The partnership will provide fans with access to a huge pool of content from PGA Tour events.
The PGA Tour has announced it’s to use AWS for cloud storage, machine learning, analytics and media services. The organisation says its use of AWS will “transform the way golf content is created, distributed and experienced.” Its aim is to bring fans closer to the action while at the same time streamlining the Tour’s media operations.
The PGA Tour captures hundreds of hours of raw footage at each tournament and will use AWS services to rapidly transform this content into new digital experiences that provide fans with a more complete and personalised experience.
Examples of such services include OTT streaming platform ‘Every Shot Live’, powered by AWS, which gives viewers live access to every shot from every player in a tournament.
For a tournament such as The Players Championship, the PGA Tour will offer fans access to more than 32,000 shots from a starting field of 144 golfers.
Fans will be able to choose to follow any player in real-time and stream each shot they make.
Furthermore, AWS will power a new Tour leaderboard called TOURCast, providing fans with video game-like control of the golf viewing experience. Users of TOURCast will be able to change their viewing perspective with alternative camera angles, navigate around the course, view speed rounds, and display player and shot stats on demand.
The Tour will also use AWS media services to make it faster to deliver video content for televised event coverage and OTT streaming for online viewers. It will use AWS to simultaneously process and distribute OTT content and format it for reliable viewing over smartphones and tablets.
On top of this, the PGA Tour will migrate almost 100 years of media content to AWS – including video, audio, and images dating back to the 1928 Los Angeles Open. Live footage from future tournaments will also be added to this historical database of content.
AWS’s AI will automatically tag content with specific metadata like player names and sponsor logos, enabling archive search, review and annotation, and to package new content. Fans will be able to access years of this tagged and archived golf footage and highlights through the Tour’s web and mobile apps.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, said: “This transformational partnership with AWS will give our fans the opportunity to experience the PGA Tour like never before. Growing and diversifying our fan base is a top priority for us, and thanks to the collaboration and innovation from AWS, we are creating more ways to experience the game of golf, while personalising our content to enable fans to engage with the tournaments and players they support.”
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, added: “The partnership and experience we create with the Tour will be unique. Unlike other sports, there’s more than one ball in play on a golf course, which makes it harder for fans to follow how every player is performing. Our collaboration with the Tour will change the way that fans will be able to connect with the sport by giving them real-time access to virtually every moment on the course and letting them determine how they experience the game.”