PGA Tour Bolsters Betting Integrity Program through 2024
The PGA Tour announced Tuesday that it has reached two agreements that will “enhance monitoring capabilities as part of an expanded PGA Tour Integrity Program.”
The partnerships include U.S. Integrity and an extension of their already-existing partnership with Genius Sports. The Genius Sports partnership will provide them with “best-in-class bet monitoring services” through 2024.
“U.S. Integrity is proud to partner with the PGA Tour and assist with maintaining the integrity of its golf competition across the world,” U.S. Integrity’s CEO and Co-Founder Matthew Holt said in a news release. “U.S. Integrity’s mission is to provide conflict-free, best-in-class insights and compliance solutions to our clients. We are looking forward to working with the premier golf tour in the world, featuring the biggest names. All our partners are committed to the highest integrity standards, and they are no exception. These types of partnerships help ensure sports betting integrity and strengthen the unique and proprietary anomaly-detection tools we have developed at U.S. Integrity.”
The PGA Tour’s Integrity Program was created in January 2018. It covers “all facets of competition and operations on the Tours overseen by the PGA Tour, including players and their support teams, all tournament staff and volunteers, all PGA Tour employees and the PGA Tour Policy Board.”
The PGA Tour’s Integrity Program’s stated mission is: “To maintain integrity and prevent and mitigate betting-related corruption in PGA Tour competitions – ensuring competitions always reflect, and appear to reflect, the best efforts of the players, while protecting the welfare of the players and others involved with the PGA Tour – through clear policies and regulations, ongoing education and training, and effective and consistent monitoring and enforcement functions.”
The partnership with U.S. Integrity will provide “supplementary integrity-monitoring services via its proprietary dashboard, in an effort to proactively identify irregular contest-level, officiating and wagering patterns by conducting analysis across many data sets.”
“We are excited to partner with U.S. Integrity, as we look to continue ensuring the integrity of the PGA Tour,” PGA Tour Vice President of Gaming Scott Warfield said in the release “U.S. Integrity along with Genius Sports’ commitment to protecting our sport, as well as their proactive approach, will play a pivotal role in assisting our operations with monitoring sports betting across our Tours.”
With Genius Sports, the PGA Tour will provide educational programs for players, caddies, and officials. These educational workshops highlight the risks associated with “betting-related corruption.” Also, there are custom e-learning modules for players to access worldwide in multiple languages.
“We are delighted to extend our historic partnership with the PGA Tour. As the sports betting landscape rapidly evolves across the U.S., it is imperative that sports are proactive in protecting the integrity of their competitions,” said Stephen Thurley, Head of Integrity Partnerships at Genius Sports. “This partnership ensures the PGA Tour continues to benefit from Genius Sports’ Bet Monitoring technology and Education services, as well as utilizing ‘Genius Intelligence,’ our groundbreaking fraud detection management system.
After the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was overturned in 2018, the PGA Tour partnered with Genius Sports and, later that year, IMG ARENA. Its deal with IMG ARENA was to license its official, live scoring data to betting platforms globally.
Today, the PGA Tour is a “platinum member” of the National Council on Problem Gambling and is aligned with the “Have A Game Plan” campaign through the American Gaming Association. This public service campaign aims to “educate golf fans on responsible sports betting.”
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