PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan earned over $23 million in regular and deferred compensation in 2023, according to a copy of the golf league’s most recently-filed tax return.
That tally includes $12.1 million in bonus and incentive compensation, $2.5 million in estimated post-retirement benefits and $6.7 million in post-2023 long-term incentive compensation. Monahan’s base salary was $1,887,096.
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A little more than $9 million of those earnings are deferred to future years and could therefore change in value based on long-term interest rates, a PGA spokesperson said in an email.
In addition to Monahan, Ronald Price, the PGA Tour’s chief operating officer, also joined the nine-figures club, earning a little over $13 million in regular and deferred compensation, including bonuses and incentives worth $7.8 million.
The non-profit PGA Tour Inc. brought in $1.82 billion in revenue last year, which covered the six-month periods before and after the league shocked the world—and many of its own players—by announcing last June that it would merge its business with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf. In addition to its earned revenue, the PGA Tour reported $2.52 billion in sales of non-inventory assets, bringing its yearly gross receipts total to $4.33 billion.
PGA Tour Inc.’s 2023 tax return, a copy of which was provided to Sportico upon request, disclosed $18.7 million legal expenditures after the tour spent just under $21 million on outside lawyers the year prior. Monahan has said that legal fees were a major factor in the organization’s decision to settle its lawsuits with LIV Golf and strike a truce. At the time, according to the Wall Street Journal, Monahan told PGA Tour staff that he expected legal fees could climb to as high as $50 million.
In June 2023, the PGA Tour, LIV, and European circuit DP World Tour announced a commercial merger, ending months of recriminations between the American and Saudi leagues. But the process has dragged along since, blowing past its original deadline the parties had set for a merger to be completed by Dec. 31, 2023.
At the start of this year, the PGA Tour announced a new commercial venture, PGA Tour Enterprises, LLC, funded Strategic Sports Group (SSG)–a consortium of US pro team owners led by Fenway Sports Group’s John Henry and Mets owner Steve Cohen–which could take on a co-investment from PIF. (The entity had been originally incorporated as a Delaware LLC in October 2023.)
