There were exuberant fans at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome, and a $750 price tag isn’t going to keep Ryder Cup rowdies away from Bethpage.
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As the championship director for the 2025 Ryder Cup matches at Bethpage Black on New York’s Long Island, Bryan Karns expected some pushback when daily ticket prices – especially the $749.51 single-day tickets for Friday, Saturday and Sunday – were announced. Karns and the PGA of America, which runs the event, got it in full Metallica concert decibels. “I’m not dense enough to realize there wouldn’t be some of this,” said Karns, who spent much of last week explaining the why to an audience that didn’t want to hear it.
The ticket prices – $255 for Tuesday and Wednesday tickets, $423 for Thursday with the opening ceremony and $749 (when we round down) for the weekend days – are, to put it mildly, aggressive. Greedy? Maybe. Market savvy? Perhaps. A dollar-sign commentary on the sports world today? For sure. Fans, most of whom were never planning to attend the event in person anyway, are angry and offended, and it’s understandable. Golfers are becoming more accustomed to sticker shock – that $750 can get you one tee time at the Stadium Course at Sawgrass, and it’s enough to get you a dozen golf balls on top of the latest and greatest driver – but this one landed like a chunked pitch shot.
There are, as Karns has explained over and over recently, justifiable reasons for the ticket prices being approximately three times what they were for the most recent U.S. Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits, but the bottom line is hard to get past. “We felt we had done our homework, put the time and energy into pricing this and we’re factoring in a million different things, but when the public sees those prices, that’s not where their brains go,” Karns said.
A couple of housekeeping details to consider: There are approximately 500,000 names in the queue to purchase Ryder Cup tickets, and registration is open through October 22. Of those half-million or so entrants, approximately 10 percent will have the opportunity to buy four tickets. Ticket prices are all inclusive, meaning there are no additional fees, no surprise taxes and they come with all the food and drink a ticketholder can consume in a day (though beer will cost extra). That’s not to suggest that having unlimited access to hot dogs and chicken sandwiches validates the full price, but it does make concession stand stops much quicker.
For anyone thinking the pricing was done to keep out the famously noisy New York fans who may lack what some consider proper golf sensibilities, that’s not the case. “That was never a thought,” Karns said.
While the Ryder Cup is arguably the most emotionally compelling golf event on the calendar, it’s also a critical economic driver for the PGA of America. The tens of millions of dollars the Ryder Cup brings in through ticket sales, media rights and sponsorships provide a sizable chunk of the funding for an organization of approximately 30,000 members.
The price will keep many away, but it’s going to be a salty Ryder Cup, and it will be a sellout.
There is the geographic and financial reality of playing the Ryder Cup outside New York City as compared to an hour south of Green Bay, Wisconsin, four years ago, where ticket prices were roughly one-third the cost. Labor costs are dramatically higher and, intent on making the Ryder Cup experience all it can be, the infrastructure will be enhanced.
Attending a Ryder Cup is an experience. It’s difficult to see the actual golf because, except for Sunday, there are only four matches on the course and close to 50,000 people trying to catch a glimpse. There is, however, an undeniable energy at the Ryder Cup that’s unlike any other golf event. Part of what spectators will be paying for is the opportunity to feel it as much as see it. That’s no different than going to a concert to feel the music thumping off your chest in an arena rather than listening to it in your car on the way to work.
For an organization that, like many others, proclaims its mission to grow the game, does pricing out the general public accomplish that? How many kids are going to be able to attend? The Ryder Cup and alcohol are not strangers.
How many of the people who sleep in their cars to play Bethpage Black can afford even a practice-round ticket? “We have a responsibility for 30,000 members to make sure we run this event in a way that allows funding them to continue,” Karns said. “As we try to grow the game and provide support, they need to be stewards of the game, and we are trying to do right by them. My constituency is those people.”
The ticket prices are also likely to rekindle the conversation about whether players should be paid to play in the Ryder Cup. Players are given $200,000 apiece to donate to charities of their choice, but they do not get paid to participate, a subject that came to a boil again at the Rome Ryder Cup last year. It feels like time to revisit the pay-for-play idea in the Ryder Cup.
As expensive as the Ryder Cup tickets are, see what they go for on the secondary market once they’re out there. If you wanted to see Taylor Swift in Miami this past weekend, it was going to cost more than $1,000 a ticket on the secondary market and upwards of $6,000 for the best seats. And ask Uber about dynamic pricing. Karns and his group factored that into their ticket-pricing equation. If the tickets were $400 per day and they sold for $1,000 on the secondary market, the extra money is going to the ticket broker. Acknowledging that, PGA of America officials built some of it into their pricing model, figuring they could capture a portion of the secondary-market money for themselves.
“It’s an inherent part of the events business now,” Karns said. “Those things do go through your mind. There is a value to protect.
“If the market says people will pay $1,200, there is a significant delta we have to factor in. Those dollars are resources for our members.”
No one doubted the Ryder Cup at Bethpage might be the noisiest one ever. Eleven months out, the noise has already begun.
