Iconic Florida Championship with $8.7M purse signs 5-year extension with PGA Tour

The Valspar Championship, one of the top PGA Tour tournaments in the state of Florida, has just signed an extension with the sponsor. Through the 2030 tournament, it will have the same sponsor it has had for several seasons.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, full-field events, which this one is, have usually gotten anywhere from $13-15 million from the sponsors. For example, the Cognizant Classic is paid $14 million by the brand.

The current deal had been signed in 2014, and it was set to expire after this year's tournament. Instead of letting it run and out and having to try and get another sponsor after that, the two sides agreed to a five-year deal to continue being partners.

According to Sports Business Journal, RBC is likely the next brand to be extended. They sponsor the RBC Heritage and the RBC Canadian Open, but they have been signing one-year contracts as they await the resolution of the PGA x PIF merger. Either way, RBC is likely to get another short-term deal with the Tour to remain the head of those events.

The Valspar Championship typically carries an $8.7 million prize purse. However, with the pending PIF merger, that could go up. PIF funds LIV Golf events with massive prize purses, so an influx of cash from the merger wouldn't be a big surprise.

---

PGA Tour merger not as close to conclusion as earlier reports indicated

Last week, the PGA Tour sent Jay Monahan, Tiger Woods, and Adam Scott to the White House to meet with President Donald Trump to try and move the merger along. The initial reporting stated that this could lead to a "deal in principle" for the two sides, a major breakthrough in the negotiations.

The PGA Tour meeting at the White House might not have gone as expected (Imagn)

However, Golfweek's Eamon Lynch is reporting that the second meeting actually didn't go well. He said via FOX Sports that there are "rumblings" of a bad meeting:

“Rumblings from informed sources suggest that Thursday’s meeting at the White House didn’t go as well as Tour executives had hoped, which suggests that PIF governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, remains determined to keep shoveling cash into the furnace of his own pridefulness."

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has said repeatedly that he wants to see the reunification of golf and that the best stars, meaning Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Scottie Scheffler, and Rory McIlroy, will all compete against one another once again on one tour.

There was hope that last week's meeting would get that nearly done, but that may not be the case. Instead, the Tour may be staring down another long wait before this gets wrapped up and the deal is firmly in place.