Change is afoot at the PGA Tour.

The Tour’s policy board voted Tuesday to make a series of stark changes to the size and qualifications of events. 

Commissioner Jay Monahan said the changes will “transform and set the future direction” for the PGA Tour.

• The 2024 season will have eight designated events with fields of 70-78 players. These will be in addition to the majors, Players, and three FedExCup Playoffs events.
• Prize purses will be larger for these designated events. This year, they have minimum prize purses of $20 million.
• They will not have a 36-hole cut, allowing every player to compete in all four rounds.

“Over the last year, we have spent a massive amount of time exploring how to better position the PGA Tour for continued growth,” Monahan wrote. “How to further showcase our top performers, while staying true to the meritocracy and legacy that define the Tour.”

The changes could help the Tour to better compete with LIV Golf for talent, which has lured big names with huge bonuses and prize offerings, and a guaranteed place in its events. LIV uses a 54-hole, no-cut format.

The PGA Tour will also no longer require top players to participate in certain events.

“I want to give everyone a fair shake at this, which I think this structure has done,” Rory McIlroy said about the designated event format. “It’s trying to get the top guys versus the hot guys, right? I think that creates a really compelling product.”

Brian Flores secured a significant courtroom victory as a federal judge kept his racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and three teams in her court instead of arbitration. 

The NFL’s lawyers had argued for months that Flores’ lawsuit should be shifted into the league’s arbitration process. Flores filed last year after he was fired as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins and alleged the New York Giants conducted a “sham” interview to comply with the NFL’s Rooney Rule. 

“This case shines an unflattering spotlight on the employment practices of National Football League teams,” U.S. District Court Judge Valerie E. Caproni wrote in the introduction to her opinion. 

Flores’ case will move forward against the Denver Broncos, New York Giants, Houston Texans, and the NFL in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Flores spent last season as a defensive assistant with the Pittsburgh Steelers and was recently hired as defensive coordinator by the Minnesota Vikings.

“The [core] of Mr. Flores’s claim is not that the NFL is generally racist,” Caproni wrote. “Rather, Mr. Flores claims that specific adverse employment decisions were driven by discriminatory animus harbored by the NFL and member teams.”

The league successfully got some claims moved into arbitration, including those brought by the two other plaintiffs in the case — Steve Wilks, who served as the interim head coach for the Carolina Panthers last season, and longtime former assistant NFL coach Ray Horton. 

Footwear continues to be a high point for Puma as it reported record annual sales for 2022.

The athletic apparel and footwear brand reported an 18.9% increase in revenue for the full year to $8.98 billion and a 21.1% year-over-year increase in fourth-quarter revenue to $2.33 billion.

For the three months ending Dec. 31, 2022, sales in footwear jumped 53.3%, while sales in apparel and accessories fell 1.6%. Net earnings dropped 82% in the quarter.

During the year, Puma extended its deal with AC Milan and became the official naming partner of the club’s performance center for “future talents” and its women’s team, called the “Puma House of Football.”

The company also became the official match ball provider of Serie A, starting with the 2022-23 season. 

Puma aims to become a “premium sports brand” in the U.S. by selling more higher-priced soccer, basketball, and running sportswear, according to CEO Arne Freundt.

One of Puma’s eight strategic priorities continues to be “re-entry into basketball to improve our position in North America.” 

Last year, Puma launched the first signature shoe for a female athlete in over a decade with WNBA player Breanna Stewart. 

Sales in the Americas region for the fourth quarter jumped 29% year-over-year. Sales increased 26.1% in the EMEA region and 1.6% in the Asia/Pacific region.