Going for the green: PGA Tour's plans for betting

Betting is part of golf’s DNA,” says Norb Gambuzza, the SVP for media business development at PGA Tour. Gambuzza is the man in charge of managing golf’s growing relationship with betting and, of course, making sure the sport receives its slice of the pie.

As Gambuzza says, most golf players are familiar with a friendly wager on a round, and the repeal of PASPA offers the sport and its betting partners the chance to tap into that culture and get fans betting on pro tournaments, rounds and even individual holes.

To that end, PGA Tour expanded its relationship with IMG Arena in September, agreeing to work together to deliver an official betting and data feed to US operators.

As in Europe, the feed will utilize ShotLink data, collected by around 350 volunteers per event through an “elaborate network” of walking scorers, lasers and greenside cameras.

That feed, which will include pricing, is expected to be ready for prime time early next year. Below, Gambuzza takes EGR NA through the Tour’s plans for the roll-out of betting content and why the organization supports official data legislation.

EGR North America (EGR NA): How much are you discussing betting policy and plans with the other pro sports leagues and politicians?

Norb Gambuzza (NG): We are very active in that space and we’re doing that in partnership with the NBA and Major League Baseball. We share resources and work on state-by-state conversations to try and reinforce our objectives about official data, mobile and other things.

EGR NA: Why do you think there is a need for legislation around official data when the likes of MLB have had a lot of success working these deals out commercially?

NG: Data and scoring distribution was a really important part of our business for years and we lost that as aggregators and distributors came into the space and started doing that. We maintain the position that some of that is in the public domain, but at the end of the day, it is our product and IP.

And if our fans are going to be betting on it, we want to make sure that it’s ours, it’s real and it’s accurate. So, we’re protecting the marketplace to some extent.

EGR NA: Have you invested more in the data collection process with the prospect of more betting?

NG: We’ve needed to upgrade our data collection and data distribution systems. Other leagues are a little bit more fortunate where they’ve got cameras and lasers focused on a rectangle or a diamond, while we’re on hundreds of acres with 144 players in the field and golf balls all over the place.

It is a data collection and distribution challenge to get all that done quickly and accurately, so there’s enormous focus on ShotLink and making sure the system is getting the data off the golf course and over to our partners at IMG Arena.

NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 01: Sr. Vice President of Media Business Development at PGA TOUR Norb Gambuzza speaks onstage at the 2nd Annual ‘NYVC Sports’ Venture Series: The Future of Sports Digital Media panel during Advertising Week 2015 AWXII at the Liberty Theater on October 1, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images for AWXII)

EGR NA: Given that complexity, it sounds like it could be difficult for an unofficial feed provider to really compete?

NG: Yeah, that’s the plan. We want to create a very deep and very rich product experience and ShotLink is foundational to that. So, it’s not just ‘did the ball hit the green?’ It’s ‘what quadrant did the ball hit’ or ‘exactly how many feet and inches is it away from the green?’

Official data in our space has more levels to it than in baseball or football where it’s a bit more of a linear track of what’s happening on the field of play versus all the nuances of golf.

EGR NA: Can you share some of the other innovations you have planned?

NG: You’ll be able to bet on the threesomes and the twosomes going round over the weekend and things like closest to the pin. IMG is building these products and is selling them now. We expect products to be in the marketplace in the first quarter of 2020.

We are involved largely from a technical standpoint. They’re the experts in the space and they know what operators want and they know what the fans want.

EGR NA: Are there any concerns about the integrity of the scorers on ShotLink? These are often students who are perhaps more open to manipulation?

NG: When I talked about the process of heavily investing in ShotLink, that’s not only hardware and software but also overall personnel training and monitoring.

We are going to have more people on site monitoring. And there’s also technical redundancies built into that system where, for example, odd behavior by a walking scorer or marking a ball wrong would be flagged and can be handled really quickly.

So yes, it’s a concern but we’re addressing the concerns.

EGR NA: Do you interact with operators directly at all?

NG: We are developing relationships with operators. I think it would be unwise for us to sit back and not have those relationships. So, we are developing those and understanding the market more. But we are not getting involved with product negotiations and things like that. That’s Arena’s area.

EGR NA: Where do you see the biggest opportunity here? Talking to NASCAR, for example, it was more about increasing fan engagement for them rather than directly monetizing betting.

NG: When we started looking at this space in late 2015/early 2016, we established some very foundational criteria, which was integrity first, fan development second and commercial opportunities third. So that’s the lens that we look at everything in this space through.

We’re not going to do anything that doesn’t pass the first or second screen. The first thing we did before we even started investigating commercial opportunities was establish an integrity program and educate all those stakeholders in our space.

Then on fan development, we have a commissioner who is finishing his third year, and from day one his stated objective has been to more deeply engage the fans that we have and also bring new fans into the tent.

So, we’re looking at this as a way to find other sports fans and expose them to our product and have them start consuming golf across the gaming platforms, but also our more traditional linear and digital platforms.

EGR NA: Is it fair to say gambling is built into the DNA of golf?

NG: When you are learning the game, the idea of playing a $2 Nassau or a $5 match is really kind of inherent to the game. And it’s all done in a gentlemanly manner.

If you win or lose, you take your hat off at the end of the round and you shake hands. So, we know that golfers understand that a gambling element is a natural part of the game.

CHARLOTTE, NC – AUGUST 13: Justin Thomas of the United States reacts to his putt on the 18th green with an -8 finish during the final round of the 2017 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club on August 13, 2017 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)

EGR NA: Have you thought about launching free-to-play games to warm golf fans up to betting?

NG: We are considering it. And we think the idea has got some merit but we looked at the games that are out there across other sports leagues and those games are not necessarily getting the kind of traction that people want.

EGR NA: What about other ways of preparing fans for more betting opportunities?

NG: To me, this is about content. How is the PGA Tour going to start populating our platforms with content around gaming? Are you going to talk to people at a very elementary level, or are you going to talk to fans who are more sophisticated bettors?

That content discussion is going on right now inside our place. It involves a lot of people and we’re putting a lot of thought into it. You’re going to see the introduction of talent talking about betting, graphics indicating odds and things like that.

We’re going to be very cautious about it, but we are going to start to move our teams into presenting content with gambling-related items in it.

EGR NA: So, somewhat similar to the DFS deal you did with DraftKings that has seen DFS advice appear on your platforms?

NG: Yeah, that partnership has helped us move a little bit closer to the gaming space in terms of content. If you go on PGATour.com, we’re now beginning to talk about how to build a fantasy team and how to approach a particular tournament with particular players.

EGR NA: How are you handling that move towards gambling content? It’s not necessarily easy to do in an informed way.

NG: I think we acknowledge that we need to bring subject matter experts in-house for that. We’re not going to jump into the deep end of the pool and all of a sudden you’re going to log on the PGA Tour app and there’s going to be a giant gaming section talking to you.

I think you’ll probably see first a third-party content partnership that takes our brand and our data but gets that content from experts who know how to do this.

So that may be step one. And then step two would be to take our existing talent, the talent that’s doing the telecast on CBS, NBC and Golf Channel, and just touch on odds or put graphics up two or three times during the telecast about gaming. We know we can do that and that can be authentic.

Authenticity is very important because our fans are very sensitive and very finicky, and that will be called out.

EGR NA: So perhaps a third-party content deal could initially make more sense, like NASCAR and The Action Network?

NG: We’re looking at things like that. From an organizational standpoint, do we want to hire 15 new people for this or hire it out? We think a third-party deal is a great way to start and whether we continue with that long term, I’m not sure.

We’re also in the middle of our domestic rights media negotiations as our current deal runs through 2021. A lot of those media partners are starting to build custom TV feeds in regions where betting is legal. So that’s another layer to this that is adding complexity and, frankly, opportunity.

The media companies are all planning on doing some things around this but I don’t think any of them are as far along as they’d like.

EGR NA: Was the Mickleson/Woods match a decent testing ground for some of the ideas we might see in the future, like live odds on the telecast?

NG: We had a hand in building that and working with Tiger and Phil and MGM and the organizers of that to present it in a way we thought was good. It wasn’t a 10 out of 10 commercial success, but it was a really good start.

Turner [owner of Bleacher Report], which ran the media side of it, was really pleased with demand both on the pay TV platforms but also on the digital subscription product.