PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — It’s The Players Championship week, and you know what that means: The collective gaze of golf fans zooms in The Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass and expands to 4000 square meters 17 green.
On Sunday, the tournament will be decided in part based on whether the world’s best players can find the green in regulation.
But first: What about Rob Gronkowski?
That’s the question being asked by gaming giant and PGA Tour gaming partner FanDuel, which pays Gronkowski a handsome number to serve as a ringleader in its marketing schemes. The future Hall-of-Fame tight end hit the Sawgrass on Tuesday with a fleet of contentious producers. If he hits the green, FanDuel will offer its users a portion of the $300,000 in bonus bets through its platform. This was modern multi-level marketing at its best. Educating the public about an upcoming event, attracting them to an influencer, promising something (or at least a chance at something) in exchange for their attention. But also … asking them to pony up.
You see it everywhere in sports these days. Gambling, gambling, gambling. It’s a massive industry — $166 billion was wagered on sports in America by 2025 — and it’s legal (to varying degrees) in more than 35 states. Betting can also be a controversial and inflammatory corner of the sports world. Just this week, two MLS players received life sentences for their roles in the game’s corrupt action. Many pro and collegiate basketball players have been sued by the federal government for their roles in match-fixing for money. Similar controversy landed on MLB’s doorstep with a pair of Cleveland Guardians pitchers last fall.
Golf hasn’t had that kind of front-page scandal. At least not yet. And the PGA Tour is keen to keep it that way. But they also remain keen to rely wherever they can on mutually beneficial partnerships between sports leagues and gaming operators.
A recent development in the Tour’s balancing act has only come in recent weeks. On Monday, DraftKings announced that for the first time ever, it will offer same-game submissions to golf events. These multi-leg bets have often been proven to offer more punter-friendly odds than normal, but they still have exploded in popularity thanks to an added bonus at a lower cost. This has been very good for the sports books and occasionally very good for the individuals, but it is good business for the tournament. The timing before the Tour’s biggest event doesn’t seem like a coincidence.
“The reason we got into gaming was engagement,” said Scott Warfield, Tour vice president of gaming. “If we can get people to look longer through this legalized activity, what does that do to quarterly ratings, what does that do to media deals, the interest that comes in to attend the event… That’s the lens through which we judge success.”
On the other side of the coin, just two weeks ago the Tour issued new guidelines for its players on how to report gambling-related harassment, in person or online. If a caddy hears too much from an overserved spectator, the Tour can do something about it. If an unsuccessful player in North Dakota goes after Chris Gotterup on Venmo, for example, DraftKings can suspend (or ban) their account. The new measures are a proactive move, to be sure, but also an open recognition of the ecosystem the Tour is moving into now. Hey, you have to deal with these things, but we’ll do everything we can to protect against them.
The Tour, like other sports leagues, understands that revenue and engagement will increase the more it leans into gambling. Hence the hard work to prepare golf games for the same game for The Players Championship – and the hard work to prepare its technology for even more markets. Three years ago, the Tour reworked its 20-year-old ShotLink system to eliminate almost all room for human error. What started as a chance to gamble during the tournament in 2018 has grown into thousands of individual opportunities. Coming in the next few years, Warfield believes, are all-round possibilities. And why? Because each full-field event offers approximately 30,000 shots. Like a casino that offers a variety of table games, the Tour is interested in options. As it is, the Tour has seen 30 to 35% annual returns on the golf betting handle. It is a very popular gambling sport, especially in summer.
Golf has its specific advantages. One of them: It works at a slower pace than some of its peers. The NBA shot clock is 24 seconds and the NFL game clock is 40 seconds, but golfers need minutes to walk between each shot and 15 minutes to play each hole, giving operators and bettors plenty of time to take advantage.
But golf habits also make him vulnerable. Spectators are expected to stay quiet when players are on their golf ball – but what if they don’t?
At the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February, YouTuber Jack Doherty deliberately tried to upset Mackenzie Hughes as he stood over a tee shot in a fairway bunker thanks to a $100 dare. (Not even through an approved sports book, it’s worth noting.) Doherty unapologetically told himself in a number of ways – posting videos of the event online – and earned a lifetime ban from the tournament in return. Not every player would be brave enough to say, Hey, look! I did it.
And so the Tour is trying to keep pace. The league is so interested in prevention that it has begun training volunteers to stand in the middle of a crowd (rather than inside the ropes) to better identify perpetrators and bad behavior.
“You have to understand that we’re not immune to it,” says Andy Levinson, SVP of Tour Administration at the Tour. “We’re not immune to the potential for corruption, we’re not immune to bad actors, all of that. That exists and that threat will always be there. So the first and foremost thing is — everything we do in this space is integrity first.”
The tournament’s “integrity program,” as it’s aptly called, outlines all kinds of regulations not just for players, but for anyone who might naturally gain access to inside information. Their agents, bodies, coaches, even their wives, mothers and fathers. Board members, tournament volunteers, and even tournament employees who host video clips for social media are not allowed to bet on golf. The terms of the program are both specific – gambling on elite amateur events is also off limits – and also deliberately vague to cast a wide net against potential violations.
Not every element of Tour gambling mimics the work of other leagues, especially given the changing landscape. As an organization, the Tour is allowing the phrases of the prediction market to develop, “and not be a first mover,” Warfield said. (Tournament professionals may accept sponsorships from gambling companies but NO prediction marketsaccording to the Player’s Handbook.) The tournament also does not produce injury reports like those other leagues have made mandatory. “It’s really, really complicated to do,” Levinson said. “And in golf, you can be injured all year (and still play).
However, Levinson and Warfield are proud of the proactive role the Tour has taken in lobbying lawmakers in cities and states across the country to do their part in the gambling world. It’s an inexact science to squeeze everything they can out of a business opportunity, while also protecting their product from bad actors. They have partnered with Genius sport to monitor all betting markets and also reached an agreement with IC360, the same company recently charged monitoring officials in the next March Madness.
“Not many people have two different integrity monitoring partners,” Warfield noted.
“We’re watching,” Levinson said.
“We’ll find out,” Warfield concluded.
;)
