Measuring the Ryder Cup’s Impact on New York

Client Challenge

The PGA of America brought the Ryder Cup to New York for the first time, staging the 2025 matches at Bethpage Black on Long Island — a public course roughly 35 miles from New York City. With more than 220,000 fans attending and the event positioned in the largest metropolitan economy in the world, the PGA needed an independent, credible accounting of what the tournament meant for the State of New York, both in direct spending and in broader community and tourism value.

Approach

Brian Connolly led an economic and fiscal impact analysis through Columbia University's Sports Management program, combining a post-event survey of Ryder Cup ticket purchasers with event operations and spending data from the PGA of America and its partners. The team modeled attendee travel and trip spending, isolated net new activity by focusing on out-of-state visitors whose primary reason for travel was the Ryder Cup, applied New York State tax rules to estimate fiscal impact, and benchmarked the results against prior Ryder Cups and PGA Championships to place the figures in event- and venue-level context.

Benefits to Client

The study quantified nearly $399 million in net new direct spending within New York State — close to three times the impact of the 2021 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits — along with roughly $34.7 million in net new state sales tax and nearly 194,000 hotel and short-term rental nights generated by out-of-state visitors. Beyond the direct figures, the analysis captured the event's intangible value, from record-breaking international broadcast audiences to long-term tourism and destination-marketing momentum, giving the PGA of America a transparent, defensible account of the Ryder Cup's significance to the region.