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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — If Scott Warfield had been at the 17th tee box the day before The Players Championship began, he might have done well to have slid another cold Stella Artois into Sean McGrath’s free hand.
In McGrath, the vice president of gaming for the PGA Tour would have found the flesh prototype of much of his daily endeavors as the Arizona resident sipped on a beer and took in a practice session at TPC Sawgrass this radiant March afternoon.
“I like to watch it and put a little money on it. It’s fun.”
McGrath is a fan. He is an avid online bettor on legal sites in Arizona. He not only watches golf on television but attended the WM Phoenix Open in February and turned out this day for practice rounds and the caddie competition after helping his parents relocate from Massachusetts to Florida.
And belying the image projected by the pappy cap — “for my bald head,” he chuckled — he was snug in the middle of the 20-to-40-something demo with the time, money, and attention span to spend on things like golf and sports bets.
“I’m more of a fan, and I started betting it really during the pandemic once it came back around, like betting golf consistently,” McGrath said from the shade of the grandstands. “DraftKings and daily [fantasy] and things of that nature, and then just tournament winners and stuff like that.
“I like to watch it and put a little money on it. It’s fun. I like the in-game. I like the prop bets. I like the outright tournaments bets.”
Make that free Stella for life if Warfield had been within earshot.
Golf and Gambling: Synonymous From the Sport’s Origins
There’s been betting on golf, so the joke — and the scholarly research — goes, since the second Scot gathered up his longnoses and niblicks and headed out to a meadow near the North Sea.
All around the world, over ‘business’ meetings on the links and clandestine rounds when everyone should have been working, casual players make a round a little more interesting with a wager on a drive or a skins game.
The PGA Tour, like every major pro sports league in the wake of the fall of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, leverages gambling as means of strengthening television ratings and all the commercial windfall that entails. The oft-repeated premise: bettors watch it if they bet on it.
The trick for the PGA Tour is commercializing what is so institutionalized in casual players, but atypical even for ardent PGA fans.
Part of the problem is that hackers on the local municipal course or the crowds watching pros splash tee shots on the nefarious 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass don’t need a sports betting app as an intermediary. Bets can start as verbal boasts and a couple of bucks or a round at the 19th hole pay them off.
But the new-age wagers that might entice them to make a play on a pro appear on their phones in the increasing number of states where online sports betting is legal.
With the PGA Tour’s television ratings improving in 2023, Warfield and the PGA Tour think there’s an opportunity there.
“We’re going to see whether we’re right on that premise. We’re going to have a sense by this time next year if we’re onto something.”
“The premise which we’ve built this entire strategy on, that we’ve talked about of golf being well-positioned for live and in-play betting because of an advantageous space of play, a ton of shots, balls in the air from seven in the morning to seven at night … We’re going to see whether we’re right on that premise,” Warfield told Gaming Today. “We’re going to have a sense by this time next year if we’re onto something.”
Golf began mainstreaming betting content with a gambling-forward Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson match in 2018 that was heavy on odds and predictions and even featured hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of side bets.
Now it’s hoping to tee up the next evolution with IMG Arena, which harvests data from the Tour’s ShotLink sensors positioned around courses and converts them to real-time bettable markets that in many ways mimic the bets being made on local links.
PGA Tour, Sportsbooks Look to Increase Betting Handle
The PGA Tour currently lists bet365, betMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel, Parx, and PointsBet as official sports betting partners. Bet365, one of the largest gambling companies globally, recently became the first to offer PGA Tour betting markets outside of North America.
There is much work to do for them all.
Because even with some notable improvements in the past few years, golf betting currently represents a minuscule slice of the United States sports betting handle, fluctuating around 1%.
Some other countries do better — “it’s big” in South Africa, across mainland Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom, Australia, and some Asian nations, said Max Wright, chief commercial officer of IMG Arena — but in the United States, a year’s worth of global tournaments draw less monetary interest than the Super Bowl.
A relevant Tiger Woods is good for business.
And events like The Masters, which is underway this week, will stoke betting interest just as the Kentucky Derby represents horse racing’s annual brush with mainstream vogue. But there are a lot more tournaments than the one at Augusta National.
“That [handle figure] is, in my opinion, based on the fact that most of the books prior to this PGA Tour-IMG Arena deal really only featured outright winner,” Warfield said. “You were trying to predict a pre-match bet on 144 guys, all of which are pretty darn good.
“You hit it, that’s pretty good. But the chances of doing that? Challenging. And I think that deterred betting.”
Millennials, Gen Z of Major Importance in PGA Tour Plan to Rejuvenate Older Fanbase
“What I find to be the most exciting and the most upside for the sport is converting that 25-year-old, 30-year-old to come over, who may never be predisposed to have come to or watched a PGA Tour event, and to put $5 on a golfer, win that bet and say, ‘Hmm, I’m gonna check ’em out next week’.”
McGrath and his friends fit the caste of young male bettors that prefers the NFL and NBA, but dabbles in many sports.
“I don’t know what the percentages are of avid fans who actually bet [is], but I think the other sports are a little more popular, and that’s what the draw is,” McGrath surmised. “I think golf’s a bit more selective, as far as viewership goes, and I’m not sure why.
“All my friends do it, all the same guys that bet on football.”
McGrath believes there might actually be a sizeable faction of older golf bettors who haven’t been converted to the growing regulated market in the United States. In this case, technology could be the barrier.
“A lot of people, the difference between betting online and betting through the traditional methods previously, everything’s connected to the Internet now,” he said. “You have to have a W2. I think that’s probably caused some apprehension with avid gamblers.”
Then there’s the demographics of golf fans. Data provided by the PGA Tour indicates that most of its fanbase falls into a group that has so far constituted little of the mobile sports betting sector.
Age Demographics of PGA Tour Fanbase
- 18-34: 17%
- 35-54: 25%
- 55-64: 22%
- 65-older: 36%
The strength of the 35-to-54 group is encouraging, but a recently released Ipsos gambling industry study found that 39% of American sports bettors were younger than 35. The minimum age to wager legally in sports is 21 in most states.
The good news for the PGA Tour from the Ipsos study: “Most sports bettors are male, white, wealthy, and younger.” That’s nearly a demographic grand slam. Now the Tour needs the 20-somethings to watch more golf on TV.
If betting is that entry point, a conundrum, Wright said, is “trying to understand what appeals to a variety of different consumers.” Younger bettors are in theory more likely to thumb through myriads of betting menus with nimble fingers and sharp eyes. Their fathers and uncle …?
And the question remains whether Millenials and Gen Zs will age into being avid golf fans and bettors, bringing their predilection for tech with them.
“I think the bigger upside is on the current non-fan or casual fan that might come in the back door of this now-legal activity,” Warfield said.
“I say that knowing that there are a lot of hardcore golf fans like my dad that probably are never going to get on a sports betting app and place a bet on golf. I think there’s many that will, but what I find to be the most exciting and the most upside for the sport is converting that 25-year old, 30-year old to come over, who may never be predisposed to have come to or watched a PGA Tour event, and to put $5 on a golfer, win that bet and say, ‘Hmm, I’m gonna check ’em out next week’ and what that can mean for the future-proofing of our audience.”
PGA Tour Attempting to Get in Front of Modern Betting Tastes
There are reasons for optimism, Warfield believes.
Chief among them are the gambling-industry-led push to increase the amount of in-game wagering in the United States and a golf pace of play that suits it.
Already a taste in Europe, where about 75% of bets are placed on events after the game begins, in-game remains a curiosity in the US, with about only 30% of bets coming on these real-time markets.
With minutes elapsing between golf shots, bettors would have ample opportunity to peruse and patronize the myriad of markets IMG Arena’s Event Centre is able to concoct as ShotLink catalogs every swing.
There can be bets on the result of a hole or the distance of the next shot, digitally simulating those same monetized make-it-interesting moments from the municipal course.
“Before, we didn’t have the data product that would allow hole-by-hole, shot-by-shot,” Warfield said. “What can that 1% [handle share] become? I’m not sure we’re ready to put a marker in the sand on it, but I don’t see why we couldn’t be a top-five or -six most bet on sport, given that I think we have one of the most unique betting products with IMG Arena that’s out there.”
There have been some encouraging signs this season.
At the Phoenix Open, with sports betting legal and online in Arizona, GeoComply recorded a flurry of mobile wagering activity on grounds at TPC Scottsdale.
“We saw almost double handle growth for a traditional kind of average PGA Tour event,” Warfield said. “Two-, three-, 400,000 people there on a Saturday, Super Bowl in a legal betting state with mobile. And it popped.”
It couldn’t pop at the tour’s biggest event, The Masters, under the rules governing Augusta National Golf Club. Even if Georgia legalizes mobile sports betting, patrons are forbidden from bringing cell phones onto the grounds during the tournament.
At PointsBet During the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March:
- Betting handle for the tournament more than doubled from 2022 to 2023
- Total number of bets rose by 78% year over year
- 79% of betting activity was placed in-play
- In-play betting handle increased by 127% year-over-year
- Total in-play bets increased by 165% year-over-year
Circa Sports operations manager Jeff Benson said interest continues to grow, especially once the NBA and NHL playoffs conclude.
“It’s something our players are particularly passionate about,” he told Gaming Today. “We put a ton into our golf, making sure that we have the lowest theoretical holds so that we can offer the best odds on all the players, which she saw, particularly during The Masters when we offered a 12% theoretical hold and basically had the best price in everybody in the world.
“I would anticipate that as operators have more data and more feeds that they trust and software that can do it, you may see some increased in-play offerings that you don’t necessarily see right now.”
Jordan Spieth PGA Tour’s Benevolent Face of Betting
Twenty-somethings raised in the era of daily fantasy sports are likely predisposed to giving legal sports betting a shot if the communal experience they derive from their cellphones is interesting and entertaining.
That’s great news for the PGA Tour.
But the fact remains that the demographic that watches golf on television skews Boomer and the demo that bets on it ranges from older Millennials into Gen Z.
So a benevolent face for the enterprise doesn’t hurt. And for the current PGA Tour, Jordan Speith, the 29-year-old winner of the 2015 Masters is it as a FanDuel representative.
“It’s huge for us,” Warfield said.
Active MLB and NHL players are allowed to endorse legal, licensed sportsbooks with restrictions including that they may not promote wagering specifically on their sport. The PGA Tour granted players access to such deals in 2020 with greater leeway. They can pitch golf as long as they don’t encourage betting specifically on their performance.
Really excited about this! @FanDuel https://t.co/SGDNtqLEbr
— Jordan Spieth (@JordanSpieth) March 21, 2023
The nation’s sports betting market-share leader has largely kept Spieth away from golf content, but introducing FanDuel to the typical portfolio of golf equipment suppliers and financial services that sponsor pro golfers has been a milepost.
“As we opened this space up, we did our best to have a guideline that would allow operators to come in and invest in all parts of our ecosystem,” Warfield said. “So, tournaments, players, as long as it’s within guidelines and FanDuel, they treat their ambassadors — both Willie [Zatoris] and Spieth — fantastic. They keep golf away from them.
“They’re using Jordan to create a piece of content on a Texas football weekend because he is a big Texas fan. They put him in their national TV spot last year they created around golf highlights from his career. Having a brand like that, that is what, almost 50% market share right now, it’s big.”
Spieth has enjoyed the brand ambassadorship, he told Gaming Today.
“Golf has really done a great job the last few years of integrating legalized sports gaming in a responsible way, and I think everyone understands it’s a successful way to engage and gain new viewers,” he said. “FanDuel has been a great partner to collaborate with, especially as I am a huge fan of most college and professional sports.”
The series lost the DraftKings player answer to Spieth when Bryson DeChambeau defected to the LIV Tour. A DraftKings retail sportsbook is scheduled to open this fall at TPC Scottsdale, however, making the Arizona sports betting venue the first on-site sportsbook on a PGA Tour course.
Golf’s Pace Makes it Prime Feature for In-Play Betting
Warfield thinks that golf and baseball, each a series of “discrete moments,” have advantages over football and basketball if in-play betting grows in popularity. Those sports together dominate American bettors’ interest currently.
“[Golf] is a unique proposition versus a 24-second shot clock,” Warfield said. “It’s going to be hard to leverage in-play — if that continues to trend — and we’ve seen results.”
Wright said that in 2019, pre-tournament wagers comprised 95% of revenue from golf betting globally. Sports like tennis, he said, elicit as much as 70% of bets in-match. Key, he noted, will be developing “tiers of different involvement” to interest bettors and fans of disparate levels of intensity.
“The gap between shots. I think that works really well in a couple of areas,” Wright said. “One is it gives the consumer time to make a decision, so they’re not hurried into making a decision, which I think is quite, quite interesting. You can make more of an educated guess rather than an impulse guess.
“It also enables them to move between players and if the outcome of a shot is that Rory [McIlroy]’s just hit, the bettor knows that it’s going to be a few minutes before Rory’s back in action. They can place a bet and they can move off around the tournament using the Event Centre experience and go and visit other players on other holes.”
The complication, as with any betting event reliant on television, is the latency — or speed — with which the action reaches the viewer/bettor.
“I wouldn’t say we’re immune to it, period,” Warfield said. “I think we’re uniquely positioned. Even if there’s a 30-second delay to what you’re seeing on the broadcast, it still at times can take 6-7 minutes to walk to your ball, a couple minutes to pick your club. We as an industry have got to keep working at that sync, but I do think it’s an advantage for everyone in the game of golf.”
Even with so much time between shots, bettors watching on television are sure to be behind their counterparts sitting beyond the ropes because of signal delay or because TV production is curated for effect.
Obviously, the way in which the broadcast is presented within golf is what you’re seeing is near-live, highlights,” Wright explained. “This is kind of curated on the fly and delivered to you. So you’re always aware as a golf fan that what you’re seeing may or may not be in the moment.
IMG Arena’s Golf Centre streams a front- and back-9 par-3 hole each tournament. ESPN+ also follows featured groups live.
PGA Tour Wants Legal Betting in California, Florida, Texas
“Florida, Texas and California … No disrespect to any of the others … but those three would be game changers for the entire industry.”
California, Florida and Texas have lots of golfers, lots of golf courses, lots of PGA Tour events, and no legal sports betting.
California has seven tournaments, Florida five, and Texas four. There won’t be any legal bets placed in Georgia for The Masters, either.
The PGA wants to change this.
The Tour’s government affairs team lobbies on behalf of legalized sports betting in those four states and North Carolina. It worked in North Carolina with the support of other pro team owners.
“Florida, Texas and California …,” Warfield said. “No disrespect to any of the others, and if you think about where we are five years into this and how many states have legalized, I think we feel pretty good.
“But those three would be game changers for the entire industry.”
Meanwhile, out on 17 …
There would be no legal bets placed by McGrath out at the 17th tee. He’d have to wait until he got back home to Arizona, or for a distant future visit back to Florida to check in on the folks.
Maybe then the smiling face of pro golf’s hopeful future could get that Stella. Seriously.
“You’re absolutely right,” he laughed. “I mean, I am kind of the poster boy.”
