I saw someone on Twitter claiming Tiger Woods hasn’t put more money in professional golfers pockets. Specifically, that golf purses haven’t grown above salaries in other sports in the last 25 years. That seems true looking at the data – more later – but it also isn’t the relevant comparison. The impact Tiger has made on golf purses pretty obviously occurred in the handful of years between him turning professional in 1996 and him dominating during the Tiger Slam in 2000-01.
Leveraging this data viz from DataGolf indicates when Tiger turned pro in August 1996 the average winner’s check on Tour was $406k. By the start of the 2003 season after Tiger had racked up 8 majors in 24 attempts (and the Tour had signed a new TV deal for 2003-2006) the average winner’s check was $970k – a 140% increase in less than 7 years. The growth in the average winner’s check would level off in the next decade and at the start of 2014 would stand at $1.157m – growth of just 20% in eleven years. So Tiger emerged onto the scene, established an unseen before level of dominance in ~6 years, grew purse by 140%, and then purses stagnated for over a decade.
It is interesting to note that purses have again started to increase up to 2023 season. By my math (DataGolf graph stops in 2018) the average winner’s check was about $1.65m in 2022 season. That means that during nearly a decade where Tiger Woods was playing sparingly on Tour, purses went up by about 40%. 2023 will see increased growth due to PGA Tour’s competition with LIV Golf which will grow winner’s check over $1.8m to about $1.82m. Overall, that would be a change of 90% versus 2003.
And before Tiger’s emergence, looking between 1984 and 1996 PGA Tour winner’s checks grew from about $150k to about $400k – growth of about 4.5% per year.
Isolating Tiger’s impact to his emergence indicates growth of 140% over seven years and then fairly modest growth of 90% over another twenty years. Per year, that’s around 13% growth in 1996-2003 period and 3.5% growth from 2003 to 2023. How does that compare to other sports?
The NFL cap was $41m in 1996 and $75m in 2003 – a growth of 84%. That is clearly lagging PGA Tour. Then from 2003 until 2014 it grew by another 77% and from 2014 to 2023 by 82%. NFL is obviously a sport which has featured steady year-on-year growth in the last 25 years. No matter the time period, you’re looking at an average growth of 7% per year.
NFL did not have a salary cap before 1994, but we can find average salary data which indicates $162k in 1984 and $496k in 1993 (the last uncapped year). Based on that, NFL salary growth was something like 13% per year from 1984 to 1993.
MLB total payrolls grew from $895m in 1996 to $2.127b in 2003 – a 138% increase. MLB also added two teams in that time period so maybe it makes more sense to account for that in which case the per team payroll grew by 122%. Either way, robust growth which exceeded NFL and nearly matched PGA Tour. From 2003 to 2022, payrolls grew by 97% from $2.127b to $4.201b. Per year, MLB growth from 1996 to 2003 was about 13% and from 2003 to 2022 about 4%.
We also have data for MLB from 1988 to 1996 and can see MLB was already booming in the 1990s with 180% growth in average team payroll in that eight seasons span – about 14% growth per year. This is very similar to NFL for a similar time period.
The last major US sport to compare is NBA. NBA saw explosive growth from 1984 to 1996 when Michael Jordan entered the league and dominated in the 1990s. The NBA cap grew from $3.6m in 1984 to $25m in 1996 – a staggering nearly 600% increase (or 18% per year). Then from 1996 to 2003 when MJ retired the cap grew from $24.7m to $43.8m (about 78% or 9% per year). And from 2003 to 2022 the cap has grown from $44m to just under $124m (about 180% total or 6% per year).
1984 to 1996
1996 to 2003
2003 to 2022/23
PGA Tour
4.5% per year
13% per year
3.5% per year
NFL
13% per year
7% per year
7% per year
MLB
14% per year
13% per year
4% per year
NBA
18% per year
9% per year
6% per year
Interpretation is fairly simple here. Pre-Tiger Woods, the PGA Tour was stuck in a rut without Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. Their purses grew much less than the salaries for the big three US sports – 4.5% versus 13-18% per season.
In the immediate post-Hello World era, PGA Tour purses exploded by 13% per year – at a time when the big three US sports averaged between 7 and 13%.
Since 2003, the big three US sports have averaged between 4-7% growth in payrolls per year, while PGA Tour has trailed at 3.5%.
That looks pretty decisively like Tiger Woods had an out-sized impact on golf after he debuted on Tour – above and beyond what was going on in other US sports in that time period.
In total, if PGA Tour purses had grown 4.5% from 1996 to 2023, the average winner’s check would be about $1.33m in 2023 (vs about $1.82m).
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