Table of Contents
Welcome to the TEC Lowdown, our monthly breakdown of the technology partnerships, platforms and innovations shaping the delivery of the world’s biggest sports events and the way fans and other stakeholders experience them. This month:
PGA TOUR & The FedEx Cup
What: The series of elite professional golf tournaments encompassing The FedEx Cup, its primary season-long points competition and championship race
When: 45 tournaments played between January & November. The FedEx Cup concludes at the end of August.
Where: Primarily North America but events are also held around the world in locations such as Mexico, Japan & the Caribbean.
Organiser/s: The PGA TOUR
While a Green Jacket or a Claret Jug may be viewed as the pinnacle of golf, what professional golfers strive for, and where the elite golfers play, is the PGA TOUR. This 10 month long, annual golf tour of North America and the World takes in some of the most spectacular – and difficult – courses, providing players with both prize pots and points to play for – the latter counting towards the FedEx Cup, the season-long competition on the PGA TOUR that crowns the overall champion. With millions following each stroke around the world, the TOUR has built a powerful and sophisticated digital ecosystem designed to enhance and personalise the fan experience, no matter how they are engaging, while also providing players with a supporting layer of data and insights.
CDW & ShotLink – the Data Layer
At the heart of the PGA TOUR’s technology ecosystem is ShotLink, their proprietary real-time scoring and data-collection system, supported by its long-standing Official Technology Solutions Advisor, CDW. CDW has supported ShotLink since 2008, providing the technology products, professional services and infrastructure that enable the system to capture and process data from tournaments.
ShotLink has evolved from a digital scoring system into a comprehensive real-time data platform that captures hundreds of thousands of pieces of data every week, covering everything from the location and distance of individual shots to scoring and player-performance statistics. The latest generation of ShotLink has been rebuilt to capture substantially more ball-in-motion data, creating the foundation for new fan-facing experiences such as detailed putt-path visualisation.
ShotLink data is used to feed the PGA TOUR’s websites, mobile applications, broadcast graphics, fan tools and player services, creating a common data layer from which multiple digital experiences can be developed.
AWS – the Digital Infrastructure Layer
While CDW and ShotLink provide much of the underlying event data for the PGA TOUR, Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides the cloud, artificial intelligence and machine-learning infrastructure that enables them to process and exploit it at scale.
AWS became Official Cloud Provider and Official AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning Cloud Provider in 2021 and the recently expanded partnership serves as the bridge between the TOUR’s raw data and its consumer platforms. AWS provide the technology infrastructure that allows ShotLink data, video and historical content to be combined and analysed in real time. Machine-learning and generative-AI capabilities can then turn this information into commentary, statistics, stories and personalised content.
Trackman – the Data Visualisation Layer for Broadcast & Players
Trackman’s partnership with the PGA TOUR dates back to 2006 and was recently extended until 2030. Their radar-based club and ball tracking technology is used to both support player performance and enhance broadcast and digital coverage.
Trackman’s tech captures information including ball speed, club speed, trajectory, launch, spin and apex allowing it to be visualised in through shot tracers and 3D trajectories. Their technology has become an important component of ShotLink, with Trackman radar units helping automate the capture of ball-in-motion data. The resulting information can then be combined with ShotLink’s scoring and positional data.
This creates value on both sides of the sport. Players gain more detailed performance information, while fans can see the trajectory and characteristics of shots that would otherwise be difficult to understand visually.
PGA TOUR Digital Platforms & Services – Converting Data into Experiences
The value of these external technology partnerships is realised through the TOUR’s suite of consumer & player facing digital platforms and services:
PGA TOUR website and app
The PGA TOUR website and mobile app are the central consumer interface for their digital ecosystem, bringing together live scoring, statistics, video, player information and tournament coverage, while increasingly using AI and data to personalise what fans see.
The two platforms feature products such as TOURCAST (more on that below) and the Favourite Players Hub, a new feature introduced through the expanded AWS partnership. Rather than requiring fans to search across the site for information about individual golfers, the platform automatically collates current tournament positions, statistics, highlights, storylines and AI-generated content around the players a fan has selected.
This level of personalisation at scale is made possible by the TOUR’s use of AI. Rather than editorial teams having to manually create stories about every player, AWS-powered systems can analyse ShotLink data and automatically generate event recaps and player-specific content across an entire field.
TOURCAST
Powered by ShotLink data, TOURCAST transforms the traditional leaderboard into an interactive digital twin of the tournament, allowing fans to follow individual players shot by shot, see ball-tracking information and explore the statistics behind their performance.
To further enhance the experience, The TOUR has introduced AI-generated shot commentary that interprets ShotLink data in real time, providing context around what shot means to a player’s score, position and prospects.
PGA TOUR Studios
PGA TOUR Studios provides the media-production layer that brings data, video and storytelling together. The 165,000-square-foot facility in Ponte Vedra Beach is now the home of PGA TOUR media operations, including live production and digital and social content. It can handle thousands of video and audio feeds and provides the infrastructure for the TOUR to produce much more content itself.
The Studios allow the PGA TOUR to combine live video with its own data and AI capabilities, to produce more targeted highlights, statistics, stories and digital content rather than simply distributing a conventional broadcast.
PGA TOUR World Feed
As part of their efforts to create more personalised experiences, PGA TOUR Studios also produces the PGA TOUR World Feed, which is specifically produced for international audiences, incorporating dedicated cameras, commentary, graphics and storytelling around international players. It reaches media partners across more than 200 countries and territories.
AWS technology is used to incorporate generative-AI-powered commentary, graphics and statistics into the World Feed, allowing live data to provide additional context and personalisation to what viewers are seeing.
PGA TOUR CENTRAL
The TOUR’s technology ecosystem is also applied to the player experience through PGA TOUR CENTRAL, the TOUR’s player-facing app and website.
Built in-house using the same AWS technology underpinning the fan-facing platforms, CENTRAL combines tournament information, video and performance data in a single secure environment. Players can better evaluate their performance by accessing shot-by-shot video, ShotLink data and Trackman metrics through the app shortly after completing a round.
AI is also embedded directly into the platform. It can automatically create highlight reels and full-round recaps, combining video with ShotLink and Trackman data. This means players and their teams can move quickly from raw data to usable analysis without having to manually review the entire round.
The Enhanced FedEx Cup Broadcast Experience
As the PGA TOUR reaches the final stages of The FedEx Cup, the field contracts from 70 to 50 to 30 players, interest intensifies and with it the ways in which technology is used by broadcaster partners like ESPN & Sky Sports to capture the experience for fans.
For 2026, ESPN significantly expanded its FedExCup Playoffs coverage in the US, bringing 12 hours of live playoff coverage to its main linear channel across the FedEx St. Jude Championship, BMW Championship and TOUR Championship, alongside more than 100 hours of PGA TOUR LIVE coverage on the ESPN App. The technology-enhanced linear coverage included additional drone footage, enhanced player audio and 3D hole and course modelling supplied by PGA TOUR Studios. This is complemented by multiple concurrent streams on the ESPN App, including marquee and featured groups, key holes and Betcast feeds.
Sky Sports have taken a similar approach for the UK market, using the PGA TOUR’s underlying ShotLink data and tracking infrastructure to add interactive elements to its coverage. For example, last year, Sky Sports’ interactive TOUR Championship game allowed viewers to predict where a shot will finish and compete with other viewers, with the experience synchronised to live ShotLink data. This effectively turned the broadcast from a passive viewing experience into a second-screen prediction and participation experience.
