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It’s golf’s biggest talking point that you feel is not going to go away for some time. 

The fans have had their say. We’ve had our say. And now the PGA of America has spoken out about the controversial Ryder Cup ticket prices.

The governing body is under fire after fans realised the amount they were going to have to fork out to attend the Bethpage showpiece next September, with tickets ranging from around $225 for practice rounds to $750 for the competition days.

• ‘I hit the winning shot at the Ryder Cup – but I wish it had been different’

• Sergio Garcia’s Ryder Cup return: Pipedream or possibility?

But Bryan Karns, the PGA of America’s championship director, has been quick to defend the astronomical demands.

And that is because the Ryder Cup is, quite simply, a “Tier 1 event” that’s “on par with the World Series or the NBA Finals”.

“We looked at pricing and we were able to tap into data from all these different venues,” Karns explained when interviewed by SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio. “And we were able to see what people pay, and that really drove this.

“In terms of our position in this landscape – where do we feel ourselves?

“There are people who have the Ryder Cup on their bucket list in the same way someone would have a Yankees opening game of the World Series on their bucket list. Ultimately that’s where we felt like we are.

“We’ve got a lot of people, the demand is at an all-time high for this event and so we wanted to make sure we priced it appropriately.”

• PGA Tour caddie details shock Ryder Cup call: ‘I thought I was getting sacked’

• Remember the name! Little-known tour pro targets shock Ryder Cup start

Later, in an interview with Golf magazine, Karns added that the PGA of America “wanted to be transparent” – by which he means they didn’t want to list a lower price only for fans to get through to the checkout stage to find there’s “$140 in taxes and fees” added on top of the ticket price. “Why would we do that?” he added.

Karns continued: “We knew that it was going to be critical to get this right and to try to do something that we felt was on par with where we viewed ourselves and where our position was in this world.

“But at the same time, understanding there is some nuance to Ryder Cup tickets. It’s a full day event versus three hours. It’s without a seat, but a GA ticket allows you the chance to be on a rope line, compared to if I bought the standing room only at Yankee Stadium.

“So we try to factor all those in. And it’s never as simple as saying it’s apples to apples. But we we took a lot of feedback and got to this point where we felt like, look, this is this is what we feel confident in.

“When you get into a situation where the demand is so high, you want to do your best to price it so you don’t create this massively inflated secondary market.”

Tickets for the 2025 Ryder Cup will go on sale in November.


author headshot

Alex Perry is the Associate Editor of bunkered. A journalist for more than 20 years, he has been a golf industry stalwart for the majority of his career and, in a five-year spell at ESPN, covered every sporting event you can think of. He completed his own Grand Slam at the 2023 Masters, having fallen in love with the sport at his hometown club of Okehampton and on the links of nearby Bude & North Cornwall.

Associate Editor

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