Charlotte’s PGA Tour event has a new title sponsor and a new contract through 2031
The future of men’s pro golf in Charlotte has been secured through at least 2031, as the PGA Tour’s annual event at Quail Hollow Club has acquired a new title sponsor.
Truist Financial Corporation, which is headquartered in Charlotte, will take over the sponsorship. The annual event will now be called the Truist Championship.
The event, which began in 2003 and quickly became one of the most popular weekends on Charlotte’s yearly sports calendar, had been known for most of its history as the Wells Fargo Championship.
The first Truist Championship in Charlotte will not be held until 2026, however. The tournament will be played at The Philadelphia Cricket Club in Pennsylvania in May 2025. That’s because it was announced in 2020 that Quail Hollow will once again be hosting the PGA Championship, one of golf’s four majors, in May 2025.
“It has long been the goal of Quail Hollow Club to welcome the best players in the world to the city of Charlotte,” Quail Hollow Club president Johnny Harris said in a statement. “While we continue to prepare for next year’s PGA Championship, we also look forward to 2026 when the club and community turn the page to the next chapter of professional golf in the Queen City. We look forward to the partnership with Truist and the PGA Tour and are grateful for their shared commitment to both Charlotte and the game of golf.”
Truist has signed a seven-year deal to sponsor the tournament, which means it will be the title sponsor of the “signature event” when it is being played in Charlotte in 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030 and 2031.
Said Bill Rogers, Truist’s chairman and CEO: “Sometimes you get to do things that are really transformational, and we think we’re right here today. ... Securing this event and keeping it here in Charlotte has been really, really important and needs to be celebrated for Truist and Quail Hollow Club and the overall greater Charlotte region.”
PGA commissioner Jay Monahan said he was happy that the Truist Championship would stay in Charlotte through 2031, particularly because Quail Hollow’s golf course has offered such a strong test to the game’s best players over the years.
“When you look at the golf course itself, with two PGA Championships, a Presidents Cup and now the Truist Championship,” Monahan said, “it’s very clear that when you look well out into the future, that consistency in terms of our presence and working together as partners, I think we all thought was the right outcome.”
Rogers said that stretching the agreement out for seven years will allow the tournament time to grow under the Truist name.
“I don’t know that there was a magic (number) of seven years in particular, but it takes a while to build a great brand and to build these great partnerships,” Rogers said.
Wells Fargo announced in December 2023 it was bowing out as a title sponsor of the golf tournament, leaving the event’s future location in doubt.
“Wells Fargo is not renewing the Wells Fargo Championship as a signature event in 2025 and beyond,” the bank said then in a statement. ”To drive efficiency and support our business long-term, we regularly review and adjust our overall sponsorship strategy.”
The Truist Championship will be one of what the PGA Tour has dubbed its “signature events” for all seven years of the new contract, Monahan said. Those events are elevated in scope: They have limited fields, no cuts, and increased FedExCup points and prize money.
The fields are usually 70-80 golfers, and the extra points and cash mean that golf’s top players almost all play them each year. While the event isn’t guaranteed to be on its traditional May date through 2031, the PGA Tour’s intention is likely to keep it in that preferential slot each year.
While the sponsorship cost to Truist wasn’t released, past media reports have indicated that PGA Tour events which are “signature events” can cost roughly $25 million per year as a title sponsor. With a seven-year commitment, it stands to reason Truist will spend somewhere north of $100 million during the life of the contract.
Truist was already a major player in Charlotte’s sports marketing world before the PGA Tour deal. The Charlotte Knights’ minor-league ballpark, with its well-known view of the uptown skyline, has been known as Truist Field since 2020.
Truist’s PGA Tour sponsorship comes less than a year after the bank announced a $750 million cost-cutting plan over 12 to 18 months. The restructuring initiatives announced last September have included several rounds of layoffs as recently as last month in the company’s technology department, as well as closing branches and consolidating management roles.
In 2019, Atlanta-based SunTrust and Winston-Salem-based BB&T merged in a $66 billion deal to form Truist, and chose Charlotte for the new bank’s headquarters.
As of June 30, Truist had assets of $520 billion and is the seventh-largest U.S. bank by asset total. Truist has about 40,000 employees, including more than 3,000 employees in the Charlotte area.
As for the PGA Tour event Truist is taking over, Rory McIlroy has been by far its most successful golfer, winning at Quail Hollow four times, including in 2024 by a five-shot margin over Xander Schauffele. No other player has won the tournament more than twice. The course’s final three holes are known as “The Green Mile” and are regarded as one of the more difficult finishing stretches on the circuit.
Observer reporter Catherine Muccigrosso contributed to this story.
