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PGA Pairs With The Action Network To Form Golf Betting Site

The PGA Tour made another move this week to get themselves firmly entrenched in the new world of sports betting. Pairing up with The Action Network, the new site GolfBet.com was formed.

There was even some controversy over the domain name, which was acquired back in January for $100,000 by a law firm associated with the PGA Tour. In addition, that same law firm tried to buy the domain name TourBet.com, but the deal did not go through.

GolfBet.com did go live on Monday, though, even redirecting visitors that went to The Action Network’s golf page. That page has now been shifted to say “GolfBet presented by the PGA Tour.”

This is a deal that would make the PGA Tour the first United States professional league to profit from sports gambling directly. The Action Network CEO Patrick Keane said that the two partners would share the revenues made from affiliate marketing and advertising. Additionally,

“The deal is a primer for us, to get the market educated and to speak more loudly about betting opportunities in golf,” said Norb Gambuzza, senior vice president of media business development for the PGA Tour.

GolfBet is the beginning stage of what the PGA Tour plans to unveil during the spring. In some facet, there will be an opportunity to make a bet on every single shot taken. This deal will run all the way through the 2021 PGA Tour season.

“We believe that golf fans and sports bettors alike are in search of a deeper level of information that has not existed until the launch of GolfBet,” said Gambuzza. “We are bullish that GolfBet content and the growth of sports betting will drive fan engagement and expand our overall audience.”

The PGA Tour struck a deal with IMG Arena to build a tool that uses ShotLink data that will give odds on bets like the length of a drive or how likely a shot is to hit the green. Back in the 1990s, ShotLink was developed to track every shot that was taken on tour. That information on how far a drive or putt traveled and is then relayed to the audience.

“The whole dynamic is going to change,” said Gambuzza.

Just The Start?

With golf getting into this incredible opportunity, you have to wonder what that means for the rest of the professional sports landscape. It has already been discussed in some circles, but we’re probably moving closer to betting on whether a pitch will be a ball or strike in a baseball game – or even whether a player will make both foul shots when he goes to the free-throw line.

“We’ve seen the growth of golf over other sports,” said Keane. “So we said, let’s call up the tour and see what we can do with them.”

This is really only the beginning of where sports and the world of betting can intertwine. Don’t be surprised if we start to see more deals like this formed in the near future.

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