By The PGA Tour and Amazon have teamed up to create the ultimate golfer experience through the PGA Tour app! Every shot from every player from every tournament. The idea behind having the partnership with Amazon will greatly benefit the fan experience. The technology still is in the works and we might not see this fully take place until later in the year, but this changes the game.
Golf is a game where not many people can sit down and watch the TV coverage for 5 straight hours. A lot of it is people hopping back and forth between channels or they are just checking in to see the scores. Obviously, the diehard fans will either be at the course itself watching the action live or they will hunker down for the full duration of the broadcast.
Last Year’s Plan
The PGA Tour had a plan in place to start this movement during the 2020 Players Championship, but that was the week where Covid-19 shut down the world. The PGA Tour app has been slowly trending toward this agreement. They have added the ability to track each shot on a graphic in the app and be able to see every player from every group, which is awesome, but with this new contract, the PGA Tour will be able to put the video of that shot with the tracking software.
The only benefit of the pandemic is that many people around the country decided to pick up the game of golf. At the time, golf was the only thing that was open and somewhat normal from the pre-COVID-19 era. Golf courses and tee times everywhere were packed all the way until dark. The only thing that stopped play was sunlight. Golf is a very addicting game, and it has now been spread to thousands of more people just in one year alone.
What is the plan moving forward?
The PGA Tour app has been improving every year. They add new features to it such as adding favorite players to get notifications after every round they play. Another thing that they have added over the years is the odds that a player will win the tournament. For example, each player will be given odds to win depending on their Official World Golf Rank (OWGR) and it will stick with them throughout the week. This helps the Tour tremendously because a lot of people who watch sports and specifically golf like to bet on the action. One thing that Amazon will help add to the app is the ability to speed watch a round of every player. Let’s say you wanted to watch Jordan Spieth, but you only have 10 minutes of free time. You can now watch every shot of his round in a short clip. It is awesome because you can watch any golfer’s entire round in minutes and know exactly what happened on every hole.
The plan moving forward is to advance technology for the fan experience and many experts in the golf industry believe that they are going to create a top-notch app for everything any golfer would want. Advanced stats and analytics will continue to grow, making the need for average golf fans to get and collect information, even more, a demand.
Flaws of the PGA Tour
The Tour gets scrutinized for is their TV coverage time slot. Many times throughout the year, the coverage will not start until the leaders are 4 to 5 holes into their round. A lot of golf fans have been vocal about this issue because they want to see the leaders tee off. Fans will be able to look at the leaders and watch each shot almost simultaneously as the live-action happens. This should create more of a buzz around golf and the Tour to help promote their superstars even more.
Timetable
Only time will tell how good this contract between the PGA Tour and Amazon will be but this sounds really cool. A realistic timeline would be definitely before the FedEx Cup Playoffs start in late August. This is really an exciting time to be a golf fan with both the play on the course and the fan experience outside the ropes.
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