NAPLES, Fla. (AP) — LPGA Tour Commissioner Craig Kessler introduced a “flywheel” and spoke of his “Venn diagram” on Wednesday in releasing a 2026 schedule and plotting a road map for how the tour can seize on the surge in women's sports.
The LPGA schedule has 31 official tournaments with a record prize fund of just over $128.5 million. Fourteen tournaments raised their purses, anywhere from $100,000 to $2 million.
The LPGA also has co-sanctioned a Ladies European Tour event funded by Golf Saudi. The Aramco Series at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas replaces the Match Play, and the purse goes from $2 million to $4 million. Kessler did not rule out more tournaments from the Aramco Series.
“When you start a partnership it's important to come out of the gates strong,” Kessler said ahead of the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship. “And if you execute well, it opens up the possibility for lots of amazing things to happen. It's no different here.”
Kessler, the former chief operating officer at the PGA of America, has been on the job only 120 days and has brought high energy in meeting with players and sponsors and building a leadership staff around him.
His first big move was a partnership with mutual insurer FM for major upgrades to the broadcast production, leading to the first time every North American tournament will be shown live, along with a 50% increase in cameras and shot tracing technology.
“For us to finally get our shot at having live TV and for people investing in our product out here has been amazing,” Nelly Korda said. “I can’t wait to see where it’s going to go, but it all come downs to having great leadership and that’s what we really do have here at the LPGA.”
The broadcast upgrade was the first part of Kessler's “flywheel," which includes a schedule with a better geographic flow. The hope is that creates more fans, which in turn helps with media rights and marketing partners, leading to a stronger cash flow that gets invested back into the product.
“We're still — say it how you want, a growth stock or a discounted stock — if I were an investor thinking of coming in as a partner of the LPGA, now is the time to do it,” he said. “We haven’t yet had our breakthrough moment. And if I as a company looking to get behind an organization as remarkable as this one had a chance to do it, now would be the time.”
With little time since he took over in the summer, the schedule looks largely the same as last year. He put the two Michigan tournaments in consecutive weeks in June that precede the KPMG Women's PGA in Minnesota. There is an Asia swing early and late again.
The long-term plan is to build a schedule based on routing, golf courses and prize money.
“I hope the LPGA is quickly perceived as one of the best partners in all of sports,” Kessler said. “We do what we say we will do, and we’ll have to take that into account as we bring to life what we believe is the optimal schedule.”
His Venn diagram — three circles that overlap — accounts for performance, personality and marketability, and a willingness of players to promote themselves and the tour.
Kessler said he has had two player meetings in which he said they need to do their part.
“And at the end I asked, ‘Who is in?’ And virtually every hand in the room went up,” he said. “Now it’s on us to actually bring that to life.”
The LPGA is wrapping up a most unusual season in which only two players — Jeeno Thitikul and Miyuu Yamashita — have won more than once. Korda has failed to win after capturing seven titles a year ago, but even her remarkable season didn't help the LPGA get any more traction.
There is energy and optimism, and Kessler was well aware there's a long way to go.
“We compete in the attention economy. It’s not just against other sports,” Kessler said. “Anything that has the potential to caption a fan’s attention, we are competing against that. So it’s our job to be differentiated, to be interesting, and capture fans' mind share in every way we possibly can.”
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