European Tour on its vision to create the connected golf course through the internet of things By Heather McLean, Editor
Monday, December 9, 2019 - 17:28
Print This Story
Golf's European Tour is on a path that will see the internet of things (IoT) taking a leading role in how the association transforms the game going forward. The IoT is going to influence the future of the European Tour's operational side, for broadcasters, for players and referees, as well as for fans on-site and at home.
The smart city IoT concept is being utilised by the European Tour to create a roadmap of evolution to connect everything on any tournament site, from player strokes to overflowing dustbins. Millions of new data points will be generated which will in turn have the potential to inform commentators and broadcasters and further engage existing and new fans, as well as improving the game itself.
Commented Michael Cole, chief technology officer at European Tour: Golf is complicated by its nature and technology has a key role to play in underpinning that complexity. It is a sport that provides a platform of great opportunity, because of the challenges it has to address on that complexity.
On the latter, he explained: We don't have a single field of play; we have 18 holes, [so] have 18 fields of play. We don't have a stadium environment; we have typically up to 40,000 to 50,000 people roaming what could be up to 300 acres of a venue [with up to 70,000 attendees at premium events]. We are totally about temporary overlay. More often than not we are playing our tournaments at Greenfield sites where we have to build that town and that infrastructure. This complexity doesn't happen in any other sport, so we need to address the underpinning technology in a different way.
Our strategy is one of a three staged vision. The first is to create what I call the connected course, because if we can create an underlying platform - call it the stage - then actually we have a mechanism for connecting not just people but players, and things, through the internet, and that is a key objective in our vision.
We want to go from building a small town to a smart city. That is the goal. And that is where everything is connected then everything is possible
The second one is how we can work with the vast array of data that is now being collected across our tournaments. That data creates intelligence and insight that we can utilise around the operations, around our commercial partners, around our own marketing teams to drive real benefit as well.
And then the third phase of that strategy is how we can industrialise a technology solution and how we can repeat it time and time again, 46 tournaments, 31 countries, and the only way we can really achieve that is delivering it through the cloud, what I call tournament as a service (TaaS), he said. And that allows us to deliver ubiquity of services from the cloud in a consistent way wherever we're playing those tournaments. That's a little bit about the complexity of the game, and the key role that technology has to play in that complexity.
The untold story
Cole continued: Golf has suffered for many years, I believe, in being an untold story and the true role that technology plays. I think we're about to change that. We're going to take this from being an untold story to being a told story. In this vanguard of innovation [European Tour is] going to be considered one of the leading adopters of that innovation across the sporting industry.
As an organisation, the European Tour is, transforming its, perhaps, under investment over the last 20 years , Cole stated. But the tournament side is all about digital transformation and that absolutely is about that smart city environment. The analogy I would use is when everything is connected then anything is possible. We can physically connect the fans, the players, the commentators, and any moving item, into this wonderful platform and use that connectivity to drive real intelligence. So we can be far more efficient in our operations, far more effective in how we go about delivering tournaments, and equally we can look at the commercialisation of that and where we can drive our consumer-based revenues.
He continued: The vision is to create the smart city environment, the IoT, with everything delivered through the cloud; that's where we can get that ubiquity of world-class delivery, whatever the tournament, whatever the country. Now that's a fairly bold vision to have and we're not going to get there overnight, so we will look at how we can phase it in. We may consider for our premium events an uplift in terms of technology, but over time, why wouldn't we roll out the smart city concept to all of our tournaments?
Fast advancements
Since 1972 the European Tour's methods of scoring data collection have evolved from collecting by tournament, then round by round, then hole by hole. The latter version, which most recently would involve walking scorers of around 80 volunteers using handheld devices, collecting scores hole by hole, generated 20,000 to 25,000 data points.
Now, with a new data collection scheme for scoring in a deal announced with IMG in February this year, things are changing, said Cole, who added, we will have around 60 full time professionals on the course, collecting up to 15 data points on every stroke for every player in real time.
That is a huge leap forward, said Cole. That equates to anywhere up to 700,000 data points in any given tournament, and that creates huge opportunity. The difficult part in this jigsaw is actually collecting that data off the course.
He said the European Tour has been trialling a system to retrieve data from courses for 12 months, and that is now set to go live in January 2020. We now have a huge opportunity to take
North America Stories
12/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air seven Athletes Unlimited Softball...
12/06/2026
The United Football League will host its FAST Innovation Suite at the 2026 United Bowl presented by Credit One Bank on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. ET at Audi...
12/06/2026
PTZOptics and LayerJot will present live demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 showing how natural-language AI prompting, robotic camera control, and on-device comput...
12/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026, featuring...
12/06/2026
Ateme has announced that Eurovision Services is using Ateme's software-based frame-rate conversion technology for international live event workflows. The de...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin and Simplestream have announced a partnership with Xperi to simplify the launch of OTT streaming services on TiVo OS smart TVs and devices. The collabo...
12/06/2026
Net Insight has announced that a multinational technology company is deploying a...
12/06/2026
MLB Players Inc., the business arm of the MLB Players Association, has announced a partnership with Athletes First to develop and sell brand partnerships across...
12/06/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall have announced the CommandKeyboard-Advanc...
12/06/2026
Comcast Smart Solutions announces a new smart technology deployment with Major L...
12/06/2026
Elevation Worship completed the initial leg of its Elevation Nights 2026 tour ...
12/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has announced KONA IP25 support for Colorfront Transkoder and ...
12/06/2026
Audinate Group Limited (ASX: AD8) will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7321, Ce...
12/06/2026
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has announced the appointment of Scott Adametz as Chief Technology Officer. The Pac-12 describes the hire as the first CTO appo...
12/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced AMPP Edge Live, a production system combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration, and AMPP OS in a single platf...
12/06/2026
At one time a trailblazer with the launch of the Longhorn Network, the Universit...
12/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
12/06/2026
Chyron has announced PAINT 10.4, an update to its illustrated replay and sports ...
12/06/2026
SVP, Production Mark Gross: With the new schedule, with not having every Sunday night, it's given us an opportunity to take a step back and reimagine what ...
12/06/2026
For Televisa Technical Engineering Manager Roberto N nez Ibarra and the small team of 12 technicians and two production personnel at the IBC things are already ...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
AJA Announces KONA IP25 Integration with Colorfront Software
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Collaboration enables uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 I/O ...
12/06/2026
URSA Cine 12K LF Used to Create Visuals for STUTS' K-Arena Concert
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Organic visuals projected on a giant scre...
12/06/2026
MTI FILM Acquires Mango New Edit, Expanding its Global Post-Production Services ...
12/06/2026
AI Point Tracking Speeds Up Complex VFX Tracks in Mocha Pro
Jessie Electa Petrov June 12, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic point trac...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to...
12/06/2026
Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform, today announced Jigsaw24, a leading B2B IT solutions provider wit...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils First-Look Images from Villaflor, Santiago Mitre's New Film
Entertainment
12 June 2026
GlobalArgentina
Link copied to ...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Cross the Boundaries of the Real World into the Spirit Realm i...
12/06/2026
A fentanyl countermeasure that adapts to combat future black-market drugs Scripps Research scientists developed a vaccine that teaches the immune system to rapi...
11/06/2026
The immense size of the tourney and its Atlantic-spanning operation also disting...
11/06/2026
Nielsen has released a new soccer fandom consumer research report, The Fans Behind The Game: FIFA World Cup 2026 Edition, examining the soccer audience in the...
11/06/2026
Telemundo will launch its FIFA World Cup 2026 coverage on Thursday, June 11 with...
11/06/2026
FuboTV Inc. has announced a distribution agreement with NBCUniversal. Fubo customers can now stream Telemundo and Universo, with NBC Sports Network (NBCSN), NBC...
11/06/2026
DAZN has announced its in-app features for FIFA World Cup 2026 coverage in Spain...
11/06/2026
Roblox has released the 2026 Roblox Digital Expression Report: Wave 4 - Sports D...
11/06/2026
FIFA has unveiled DNA, the Official FIFA World Cup 2026 Anthem, performed by A...
11/06/2026
ESPN will provide English- and Spanish-language news and information coverage of FIFA World Cup 2026 across its U.S. media platforms from June 11 through July 1...
11/06/2026
The latest product of the outstanding RIT Sports Network program, this recent grad from Long Island is carving out a promising path in broadcast engineering
In...
11/06/2026
DAZN has announced a multi-year agreement to make DSPORTS channels available to ...
11/06/2026
Laura Dern at the 1986 Sundance Institute Directors Lab (Photo by Eric Edwards)
By Lucy Spicer
It takes a village to bring together the Sundance Institute lab...
11/06/2026
MTI FILM acquires Mango/New Edit Posted by MTI Film on June 10, 2026
LOS ANGELES, CA - June 2026 - MTI FILM, the multiple Emmy Award winning Hollywood post-p...
11/06/2026
Study underscores the need for authoritative content intelligence to build trust...
European Tour on its vision to create the connected golf course through the internet of things By Heather McLean, Editor 
