NAPLES, Fla. — LPGA Tour commissioner Craig Kessler launched a “flywheel” and spoke of his “Venn diagram” on Wednesday in releasing a 2026 schedule and plotting a highway map for a way the tour can seize on the surge in ladies’s sports activities.
The LPGA schedule has 31 official tournaments with a report prize fund of simply over $128.5 million. Fourteen tournaments raised their purses, wherever from $100,000 to $2 million.
The LPGA additionally has co-sanctioned a Women European Tour occasion funded by Golf Saudi. The Aramco Collection at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas replaces the Match Play, and the purse goes from $2 million to $4 million. Kessler didn’t rule out extra tournaments from the Aramco Collection.
“If you begin a partnership it is vital to come back out of the gates robust,” Kessler mentioned forward of the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship. “And in the event you execute effectively, it opens up the chance for many superb issues to occur. It is no completely different right here.”
Kessler, the previous chief working officer on the PGA of America, has been on the job solely 120 days and has introduced excessive vitality in assembly with gamers and sponsors and constructing a management employees round him.
His first massive transfer was a partnership with mutual insurer FM for main upgrades to the published manufacturing, resulting in the primary time each North American match shall be proven reside, together with a 50% enhance in cameras and shot tracing expertise.
“For us to lastly get our shot at having reside TV and for folks investing in our product out right here has been superb,” Nelly Korda mentioned. “I can not wait to see the place it will go, however it all come downs to having nice management and that is what we actually do have right here on the LPGA.”
The published improve was the primary a part of Kessler’s “flywheel,” which features a schedule with a greater geographic move. The hope is that creates extra followers, which in flip helps with media rights and advertising and marketing companions, resulting in a stronger money move that will get invested again into the product.
“We’re nonetheless — say it the way you need, a development inventory or a reduced inventory — if I had been an investor pondering of coming in as a companion of the LPGA, now could be the time to do it,” he mentioned. “We have not but had our breakthrough second. And if I as an organization seeking to get behind a company as outstanding as this one had an opportunity to do it, now could be the time.”
With little time since he took over in the summertime, the schedule seems to be largely the identical as final yr. He put the 2 Michigan tournaments in consecutive weeks in June that precede the KPMG Ladies’s PGA in Minnesota. There’s an Asia swing early and late once more.
The long-term plan is to construct a schedule primarily based on routing, golf programs and prize cash.
“I hope the LPGA is shortly perceived as top-of-the-line companions in all of sports activities,” Kessler mentioned. “We do what we are saying we are going to do, and we’ll need to take that under consideration as we carry to life what we consider is the optimum schedule.”
His Venn diagram — three circles that overlap — accounts for efficiency, persona and marketability, and a willingness of gamers to advertise themselves and the tour.
Kessler mentioned he has had two participant conferences by which he mentioned they should do their half.
“And on the finish I requested, ‘Who’s in?’ And just about each hand within the room went up,” he mentioned. “Now it is on us to really carry that to life.”
The LPGA is wrapping up a most uncommon season by which solely two gamers — Jeeno Thitikul and Miyuu Yamashita — have gained greater than as soon as. Korda has did not win after capturing seven titles a yr in the past, however even her outstanding season did not assist the LPGA get any extra traction.
There’s vitality and optimism, and Kessler was effectively conscious there is a lengthy technique to go.
“We compete within the consideration financial system. It isn’t simply towards different sports activities,” Kessler mentioned. “Something that has the potential to caption a fan’s consideration, we’re competing towards that. So it is our job to be differentiated, to be fascinating, and seize followers’ thoughts share in each approach we probably can.”
