’s money if he’s giving it away.”
And it’s not like BMW, Citibank, Aon, Rolex and all the rest are doing it purely for love of the sport. They’re in it for the exposure, to impress their own big-fish clients with hospitality, and ultimately, to see a return on their investments.
But it’s one thing taking the millions of dollars’ worth of corporate support, it’s another thing altogether when you’re fleecing the general public and pricing the average fan out of the event.
When the ticket prices for 2025 were announced, the reaction was scathing across the board. New York is an expensive city – and inflation is running wild across the entire country as Donald Trump loves pointing out – but even still, the prices are close to jaw-dropping. $225.27 (€206.58) for Tuesday and Wednesday practice rounds, $423.64 (€388.49) for the final practice sessions on Thursday that also includes the Singles sessions of Junior Ryder Cup, Celebrity Matches and the Opening Ceremony, and $749.51 (€687.38) if you want to be there for the real action on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
According to the PGA of America website, their mission is “to promote enjoyment and involvement in golf among the general public, as well as to contribute to the sport’s growth by providing services to golf Professionals and the industry.” In other words, to grow the game.
You can’t grow the game without resources, we all know that, but come on… Golf has been working hard to ditch the ‘male, pale and stale’ stereotype over the past few decades, but I can’t see many people under the age of 30 willing to shell out close to $1,000 a day for an event that, in all reality, is tough to actually watch on the grounds.
PGA of America director Bryan Karns tried to defend the pricing by suggesting that the ticket costs are standard for top tier sports in the United States, saying it was on par with costs for the World Series of Baseball or Game Seven of the NBA Finals. The big difference is that your ticket for a baseball or basketball match means you’ll get to see every single pitch, every single home run, every single three-pointer and every single slam dunk.
What makes matters worse is that the golf course staging the Ryder Cup – Bethpage Black – is commonly known as ‘The People’s Country Club’, a place where New York residents can play weekend rounds for $80 a head and $65 midweek. The People’s Country Club it may well be, but the People’s Ryder Cup it’s certainly not.
And it’s not like the Ryder Cup has been struggling to generate revenue. In Rome last year, where tickets cost €50 and €60 for practice days, €250 for Friday and Saturday and €260 for Sunday, the overall revenue generated was up 40% from that gathered at Le Golf National in Paris in 2018.
The Ryder Cup was last held on U.S. soil in 2021 and ticket prices at Whistling Straits were roughly a quarter of what they are for Bethpage – the PGA of America recognised $192 million in revenue of which $143 million was tournament generated. Comparing that to the previous non-Ryder Cup year which is 2019 – 2020 is excluded for obvious reasons – those figures drop to $94 million and $68 million respectively. Therefore, we can deduce that the Ryder Cup in 2021 was worth somewhere between $70 and $100 million alone, or roughly half of the entire year’s revenue. So, I get it. It’s the cash cow and they’re determined to milk it for every drop they can.
But at what point does revenue building turn into sheer greed? At what point do players start looking for their own slice of the pie since they’re the ones that are putting on the show? We’ve already had rumblings in the past – who can forget Hatgate in Rome – and though the reported offending parties deny the claims, there’s rarely smoke without fire and these prices will do nothing but fan the flames.
It also makes me worry for 2027 when the Ryder Cup returns to Irish shores. We’re decent enough at price gouging ourselves, so hoteliers, restauranteurs and service providers of all kinds will have taken note and likely already added another couple of percentage points onto the price projections.
You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, so those prices will remain and when the European Tour sees the PGA of America’s balance sheets after Bethpage, they’ll be sorely tempted to jack up their own ticket prices, so if you want to watch Europe take on the United States at Adare Manor, you’d better get saving.
In a game where the obscene wealth continues to dilute interest, part of the purity of the Ryder Cup is that it’s about the purity of the competition.
It’ll do well not to lose sight of that.
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