ST. LOUIS – Rory McIlroy has some ideas about how the PGA Tour can invest the $1.5 billion it has sitting in the bank.
During his pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday ahead of the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club, McIlroy took a not-so-subtle shot at LIV Golf when he said, “I’m pretty sure if the PGA Tour were handed 6 billion dollars it would have done a better job with it.”
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The Tour doesn’t have quite that much, but it has been sitting on $1.5 billion since the Tour created its new for-profit entity and sold a 12 percent stake to Strategic Sports Group for the previously noted sum and potentially another $1.5 billion in January 2024. Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said at his press conference at the Players Championship in March that, “I think we have ideas how to (invest) it,” noting “there’s a lot of uses for the capital to effectuate the long-term value of the PGA Tour” and “to build something lasting that outlives all of us.”
McIlroy has a wide range of investments in golf, including in Golf Genius, Puttery, GolfPass and Whoop. How does McIlroy think the Tour should invest the $1.5 billion it has been sitting on for the better part of two years while it deals with more pressing issues?
Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland plays his shot from the seventh tee during the first round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind on August 15, 2024 in Memphis, Tennessee.
“I’ve said this to Brian, I’ve said it to people that work for him, Dhruv and whoever else: the PGA Tour has got an unbelievable marketing platform,” he said. “They’re on TV basically every week of the year. I think if they could spend that money and try to own more of the golf space. You think about the recreational game, and how much that’s booming. They had to get rid of a tee times business during COVID because the reserves got pretty low because of everything that happened.
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“You go down the path of buying part of a tee times website again. You go down the path of like Versant, who I’m involved with; they just bought Full Swing, the tracking company, for 530 million. Like, if another, say a Trackman or a Foresight or whatever came up to buy, being able to put money into that, and then plugging it into this unbelievable platform that you have, the PGA Tour, and being able to scale it that way.
“So, like from a business perspective, there’s a lot that they could do with the one and a half billion. I think they could own more of the golf space, professional and recreational. And now that all the players have equity in the Tour, I think that’s the way to grow the enterprise value of the business.”
There’s some sound logic to McIlroy’s plan and it will be worth watching if Rolapp and the Tour leadership listen to any of his suggestions.
Adam Schupak is a senior writer for Golfweek, covering the PGA Tour.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Rory McIlroy details how he thinks the PGA Tour should invest $1.5 billion investment
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