The LPGA Tour and CME Group introduced a handbag enhance for the season finale that will see the winner take residence $4 million.
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NAPLES, Fla. — LPGA Tour execs are set to see a document payday within the close to future.
Due to a historic funding from CME Group, the LPGA Tour Championship purse — already the biggest within the girls’s sport — will enhance from $7 million to $11 million subsequent season. The winner’s share will enhance from $2 million to $4 million, with each participant within the subject assured to earn at the very least $55,000 for the week.
The title sponsor will even lengthen their partnership with the LPGA Tour by two further years.
“I’m making an attempt to be a catalyst for ladies’s golf,” stated CME Group CEO Terry Duffy. “We’re being a little bit of a catalyst and I believe we pushed the majors, which is extra vital.”
With a handbag of $11 million, the CME Group Tour Championship joins the U.S. Women’s Open in having the biggest purse in tour historical past. The purse can be bigger than many on the PGA Tour, save for the majors and elevated occasions.
“This partnership extension with CME Group is extraordinarily vital and underscores the expansion and energy of the LPGA,” LPGA commissioner Marcoux Samaan stated in an announcement. “CME Group has been pushing the LPGA ahead at each step of our evolution since 2011, and with this extension they’re as soon as once more serving to take the LPGA, girls’s golf and ladies’s sports activities to unprecedented heights.”
The historic inflow of money comes only one yr after a tense episode between CME Group and the LPGA final fall. The incident featured Duffy trying to honor the LPGA execs at a pre-tournament dinner earlier than the 2022 occasion. Nonetheless, when the lights have been turned on to highlight the gamers, there have been none to be discovered.
“It’s a humiliation to an organization of my dimension and a humiliation to me personally,” Duffy later told Golfweek. “I’m exceptionally upset with the management of the LPGA.”
The episode had some gamers and tour management frightened that CME would possibly pull their sponsorship {dollars} all collectively. As a substitute, Duffy has opted to double down on his dedication to the ladies’s sport.
“My dedication to the LPGA and my dedication to St. Jude won’t ever change,” Duffy stated. “However I believe Mollie, we bought collectively all year long and talked about quite a lot of the various things and nonetheless do, and I believe that helped give me extra confidence to return thus far at this time to increase our relationship.”
The $4 million to the winner is a historic determine for ladies’s golf as simply two gamers in LPGA Tour historical past have ever made extra all through a complete season. This season’s cash chief, world No. 1 Lilia Vu, has made simply over $3.2 million with the season finale nonetheless to play.
“I at all times needed this to be a premier occasion,” Duffy stated. “[And] typically you want {dollars} to make it a premier occasion.”
