The PGA Tour has eliminated four percent of its workforce as part of a restructuring process.
According to numbers confirmed by the PGA Tour, 56 of the US-based circuit’s full-time employees were laid off while another 73 open positions will not be filled as part of its transition to a for-profit model.
The affected employees were notified by senior team leaders, while PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp sent a memo to the entire staff to explain the organisational recommendations that came out of a review by a third-party consulting firm.
“Today we took a difficult – but important – step,” Rolapp wrote.
It comes after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announced a plan to focus investments on the country’s economy across six key themes under a new five-year strategy, deploying more money domestically in its latest effort to diversify its reliance on oil. This led to the sovereign wealth fund reportedly pulling funding from parts of its sporting portfolio, putting rival league LIV Golf at risk.
In January 2024, the PGA Tour announced it had reached an agreement with Strategic Sports Group in which the consortium of U.S. sports team owners would invest up to $3bn into a new for-profit entity known as PGA Tour Enterprises. SSG invested an initial $1.5bn as part of the agreement that also allowed for a co-investment from PIF.
Talks between the PGA Tour and PIF, however, have gone silent since the two sides last met with US president Donald Trump at the White House in February 2025.
Reuters
