After 16 years as the host of PGA Tour playoff events, TPC Boston has gone largely unused by the pro game in recent years, but that all changed Friday. The Norton, Mass. track has been tabbed as the host venue for one of the largest purses on the LPGA Tour.
TPC Boston will now become the annual site of the FM Global Championship, a new event beginning in 2024. With a purse of $3.5 million, it immediately leaps toward the front of the pack for the LPGA Tour, offering the biggest purse of any non-major, non Tour championship event.
“Boston is quickly becoming a dynamic home for women’s sports,” LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan said. “We are thrilled to join this incredible movement, as the famed TPC Boston prepares to host the 2024 FM Global Championship, marking a historic return of the LPGA Tour to New England. With this event, the new National Women’s Soccer League team and the new Professional Women’s Hockey League team, the momentum for women’s sports in the Boston area is undeniable.”
The first iteration of the FM Global Championship takes an interesting place in the calendar, too: late August/early September. That’s when the course seemed to be in the most perfect shape when it hosted PGA Tour events, so why change? It’ll feature right as the PGA Tour season comes to a close and the LPGA Tour’s Race to the CME Globe ratchets up.
The 5-year sponsorship is FM’s first major sponsorship of a sports entity, and was secured with the help of Fenway Sports Management, a branch of Fenway Sports Group, one of the leading private equity firms investing in sports. Also one of the leading entities investing in golf. FSG is the owner of the forthcoming Boston team in Tiger Woods’ TGL, a mixed-reality golf tour, and has also reportedly made a bid for investment in the PGA Tour itself.
Fenway Sports Management was involved with those PGA Tour playoff events, and is likely to be much more involved with LPGA sales and marketing moving forward. The brand signed an agreement with the LPGA Tour in August with the goal of “fostering diversity, increasing investment in the sport and unlocking a host of new opportunities for the LPGA and its athletes.”
