Warning, This Post Contains Information That May Be Offensive To Anyone With A Pulse: PGA Tour Executive Compensation Edition

I used to be able to joke about PGA Tour executive pay, but when you see these numbers...

Jon Show of Sports Business Journal did the digging and writes:

PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem took home $5.3 million in 2008, up from $4.76 million the previous year and roughly flat with what he received in 2006.

Tim Finchem’s salary remained $1.3M, but performance bonuses pushed his total up. Finchem’s salary remained constant at $1.3 million, meaning the fluctuation is due to performance bonuses paid under a plan established by the compensation committee on the PGA Tour board of directors with the help of a compensation consultant.

Forget Finchem, that's old news. This is the part where the children must leave the room:

The second-highest-compensated executives in 2008 were co-COOs Charlie Zink and Ed Moorhouse, who each made about $1.7 million. Other executives receiving at least seven figures include CMO Tom Wade, CFO Ron Price and David Pillsbury, also president of PGA Tour Golf Course Properties.

Five over a million! Growth!

Show says new IRS rules gave us more information than in the past.

Among the revelations in the new filings is that the PGA Tour pays “health or social club dues or initiation fees” for one or more executives, which primarily consists of memberships at TPC Sawgrass.

Also, the 538 PGA Tour full- and part-time employees received $78.8 million in salaries, other compensation and benefits, up from the $74.4 million that 551 full- and part-time employees received in 2007.

I know what you're saying, these numbers were sketched out before the bubble burst. So note how they are anticipating the Great Recession down in Greater Jacksonville:

In the 2008 filing, the tour also outlines a long-term incentive bonus plan payable to high-ranking employees in 2009 and 2010 unless the individual terminates his or her employment. Finchem’s bonus is scheduled to be nearly $1.9 million in 2009 and 2010, followed by Zink and Moorhouse at $534,127 each.

Now, I'm not real good with numbers and common sense stuff here (blame Pepperdine), but how is it that you already know what's someone's bonus is going to be before the year's work takes place? How is that an incentive to work, since after all, bonuses are incentives, no?

Anyway, here's the expanded 2008 list in SBJ and a link to SBJ's findings for 2007.  And congrats to everyone on their pay raises in these thriving economic times!

PGA Tour Compensation   Name   Title   Total Compensation

Tim Finchem  Commissioner  $5,248,979

Charlie Zink Co-COO $1,768,832

Ed Moorhouse  Co-COO  $1,707,845

David Pillsbury* EVP, championship management $1,162,253

Tom Wade CMO $1,141,881

Ron Price CFO $1,209,464

Rick George  Chief of operations $776,693

Ty Votaw  EVP, communications and international affairs  $726,195

Rick Anderson CLO  $666,743

Henry Hughes CEO, The Players  $737,941

Bill Calfee President, Nationwide Tour  $698,414

Gil Kerr*  SVP, broadcasting and programming $534,534

Jeanne Lightcap* SVP, accounting and financial reporting  $480,158

Jeff Monday  SVP, tournament development $481,323

Mike Bodney* SVP, Presidents Cup  $491,955

Now there's a job I want. $491,955 for a once-every-two years event! Sorry to interrupt...

Jon Podany*  SVP, business development  $462,775

Bob Combs Former SVP, communications and public affairs $477,858

Slugger White* VP, rules and competition  $468,865

Mike Stevens* President, Champions Tour $398,230

Sid Wilson VP, player relations $394,610

* Not previously listed  Source: Form 990

Update on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 11:18 AM by Geoff

I guess the above, combined with the number below make the USGA salaries look like chicken feed:

Arlen Kantarian was paid more than $9 million by the United States Tennis Association in his last year as its chief executive of professional tennis, according to tax documents filed by the organization and confirmed by the U.S.T.A.

Comments

[Ky Laffoon's Ghost]

Life is good if you are a Sun King. Or Prince.

Geoff, you need to get with the program. Bonuses are deserved for showing up. Period. Performance has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

[Chema]

I assume that Finchem's $1.9MM in future bonuses is a minimum number and that the actual number will be higher.

[thusgone]

no reason why finchem shouldn't feed at the same trough as the rest of them. i don't think i could turn it down if it was offered to me.

executive pay in the united states is a scandal no matter what your political affiliation. it represents both a market failure and the failure of american corporate culture to impose any meaningful limitation on the lucky few who are above a certain level in the hierarchy. it's good to be the king. always has been, always will be.

[shug]

These salaries are even more scandalous when you remember that the TOUR is a non-profit organization that gets a colossal tax break for doing charitable work. Charity No 1 seems to be Mr Finchem himself.

[Aunt Blabbie]

Disgusting.

[OB]

Think the golf media will ask players what they make of a $77 million payroll to run the operation?

[Vince Spence]

Slugger White is underpaid. If you divide his salary by the hours he works and add in the responsibility his position entails, he's barely at minimum wage.

I will un-officially become his agent and top cheerleader. I guarantee more people could pick Slugger out of a line-up before Votaw and the other knuckleheads...

[Miss Priss]

Are they doing something illegal? Of course not. Executive salary and bonus stories are so old and easy ... like Thanksgiving holiday travel stories. Good God. Duh!

Let's pound on John Daly or something really fascinating, boys! I love this web site ... love golf ... I'm a sexy, fast player ... not a lesbian or a martinet ... but you guys are nerds! Show me sumthin!

[Sir Real]

Goeff and fellow viewers, A Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

The PGA administrators' figures are just as bloated...please post those! The game will continue to suffer in the public eye so long as these gross compensation plans continue. NO no-profit should be permitted to lavish these obscene figures to their lackies and keep that designation. It's like these Not-for-profit hospitals... that charge extortionate rates to patients...it all a bunch of garbage cloaked in legal practices that should be ...ILLEGAL! Our nation (and the game) will continue to rot from within until enough people have the guts to say enough and demand change. MADD got it done...so can anyone else! Gobble..Gobble!!!!

[johnny knoxville]

I'm glad they have a great support network of local volunteers, organizers, organizations, and companies at every tour stop, who bust their tails working long hours for many months not to mention 2 weeks prior, so this non-profit and their contractors can be paid so well.

[MRP]

J.Knoxville...great point!!

Miss Priss...why do we need to show you something? Why don't you show us "nerds" something? Give us a thought provoking question or statement...add some value with some of your insight. You are a "sexy and fast" player. Yeah, how is that relevant? I can do 40 pull-ups and bench press over 300 lbs...but who cares? I love golf as well. I read a lot of these threads looking for you to post...but all I see are "zingers" and "lightening rods" but very little substance. I look forward to you showing us something, I think your spunk can really be good...but now it is time to begin to shine!!

[E.P. Richardson]

Good for all of them. The PGA Tour makes alot of money...I have no idea what is required to run a golf tour. Who am I to question their salaries? The players are doing pretty well, and all that stuff about a rising tide lifting all boats applies. I'm sure if golf suffers, it'll go away on its own.

It's not like Finchem & Co. are running an uber-leveraged Hedge fund, orchestrating buyouts and paying themselves huge commissions off huge loans based off balance sheets based off hugely leveraged....well, you get the idea.

[Scott]

The outrage is a bit simplistic. The tour isn't a charity of course, in that it doesn't raise money from donors to give to needy children in the Sub-Sahara. So we can't compare their salaries to those from Unicef. It really is a private enterprise, albeit one that dishes out donations in lieu of taxes--much like many colleges do. I don't begrudge their salaries, any more than I begrudge the fact that little old Suffolk University pays its president $2.8M a year . It's good work if you can get it. And if anyone should have a problem with it, it's the players, since they underwrite the tour. Are they complaining?

[Miss Priss]

MRP ... Wow! With those muscles I bet you can drive it a long way! Looks like I got to you! Bite my threads!

[MRP]

Miss Priss...

Like I said, I look at these threads looking for your posts and I am waiting for something good.

[OB]

The old "who am I to question" mentality. And it's working so well for us as a country these days, isn't it?

The salaries are fine if the players had any control of the operatino (it is their organization, is it not?). And it would be okay if they were a for-profit enterprise, as you note E.P.

However, they are a non-profit and live under a tax exemption that expects them to behave. Giving raises as they cut donations to the charities they claim to be working for should raise a red flag if Congress hadn't been bought off by lobbyists.

[On Tour]

Only one woman at Tour HQ making any money? Lame.

[Farmingdale]

MRP, she's a man baby, don't fall for it.

So, in light of all this, if I were to say a few PGA Tour events are still grandfathered in as "for profit" with 100% discretionary (and 100% unpublished) charity commitments, how would that sit?

Would anyone give a King's Ransom to know which events have been for profit over the long haul??

[Pickworth]

It looks like you people are still printing money. It's a worry.

[AA]

Fdale,

Their very own TPC must be for profit and I would guess the Prez Cup is for profit. Maybe even the Tour Championship? What say you?

[Scott]

Here's another point. Do we know what the Euro Tour is paying George O'Grady and his team? Isn't that the best way to determine whether the PGA Tour's compensation structure is out of whack?

Does the Euro Tour disclose that information? If not, why not? Would their sycophant press, which tongue bathes Mr. O'Grady on a daily basis, even care?

[S. Apopka Vineland]

Total Purse: $5.8 million

Winners Share: $1.044 million

Owners Profit: More than that

Undocumented Charity Giving: Priceless

For everything else there's...

[Wisconsin Reader]

Wow. . . And I keep reading the golf industry is having financial problems. . . Of course I also keep reading about banks, credit card companies and health insurers being in even more trouble. . . And the salaries and bonuses to executives in those industries make the boys from Ponte Vedra look like paupers. . . Slugger White only makes the minimum wage? (See Vince above.) . . . Vince, that sounds like you have been watching a little too much Glenn Beck. . . Unless, of course, Slugger (and who does not like him?) is working about 7,000 hours annually. . . Are you counting those middle of the night hours when Slugger is laying awake worrying whether Tiger will reduce his schedule or AK might show up at the first tee tomorrow doing his imitation of Walter Hagen?

[Raider Fan]

Not one person has mentioned the bonus structure. Normally a bonus is received for good work. Sadly in the US a bonus is part of compensation and is guaranteed.

What has Finchem done to deserve a bonus? Sponsors are dropping like flys, purses are sure to go down, the PGA endowement is down, TV viewing is way down and the entire golf outlook is negative.

This guy is so powerful he does whatever he wants whenever he wants.

[Vwgolfer]

Ok so Peter kostis where are you? Pay cuts for the players yet not one peep about Lil' Timmy bonus. Shame on you Peter.

Ok so is Lil' Timmy gonna be showing his rims on MTV cribs?

[chico]

Scott-David Garland-Sluggers equivalent on the Eurotour is on about £100k.
George is on about 1/10th of what Timmy Boy gets and Dubai has just gone bust so dont expect much increase in the foreseeable.
Should give you loads of ammo to lambast Britain/Europe once again!

[Scandalous]

Players should be up in arms about this...lotta fat in there...what's bob combs do? promoting the world golf village is a once a year deal, when they induct 3-4 players...what's sid wilson's 400 G gig? Player relations? finchem deals with the players directly, when it's important. I've seen some of these folks in action...they're not that good. How does finchem justify these salaries? if he says you gotta pay top dollar for top people that's not gonna wash. most could live just fine on 100 G's in PVB.

An $80 M staff payroll exceeds annual purses on Champs. Tour and is about equal to the tour's annual charitable contributions...it's scandal, it's an outrage.

[Farmingdale]

Scandalous...that is a great comparison, and a shocking one as well.

There are consultants/watchdogs out there that study these charitable foundations/organization and determine what percentage of revenues actually accrue to the charity, wonder how the PGA Tour would hold up to that type of scrutiny?