Tag: Amazon Web Services

PGA Tour expands use of TrackMan in 2022 to ‘help enrich the fan experience’

The PGA Tour will double its use of TrackMan in 2022 to provide a more dynamic viewing experience for fans.

On Wednesday the PGA Tour and TrackMan announced it would not just expand its partnership, but double the use of the popular tracking system in order to provide tracing capabilities for every golf shot hit during the season and enhance how fans follow the game.

Fans will first experience the new content in 2022 on PGA Tour Live on ESPN+ and the Tour’s digital platforms. A new television agreement begins in 2023.

“We have been working closely with the PGA Tour for more than 15 years, to accurately measure and report data on club delivery, ball launch, ball flight, and tracers for the best players in the world,” said Klaus Eldrup-Jorgensen, co-founder and CEO of TrackMan. “We are proud to be chosen to implement our new solutions with the PGA Tour, which will ultimately include all shots for all players. The future of golf will be told in new and innovative ways, the fan experience will elevate to a new level, and the stories about how good these guys play is just beginning.”

Future of ShotLink: More tours, more stats, more videos and fans in control

Last March the Tour partnered with Amazon Web Services to improve how fans view tournaments. For example, AWS will power Every Shot Live, an app that will provide viewers live access to every shot from every player in a tournament.

Fans won’t just get to see where a shot lands, but they’ll also learn why it landed why it did due to TrackMan’s ability to capture club speed, ball speed, curve, landing spin, launch angle, spin rate, spin axis, apex, carry and more. An advanced aerodynamic model can also determine how wind, weather, and altitude would alter a shot.

“We’re excited to increase the volume and depth of tracking and tracing for every shot on the PGA Tour,” said Ken Lovell, PGA Tour Senior Vice President of Golf Technologies. “TrackMan’s sensors will substantially increase content available for analysis and initiate the development of new insights, while creating the opportunity for us to develop innovative visualizations for fans to view all the incredible shots on Tour.”

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The Future of ShotLink: More tours, more stats, more videos and fans in control

PGA Tour partners with Amazon to boost ShotLink capabilities while also developing an easier-to-use system that could work on for the LPGA.

Collin Morikawa was not walking the fairways at the Albany Golf Club or hanging out at the beach the Monday before the Hero World Challenge, Tiger Woods’ event in the Bahamas. He was 15 miles northwest of the Las Vegas Strip at TPC Summerlin, along with Michelle Wie West, Max Homa, Danielle Kang, Harry Higgs, David Duval, Graeme McDowell and a host of other PGA Tour and LPGA Tour players.

Caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay was there, too, as the emcee of the first AWS Golf Invitational, a corporate pro-am for Amazon Web Services and Deloitte VIPs in town for a massive conference. And all of them were about to become guinea pigs for new technology that potentially could change how golf fans watch and interact with the sport and data on multiple tours.

The PGA Tour is king of the mountain when it comes to collecting data from all the shots players hit during most Tour events. Using ShotLink, developed in 2003, the Tour can provide fans with detailed information about where players hit the ball, all in or close to real time. It’s an expensive system that requires a lot of boots on the ground to produce, and currently ShotLink is out of reach for the PGA Tour Champions, Korn Ferry Tour and the LPGA Tour.

Collin Morikawa
Collin Morikawa at TPC Summerlin (David Dusek/Golfweek)

To make similar data available beyond the PGA Tour, the Tour and its partners are working to develop a lighter, less-expensive shot-tracking and statistics platform for the Korn Ferry Tour and Champions Tour while simultaneously developing the next generation of ShotLink.

Enter Amazon Web Services and all those pros and pro-am guests at TPC Summerlin, site of the PGA Tour’s Shriners Children’s Open. They were part of a beta test of the new system, and I was the only reporter onsite to get a first look at a system that might revolutionize how golf fans are able to interact with the sport on multiple tours.

It’s all part of a plan to help the PGA Tour and other tours attract new viewers with enhanced engagement, either through a better, modernized ShotLink that utilizes Amazon’s vast computing network, or through a new alternative system that might best be described as ShotLink Lite. And fans already have been given a taste.

In March the PGA Tour announced it was entering a new partnership with AWS and gave golf lovers a preview. During the 2021 Players Championship – while another Tour partner, CDW, helped it gather data on the course – AWS powered Every Shot Live, an app that gave fans the ability to see every shot hit by each player in a tournament. That was more than 32,000 shots in real time, a massively complex data and computing job. AWS’ powerful cloud-based tools and infrastructure helped make it possible.

Players Championship offers free viewing of ambitious ‘Every Shot Live’ platform

The PGA Tour’s ambitious “Every Shot Live” platform only got one round at the 2020 Players Championship. The whole package will be available this week, beginning with Thursday’s first round – all 32,000 shots, or less, if the best professionals in …

The PGA Tour’s ambitious “Every Shot Live” platform only got one round at the 2020 Players Championship.

The whole package will be available this week, beginning with Thursday’s first round – all 32,000 shots, or less, if the best professionals in the world have anything to say about it.

The estimate for the total number of shots was drawn from the 2019 tournament. Thanks to 120 dedicated cameras spread out over the TPC Sawgrass Players Stadium Course, fans don’t need to miss a single shot from their favorite player or a select group – an option even more important this year, since the capacity for the tournament is being limited to 20 percent.

Every Shot Live is available to PGA Tour Live subscribers on NBC Sports Gold but fans will get a bonus this year: the first round will available free, and a one-week trial is available on PGA Tour Live.

Past ticket purchasers will qualify for the free week and will be notified by email on March 8 with directions on how to register.

Every Shot Live got a big power boost last week with the announcement that the Tour had forged a partnership with Amazon Web Services to be the official cloud provider for the Tour.

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“This transformational partnership with AWS will give our fans the opportunity to experience the PGA Tour like never before,” said Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “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.”

Fans will also be able to control their viewing experience with AWS’ TOURCast, a leaderboard that will provide new camera angles, course navigation, speed rounds and on-demand stats.

AWS will also assist First Tee in developing an online community for its teachers and youth leaders in order to grow the program.

The Tour will also move almost a century’s worth of content to AWS, with 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 task of utilizing the cameras to cover every shot by 144 players, for 72 holes, is being undertaken by PGA Tour Entertainment and NBC Sports Group.

“The Players has developed a tradition of innovation where we’ve been able to deliver new technology to golf, and we are excited to welcome Every Shot Live back for the 2021 event,” said Players executive director Jared Rice in a statement. “With a limited footprint of fans on site this year, we want to ensure those closest to this event – our friends and neighbors here in Northeast Florida – feel engaged with us. We know the impact of Every Shot Live, as well as the various opportunities our partners are offering throughout this community, will allow for everyone to feel as though they are part of the action taking place onsite.”

In addition to Every Shot Live, The Players also is offering fan engagement opportunities in the area for the 2021 Players, which sold out of its available tickets within hours on Feb. 16.

The Players has partnered with area restaurants and golf courses to bring the tournament to the community in the form of promotions, nightly food and drink specials and opportunities for fans to win Players merchandise.

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PGA Tour partners with Amazon Web Services to improve how fans view future, past tournaments

The PGA Tour has partnered with Amazon Web Services to improve how fans view future and past tournaments.

In a move to bring fans closer to golf, the PGA Tour announced a new partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Tuesday, which makes AWS the official cloud provider for the Tour.

“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.”

So, what does this new partnership mean for fans?

AWS will power Every Shot Live, an app that will provide viewers live access to every shot from every player in a tournament. Using the upcoming Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass as an example, fans will be able to see more than 32,000 shots and follow players in real time.

Fans will also be able to control their viewing experience with AWS’ TOURCast, a new, innovative leaderboard that will provide new camera angles, course navigation, speed rounds and on-demand stats.

AWS will also assist the First Tee in developing an online community for its teachers and youth leaders in order to grow the program.

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.”