Parlay! PGA Tour Wants Proposals To Feed Data To Gamblers

Thanks to reader Glenn for catching Scott Soshnik's exclusive for Bloomberg detail the PGA Tour's request for proposal to data companies who might pay to supply real-time tournament stats to gambling houses.

He writes:

The governing body of American men’s golf “continues to explore the risk/return trade-off associated with potential entry into the online sports gaming category,” the documents said.

Spokesman Ty Votaw said the PGA Tour sends out proposals “all the time,” and declined to comment specifically on its gaming-related RFP. “We’re far away from any kind of deal,” he said. “We only talk about things when we announce them. We don’t talk about things in progress.”

It's in progress! Non-denial denial alert!

At least it looks like the millennials are perceived as gamblers, which is refreshing. Soshnick writes..

“The PGA Tour is at risk of losing the next generation, said Berke, president of LHB Sports Entertainment & Media. “You have to do something or you’re going to fade away to harness racing.”

But like other professional U.S. sports leagues, the Tour has kept its distance. Sports betting is illegal in most states, and active, high-dollar gambling can call into question the integrity of the contests themselves. National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver has said he thinks sports betting will eventually be legal everywhere in the U.S. and has called for it be be federally regulated. Top executives in other sports tend to side-step the topic completely.

Now, I don't want to be a killjoy and point out that betting on golf is tricky business--especially when you don't know whose dog bit him the night before or whose wife crashed the courtesy car...

Increasingly, gambling houses see more money in live betting, where they can offer a new wager with every stroke. A handful of sites already offer this kind of gambling on golf based on unofficial data feeds.

The growth of this kind of point-by-point wagering has created a lucrative opportunity for leagues. In December, Sportradar renewed its data contract with the International Tennis Federation for $14 million a year over five years -- six times the value of the company’s original deal with the ITF in 2012.

Oh...that could pay for the next two TPC Sawgrass renovations.