Official betting operator

The Florida-headquartered PGA Tour has appointed bet365 its official betting operator.

While the PGA Tour has struck official betting partnerships with multiple US sportsbooks in recent years, the deal bet365 announced via Twitter Monday has its focus on the international sports betting market:

Specifically, bet365’s jurisdiction in relation to its PGA Tour deal is the UK, Ireland, Australia, and Canada. As the PGA Tour’s first agreement outside of the US, bet365 can use PGA Tour marks and can advertise on its media and partner platforms in Europe, Australia, and Canada.

Within its new Anglo-Australian territory — bet365’s remit on Canada does not extend to the following rights — the UK online betting giant will act as an exclusive source for leaderboard and player pages odds on pgatour.com and on the golf brand’s 3D platform, TOURCast.

Bet365 gets to extend its branding across the PGA Tour’s media assets. Through the Tour’s strategic partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), bet365 will also enjoy a brand presence on WBD platforms such as Golfdigest.com in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and Canada.

In-play betting the buzzword

In-play betting seems to be the industry buzzword at the moment. Only on Monday, US finance firm SIG purchased 12.76% of PointsBet shares for AU$94m (US$65.4m), with the key driver behind the deal being in-play betting.

In the PGA Tour’s official news release, executives from the golfing and sports betting sides of the deal also honed in on in-play wagering. The PGA Tour’s vice president of gaming Scott Warfield started by saying it excited his organization to work with bet365 on expanding the golf brand’s sports wagering growth outside the US.

Warfield said bet365 was the first betting operator to integrate the PGA Tour’s in-play betting product and that bet365 was:

poised for tremendous growth being on the forefront of in-play sports betting in golf”

A spokesperson for bet365 expressed the firm’s delight in partnering with “one of the most iconic brands in global sport.” The spokesperson said bet365 would, in conjunction with the PGA Tour, “strive to continue delivering a market leading in-play experience to our golf customers, both across our global sites and the PGA TOUR platforms.”

Golf betting gets innovative

The PGA Tour news release also shares news of bet365 becoming the first sports wagering brand to integrate the IMG ARENA Golf Event Centre product. According to the news release, Golf Event Centre is an ”unparalleled, front-end sports betting solution, designed to revolutionize the golf betting experience by enabling interactive in-play betting on the sport.”

The Tour added that Golf Event Centre was the only place sports betting operators could “find fast, comprehensive, shot by shot data and markets, live streaming which is purpose-built for in-play betting, and interactive course visualizations.”