A different ball game: Why sports bettors are flocking to golf

When Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama tapped in a foot-long putt on the 18th hole to claim his first Masters win and slip on the coveted green jacket, traders at most betting firms toasted a favorable and profitable result. The 29-year-old had generally been priced up as a 40/1 and 50/1 chance before the tournament started at Augusta National, and even before he teed off for the final round with a four-shot lead he was friendless in the betting market. Instead, the in-play money came for chasing US stars Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, and Jordan Spieth. In fact, Spieth attracted 15% of all wagers on the outright market beforehand at PointsBet following his win just days prior at the Valero Texas Open, ending a 1,351-day drought without a victory.

“It was by far our highest handle golf tournament since we started in the US, and Hideki [Matsuyama] winning was just about the best result imaginable,” reflects Jay Croucher, PointsBet’s head of trading for the US, from the company’s Denver HQ. “Hideki was 40/1 and there wasn’t much activity on him, so it was a really good result for us and, and by all indications pretty much bookmakers all over the world.” And it doesn’t seem the absence of five-time champion Tiger Woods due to a car crash dampened interest in the 85th Masters. “The handle on this year’s event was pretty phenomenal,” explains Johnny Avello, a veteran oddsmaker and head of sportsbook at DraftKings. “I thought this event would be big, but it exceeded my expectations; it was the largest golf tournament we’ve ever had and one of our top-10 overall events of all time.”

Such is the rise in popularity of golf betting, handle at DraftKings has ballooned more than 10x over the past year. This can partly be attributed to the Boston-based operator’s expansion of its sportsbook into new states, yet there is no denying the rising interest in a sport once infamously described as “a good walk spoiled.” Interest in DFS golf is still high, too. It is the fourth-most popular sport at DraftKings (the firm is the exclusive DFS partner of the PGA Tour) and it has run its ‘Millionaire Maker’ contest for Majors since 2014. The company’s headline $4m guaranteed tournament ($10 a go and up to 150 entries per person) for the Masters once again filled as it attracted 473,000 entries competing for a first prize of more than $1m. Moreover, both DraftKings and rival FanDuel use fantasy golf to cross-sell players into having a bet on the action in states where it’s legal and they are present.

In addition, just the inherent nature of the sport is attractive for bettors, with around 150 golfers competing at each event on the PGA Tour. It is akin to one massive NBA or NFL futures market practically every week where the favorite is around the 10/1 mark. “The sport lends itself perfectly [to betting],” says Scott Warfield, who joined the PGA Tour as VP of gaming in January after 11 years with NASCAR. “The amount of content is incredible, it’s throughout the year, you have four days of the tournament, and golfers are on the course from seven in the morning to seven at night. You’ve got hundreds of balls in the air and we’re tracking all of the data that comes off the course. It’s probably unparalleled. And you couple that with the pace of play being perfect for in-play betting, which is advantageous as it gives everyone time to reset and reload on odds, new markets and bet types.”

Live and direct

In-play betting on golf is touted as a massive opportunity. The hectic, back-and-forth nature of basketball and latency makes it difficult to get bets on and offer a good in-play user experience. Golf’s slower pace, however, combined with the fact there is four days of play with overnight breaks makes it far more conducive to live wagering than NBA, NFL, NHL, and even MLB. Accurate ball-speed and tracking data collected from the course helps enrich the in-play offering. For example, global online giant bet365 released its Live Golf Tracker product last year to allow customers to follow, all within the bet365 app, every stroke, including ball position and distance to the hole, in real time with shot-by-shot data and course visualizations for 80 of the largest PGA Tour and European Tour competitions, although it does exclude Majors.

As well as two par-three holes streamed live daily and live scoreboards, the console retrieves data and text for all players from all 18 holes of the previous rounds. Betting companies rarely receive much in the way of plaudits, but this innovation was roundly praised on Twitter among gambling industry folk and bettors alike when it was first unveiled in November 2020.

Dozens of players on different holes simultaneously means broadcasters are unable to show every shot, which means often what is beamed into audiences’ homes has already happened seconds or minutes earlier and is, therefore, a replay. As a result, providing accurate and up-to-the-second live data within betting apps will encourage more to place in-play wagers. In fact, Warfield insists the PGA Tour has made “incredible investment” in its tech infrastructure and data collection.

PointsBet hired golfer and social media personality Paige Spiranac to amplify the brand and help acquire new customers

“It is an area that is progressively getting better,” says Croucher. “There’s more and more data around individual golfers in-play and more shot location data in real time. That allows us to offer more and more granular markets. The next step is we’ll get vision of every single player, so being able to follow Viktor Hovland around the course and have a vision of him every single hole and be able to bet on him. It’s a gap at the moment, but one that I think will be solved in the near future with streaming capabilities – the PGA Tour has been really progressive towards sports betting in the US and making the betting experience more immersive and engaging.” PointsBet claimed last year to offer 500% more bet types for PGA Tour events compared with the industry average, and Croucher insists offering more diverse markets is what golf bettors are after.

“The US betting market is becoming more sophisticated with more markets beyond just typical stuff of outright winner top-five, top-10 and two-ball, three-ball markets. It’s Bryson DeChambeau longest drive or Dustin Johnson under/over eagles on day one. All of this type of stuff is engaging.” Historical course and player data and algorithms are used to price up all these derivative markets, which is a far cry from when a duo in the UK pulled off a golf betting coup in the early 1990s. Later referred to as the ‘Hole in One Gang’, they placed a series of smallish bets with different bookies who had wildly miscalculated the odds of an ace occurring at a tournament (it’s nowadays typically priced up as slight odds-on chance) and they went to win more than £500,000.

Reversing the trend

Google Trends shows, perhaps unsurprisingly, massive spikes in US searches for ‘golf betting’ in the lead up to major tournaments, and the Masters was no exception. Gambling on golf, as well as DFS, can go some way to stemming the decline in TV viewership over the years. Well, that’s the hope. Nielsen reported coverage of the Masters’ final round drew an average of 9.45 million viewers, although this was the smallest audience since 1993 if you discount 2020’s rescheduled event from April to November due to Covid-19 (just 5.6 million viewers, the lowest since 1957). The appeal of Tiger Woods and his surprise victory in 2019 attracted the largest average audience since 2010 – 15.5 million – yet this was a rare spike in the overall trend.

A study published in 2016 revealed the average age of a PGA Tour viewer was 64, up from 59 in 2006. This was older than the average viewer of all the major US sports. Realizing the need to attract more fans, especially younger ones over the age of 21, the PGA Tour has been quick to embrace betting. It has inked partnership deals with leading operators FanDuel, BetMGM, PointsBet, and DraftKings, as well as teamed up with the Action Network to launch golf betting content platform GolfBet. And on April 14 it was announced that DraftKings is to create a first-of-its-kind physical sportsbook at a golf course, TPC Scottsdale in Arizona, a state where a bill legalizing sports betting has just received the seal of approval from Governor Doug Ducey.

The PGA Tour and DraftKings plan to create a “visually stunning 19th hole experience” where fans can “gather year-round to place wagers, watch sports, and enjoy quality food and beverage options.” DraftKings is also the exclusive sports betting partner of the Waste Management Phoenix Open hosted annually at TPC Scottsdale. On the partnerships with betting companies and legal sports betting expansion across the US, Warfield says: “We’re starting to see positive results. We’re seeing encouraging TV ratings. I won’t say that’s because of sports betting, but I don’t think it’s hurting, especially as we start to see the American consumer catch up to more mature markets from a betting perspective in terms of percentage of in-play [betting].” He adds: “We think, over time, this is going to further engage the core fan, and it’s going to help us attract a younger and more diverse audience.”

Going logo

We could also see more players ink deals with sports betting operators in the near future. Last November, just ahead of the 2020 Masters, DraftKings signed a multi-year relationship with leading US golfer Bryson DeChambeau, who became the first active player to don the operator’s logo. “He certainly helps DraftKings’ name,” says Avello. “It’s kind of a nice marriage [between] him and DraftKings.” Meanwhile, PointsBet recently hired golfer and social media personality Paige Spiranac to amplify the brand and help acquire new customers. Spiranac, who has amassed eight million followers across social platforms, including three million on Instagram, took an equity stake in the Australia-founded operator. “Paige has been phenomenal,” says Croucher when discussing PointsBet’s customer acquisition and brand promotion efforts.

Looking to the future with regards the sport itself as a betting product, it seems clear more data and in-play wagering is going to drive further engagement and interest in golf. And with the PGA Tour featuring a host of star players these days and stacked fields at Majors where 10-20 players have a legitimate chance of being crowned the winner on the Sunday, the on-course action rarely fails to disappoint. “It’s a popular sport with bettors,” says Avello. “Whereas other games like baseball it is selective and a certain crowd that likes to bet it, golf seems to be [bet by] a lot of people. It’s also smaller amounts of bets, except that we do have some VIPs that fire pretty good on golf.”

Similarly, Croucher says: “From the pre-match perspective, I think one of the best betting experiences out there is backing someone on the Wednesday or Thursday morning and then having them be right in the mix on the Sunday.” As for Matsuyama, his status in his homeland was elevated to new heights after becoming the first Japanese player to triumph at the Masters. In fact, one Japanese newspaper ran a huge color graphic visualization of every tee-to-green shot he played over the 72 holes en-route to victory at 10 under par, one stroke ahead of his nearest challenger. Proof, if it were needed, that data continues to heighten interest in the game of golf.