It's hard out here for an LPGA pro
Jerry Potter of USAToday has an excellent article about LPGA rookie Brittany Lang, who is among the largest class of 37 LPGA rookies this year. While still without a victory, Lang has done respectably on tour, placing 25th on the money list with $351,875. (By comparison, Mike Weir is 25th on the PGA tour money list with $1,815,323.)
To borrow from Three 6 Mafia's famous title, it's hard out here for an LPGA pro. In following the LPGA players last week, I realized just how hard. So many players get no media coverage at all; they are complete unknowns to the public. The women try their best every day, but the purses on the LPGA are modest, droping off to very low levels outside of the top scores. For example, at the Wendy's last week, if you placed 23rd (a respectable finish), you earned less than $10,000. And the purses dwindle even lower after that.
Currently, the 120th player (Jennifer Rosales) has earned only a little over $40,000 for the year. At 130th, the income earned so far is barely over $25,000. At 135, it's barely over $20,000 for the year -- close to the poverty line for a family of 4. By contrast, on the PGA tour, 135th place on the money leaders currently has earned $438,669!
What does this mean? The LPGA has a lot of catching up to do. Michelle Wie should help, once she becomes an LPGA member. And for those who question if the LPGA should ever market the sex appeal of its players, c'mon get real: this is a business and people's livelihoods, not just a game. The LPGA smartly has started marketing its players like any other business would.
6 Comments:
You hear about the PGA and LPGA having such such a big different amounts of money being earned each week, i have to ask why? what is the difference apart from gender between the two tours. Golf is hard enough to make it in but they are making it so much harding for women to succeced in this sport because of the small amounts of money. The big name sponsers should start getting more involved in the LPGA and giving out higher purses, if there was a higher purse wouldnt the desire to win it be higher, giving the audiences a better display of golf and skill, making it even more exciting and pleasurable sport.
The LPGA does not generate the money to pay out higher purses. The LPGA has not been able to bring in the tournament attendance or the television viewing as much as the PGA Tour can produce. It may get worse, before it gets better, given that the LPGA's commissioner Carolyn Bivens is turning off sponsors. This is a shame, as the ladies play great golf.
The reason the LPGA does not pay out nearly as much as the PGA pays is because that is what the marketplace dictates. It is supply and demand. There is a reason you rarely see women's golf on a major channel, lack of audience. It is the same reason the WNBA pays less than the NBA and the same reason Tom Hanks gets more to make a movie than Tom Bosely.
The public, you and I, are not as interested in watching women play golf as men. If the public was, ratings would be the same, attendance would be the same and purses would be the same.
You are not going to get more viewership if the top prize is $500,000 instead of $400,000. 99.9% of the public has no idea how much PGA and LPGA players make so raising LPGA purses will have no effect.
I do agree that Commissioner Bivens is not helping the cause by making the LPGA less sponser friendly and I would expect that sooner rather than later the players will let her know that either she needs a change of attitude towards sponsors or she will have a change of employment.
Short of doing the communism thing and redistributing what the men's tour brings in to the women's tour, I don't know what you can do about the disparity in earnings. As stated a couple of times already, it is what the marketplace dictates, and to try an artifically alter it to make things more "balanced" will hurt everyone.
One thing that I think the LPGA and PGA tours should do is some combined team events, and not some limited silly season stuff, but some in-season matches with large pools of golfers from both tours. They could do a "best ball" match-play event, with randomly picked male-female teams.
The answer to this is simple, even many of you will argue this because of PC reasons: The tour must be made of of Women who MEN are willing to watch!
Men are the viewing audience for sports on TV. Men don't watch the LPGA tour for several reasons; they are lesser players, they are not interested in watching 30 same-name asian players, and are not interested in watching she-men.
The first issue about talent would be a non-factor if the other two issues were resolved because these gals are talented players. I personally like to watch them because they play more like I do (distance wise), but still have 10 times more finese and skill.
Asians on tour are fine, but they should be limited, plain a simple. Allow a certain # of spots for asian born players, south American, European etc. Don't come to me with this "true competition" garbage. This is a business!
Lastly, the tour needs to cater towards the young women. Players like Paula Creamer, Natalie Gulbis, Morgan Pressel, Britney Lincicome are making the tour a much more interesting place. They keep going on that route and the tour will be in strong stead in years to come.
The LPGA tour should be made up of 85% American players and 15% non American players.
Most American players can not financially compete with the Asian/European players which are being fully sponsored by their countries or corporations within their countries.
The Duramed Futures Tour is a perfect example of this situation. The American up and coming women golfers have a very difficult time getting sponsorship from U.S. companies. Most of Asian/European golfers have all their expenses paid...quite an advantage!!!
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