Jake is a Football and Entertainment betting expert, with a Man City season ticket and a deep knowledge of reality TV betting angles
- Scottie Scheffler is the odds-on favourite to win the FedEx Cup with Playoffs ongoing
- The FedEx Cup may be the unofficial fifth ‘major’ in the golf calendar but it is the single biggest prize in the sport – elite players can earn big with the winner walking away with £19.2m
- According to research by OLBG that makes the FedEx Cup the most lucrative prize in all of sport, outside of the far more dangerous pursuits of top tier boxing and Formula 1
- The FedEx Cup winner also collect 25% of the overall prize purse, a share that is only bettered by the winnings of the most famous boxers and the winner of the Saudi Cup
Scottie Scheffler is the odds-on favourite to win the FedEx Cup with Playoffs ongoing
Betting remains available on the FedEx Cup with betting sites keeping Scottie Scheffler as the favourite with the BMW Championship ongoing at Castle Pines in Castle Rock, Colarado this week.
Scheffler headed into the event with the lead in the FedEx Cup rankings and looks to stay that way at the time of writing with although the BMW Championship's 2,000 points available for winning could change that.
The current live-standings according to the PGA Tour's official site for the FedEx Cup are:
| Player | Projected | Official | Projected event pts | Official | Projected total | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Scottie Scheffler | 1 | - | 1 | 196.000 | 6,533 | 6,728.750 | |
 Xander Schauffele | 2 | - | 2 | 340.000 | 5,037 | 5,377.333 | |
 Hideki Matsuyama | 3 | - | 3 | 1,200.000 | 3,899 | 5,098.855 | |
 Keegan Bradley | 4 | 46 | 50 | 2,000.000 | 1,096 | 3,095.621 | |
 Collin Morikawa | 5 | 1 | 4 | 261.600 | 2,596 | 2,857.396 |
Keegan Bradley looks like he will be the biggest climber in the FedEx Cup rankings if the leaderboard stays as it is with a projected 46 places gained on his current showing which proves just how quickly everything can change.
Betting odds for the FedEx Cup have Scheffler as the odds-on favourite at 4/5 with those odds giving him an implied probability of 55.6% that he wins the famous trophy.
| FedEx Cup Winner | Odds | Probability |
|---|---|---|
| Scottie Scheffler | 4/5 | 55.6% |
| Xander Schauffele | 3/1 | 25.0% |
| Hideki Matsuyama | 12/1 | 7.7% |
| Keegan Bradley | 14/1 | 6.7% |
| Collin Morikawa | 16/1 | 5.9% |
What the expert says...
The FedEx Cup is the biggest single prize in sport for an individual competitor after a major boxing fight or the F1 World Drivers’ Championship, according to a study by OLBG.
Although not one of the true ‘majors’ in the golfing calendar, the FedEx Cup is regarded as the fifth most prestigious competition in the sport, and the one with the highest prize for the winner with the victor set to walk away with a cool £19.2million.
Only boxers such as Tyson Fury, who can command a very generous share of their fight purse for a single event and F1 champions like Max Verstappen can pick up a bigger pay day by lifting the world titles in their respective sports. In Fury’s case he doesn’t even have to win!
Based on available data, Fury’s recent earnings in his loss to Oleksandr Usyk came in at around £77m compared with £54m for Verstappen – far and above what the likes of Scottie Scheffler could land in the FedEx Cup this year.
Top 20 most lucrative prizes in sport according to OLBG
After tracking down details on the prize pots and winnings for the other big earning competitions in other sports, OLBG were able to rank these tournaments into a top 20, with the FedEx Cup’s winning prize worth more than every competition outside of the top five combined.
That means that the winner of the FedEx Cup secures a bigger windfall than the prizes that are available for individuals winning the Champions League, European Championship, Europa League, Indian Premier League, NBA Championship, Stanley Cup, Super Bowl, World Series and the World Cups in cricket, football and rugby union – and all the four tennis majors too.
If a tennis player were to have secured all four majors this year, they would have won £9,140,000, still £10,060,000 short of what’s in play at the FedEx Cup.
A football player who was somehow able to win the Champions League, European Championship, Europa League and World Cup would stand to collect around £6,635,892, extending the gap to what’s on offer in golf’s most lucrative tournament to £12,564,108.
Let’s say North America sees the emergence of a sporting renaissance man able to somehow compete and win across all their major sports. An athlete who won the MLB World Series, NBA Championship, NFL Super Bowl and NHL’s Stanley Cup would bring home an estimated £1,311,482 from winnings alone.
That’s £17,888,518 below what is on offer in the FedEx Cup, although of course such an athlete would be one of the most famous faces on the planet and earning many times that amount through endorsements and other commercial partnerships.
Of course, this is also the case with other sports where the outlier superstars will earn more than these estimations due to the nature of their own celebrity and status as stand out players on bigger contracts that include various incentives to win big and earn big too.
Yet bringing it back to the prize money on offer merely for winning a competition, the FedEx Cup is the most lucrative tournament in all of sport unless you’re willing to put your body and life on the line in a boxing ring or a racing car going over 230mph, with all the risks that entails.
How the research was conducted
OLBG’s number crunchers tracked down the best possible data on prize pots and winnings per sport, relying on official sources where possible and other data providers.
Where figures on winnings per individual were unavailable, the overall prize money that their teams could earn was divided by the number of players in the team or squad competing in that competition.
