The PGA Tour has appointed Amazon Web Services (AWS) as official cloud provider. As part of this deal, AWS will assist the Tour in storing, analyzing, and distributing the content produced during golf tournaments, as well as create new digital offerings for fans to encourage interactive experiences.
As AWS will distribute PGA Tour content through different platforms and devices, the tournament footage will be available globally to authenticated broadcasters and OTT subscribers. Furthermore, AWS’s Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) will be used to create a data lake for real-time and historic multimedia golfing content dating back to 1928. Amazon Rekognition (AWS’s deep learning service) will be used to analyze and automatically tag the content with metadata.
AWS will also power Every Shot Live, the over-the-top TV app and platform designed to give viewers access to every shot in a PGA tournament and follow any player in real-time. Every Shot Live was scheduled to debut in 2020 at The Players Championship, but the pandemic postponed the launch. PGA Tour’s TOURCast will benefit from AWS too as this will enable fans to access alternative camera angles, navigate around the course, view speed rounds, and display player and shot stats on-demand, just like a video game.
This deal also makes AWS a trustee of the First Tee, a youth development organization supported by the Tour that helps more than 3.7 million youth across the United States and some international locations each year to build their strength of character through golf.
“Growing and diversifying our fan base is a top priority for us, and thanks to the collaboration and innovation from AWS, people will have more ways than ever to experience the game of golf while personalizing our content to engage with the tournaments and players they support,” said PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan.
This new arrangement with PGA Tour continues AWS’s journey in the world of sports, as it is already connected to the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL), Formula 1, Nascar and the Bundesliga.