The PGA Tour has been endeavoring to bring more live golf coverage to more fans, and now they have found a partner in Amazon Web Services (AWS) that will help them fully power this initiative.
The partnership, which was announced Monday, makes AWS the Official Cloud Provider of the PGA Tour and a trustee of First Tee. More importantly for fans, however, AWS will power Every Shot Live, an over-the-top TV app and platform designed to show every shot from every golfer during certain PGA Tour events.
Every Shot Live was set to debut in 2020 at The Players Championship, but the dawn of the pandemic caused its cancelation. Fans were to be able to follow specific golfers or holes and watch every shot through streaming coverage. While Every Shot Live isn't set to become a weekly feature of PGA Tour digital coverage quite yet, this partnership seems a key step in building the infrastructure to do it more often.
AWS will also power TourCast, which is a new leaderboard-driven feature that allows fans a more in-depth experience, including seeing 3D shot trails mapped on the host course, as well selecting alternate camera angles and getting access to more real-time data.
The PGA Tour is also creating what's dubbed a "data lake" of its historic video, audio and photographic content, dating back to the 1928 Los Angeles Open, built on Amazon S3 storage service. Real-time footage will be added to the data lake as well. The platform will also use Amazon's Rekognition technology to recognize, tag, categorize and present connected media for better access and distribution for the Tour, its partners and fans.
