Ahead of the next week’s PLAYERS Championship, the PGA Tour revealed a new partnership with Amazon Web Services – the cloud-based service provider – to boost its growing media business and produce new digital experiences for its fans.
“This transformational partnership with AWS will give our fans the opportunity to experience the PGA Tour like never before,” said PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan via a release.
“Growing and diversifying our fan base is a top priority for us, and thanks to the collaboration and innovation from AWS, we are creating more ways to experience the game of golf, while personalizing our content to enable fans to engage with the tournaments and players they support.”
Scott Gutterman, the PGA Tour’s senior vice president of digital operations, added, “We are excited to utilize AWS media services to further enhance new and existing innovative services for our fans. Features like Every Shot Live and TOURCast will now be powered by AWS, which will allow for a more streamlined process and overall better product for our fans.
“Every Shot Live” is an app that provides fans video access to every player in the tournament. The feature that was initially unveiled ahead of the 2020 Players Championship will now be powered and improved by AWS.
The Tour will also move “nearly 100 years of media content to AWS – including video, audio, and images dating back to the 1928 Los Angeles Open” into a data lake, where live footage from future tournaments will also be streamed.
“The partnership and experience we create with the Tour will be unique,” said AWS CEO Andy Jassy. “Unlike other sports, there’s more than one ball in play on a golf course, which makes it harder for fans to follow how every player is performing.
“Our collaboration with the Tour will change the way that fans will be able to connect with the sport by giving them real-time access to virtually every moment on the course and letting them determine how they experience the game.”
Some of the new features are expected to be released in time for next week’s PLAYERS at TPC Sawgrass.