The rivalry between the LIV Tour and PGA Tour is widely known within the Golf community and it all stems around money.
Upon the announcement of the LIV Tour, it became known that they were coming in as a Premier Golf League with bigger cheques for the winners of their tournaments.
The first event of the LIV Tour and their prize fund in 2022 quickly pushed the PGA Tour into raising their first-place prizes and putting more into their annual purse to keep their players from moving to the new LIV tour for financial gain.
Naturally, the PGA Tours first place prize gradually increased each year but after the introduction of the LIV Tour the prize increased rapidly.
The graph above shows the PGA Tours signature events first place prize increasing each year and how those figures massively spike after the 2022 season which was when LIV held its first event.
Between 2017 and 2021 the first-place prize for these signature events increased by 20.25%.
However, the PGA Tours first place prize for their signature events increased by 74.19% between 2021 and 2023 to keep up with the LIV Tour.
Due to the PGA having different first place prizes depending on the tournament, I have used the same signature events as the first graph for the top set of data.
That data shows the difference between the first-place earnings over five events on each tour: it’s a $300,000 difference between the two tours with LIV ahead of the PGA.
The second set of data shows the difference between the individual championships prize of each tours.
The difference here is $500,000, with the PGA Tour in front with their champion winning $4.5 million.
Despite LIV Tours big cheques over the course of their events, the PGA Tour is keeping up and even edging ahead in what can be considered as the main events of the individual tours, this is not including the Golfing Majors.
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