PGA Tour Senior Vice President of Media & Gaming Norb Gambuzza joins Golf Central to discuss the Tour’s approach to legalized gambling in the sport and how they can maintain the integrity of the game. #GolfChannel #GolfCentral #PGATour
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How the PGA Tour is monitoring legalized gambling in golf | Golf Central | Golf Channel
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Golf Central on YouTube is brought to you by the new Chrome tour golf ball from Callaway I’m so pleased to be join now by the PGA Tour senior vice president of media and gaming NB Gamboa and N let’s talk a little bit about the Integrity of the game and what the tour
Is doing to protect that you know starting with the fans who let’s face it they can influence the action more so than in many other sports what is the PGA Tour doing to prevent fans from potentially interfering with play because of a wager perhaps that they’ve
Placed yeah so um I’ll say a couple of things uh before I I answer that question directly um sports betting is here uh regardless of what the PGA Tour is doing from from a commercial perspective and and the Supreme Court made that so in 2018 when it overturned
Um the professional and amateur sports protection act so so sports betting is here that is our new reality and and and we need to deal with it right so the other reality that we need to deal with is that our sport is very different from
From the NBA or or the NFL or NBA where you have a court and you have fans that are in seats that are sometimes 50 60 yards away from the field of play and and the idea that a fan is going to interrupt um the competition is is is is
Almost you know almost impossible our sport is um and and that’s what makes presentation of golf tournaments on site amazing is that it on a green you you can be 10 or 15 feet or 20 feet away from a player making a putt on a t box
You you can be just a few feet away from a player and and and the the unfortunate reality is that if if a fan at any point in time decides to to interrupt a player um there’s no policy that we can write there’s no uh mechanism that we can put
Into place that is going to 100% prevent any any fan from from um causing a distraction however um what we can do is is um educate we can work with security um uh we can identify fans who are uh problematic and and get them off the
Golf course um in 2023 we had several hundred fan ejections across across uh the schedule for for Behavior related items and I would say less than 1% of those was due to Fan Behavior tied to betting um you know player safety uh creating an environment where players can compete without interruption is is
Obviously a top priority for us it’s under constant review um our security team is um working with local law enforcement uniform law enforcement plane Co close officers on the ground each week and then um lastly I’d say you know our integrity program um we are we are constantly in real time monitoring
Betting activity around the world to see what’s happening um with individual players are our Lines Moving in in a suspicious manner is an inordinate amount of money moving towards towards uh certain certain markets or certain Debs so there’s a lot of things that we
Can do um and we are doing all of them but at the end of the day um it is not a perfect it’s not a perfect environment yeah sure I guess you just got to hope that when the empty beer cups stack up that the fans um remain respectful for
The players out on the course and and nor what have you heard from players and their concerns about potential interferences from fans yeah you know players um there’s been more discussion over on that topic over the last 12 months I’d say than in the previous years and players want to
Know what the PGA Tour is doing to to to protect the competition and and all the things that that that I just talked about those are the things that that we talk to the players about um about security about on-site about policy about messaging dealing with the with
The marshals dealing with the volunteers identifying problems before they become real problems the betting monitoring around around the world all all of those things those are the things that we can control um and we’re making sure that we’re doing everything within our ability to control those things that
That we possibly can’t and I suppose as well it’s a level of concern about the Integrity of the game but also the players as well you know in baseball we’ve seen some gambling scandals throughout the history the NFL has suspended a couple of players over the
Past few years or so um for breaking their policies recently two corn Freight T players were suspended um for gambling as well how do you actually go about monitoring these incidents when it comes to educating players and their involvement in gambling yeah so um the first thing we
Did um in 2018 and 19 following that Supreme Court decision was to was to write an Integrity policy and and build an Integrity program that would kind of govern everyone in our ecosystem um first and foremost players but also caddies and and coaches and managers and anyone who obtains a PGA Tour credential
Is governed by this policy um we circulate a written policy we produce a a video tutorial that everyone who wants to obtain a credential needs to take and that tutorial walks them through all of the various um uh rules and regulations and nuances of of the policy so that’s
Kind of first and foremost um but yeah you know the the the two players um uh were identified as having placed bets on Golf and that is kind of item number one in the policy um people they’re they’re called covered persons so people cover individuals covered by our policy are
Prohibited as strictly as you possibly can imagine from from from betting on golf um and that is monitored Again by those those um genius Sports and US Integrity the the the two partners that that we um use for bet monitoring around the world um we also all of our betting op operating
Partners all those companies I mentioned before have a list of all the covered persons so if if you’re a player or you’re a caddy or you’re a coach and and you place a bet it’s going to be flagged and and you are going to be disciplined and that discipline is going to be
Public and we we also made the decision when we wrote the policy that discipline in this area it was really important that discipline in this area be made be made public um so it’s unfortunate when it happens and and we hope that that no covered person violates the policy um
The fact that players have done it and has happen hopefully provides notice to others that that you just can’t uh you just can’t do it and it’s it’s really not worth it by any stretch of the imagination yeah it makes sense and got a couple of questions left nor but one
Thing that makes golf quite unique is the fact that most sports they have standard injury reports but in golf you know we only know if a player is hurt if they disclose it themselves how could this affect wagering on the sport and is it something that the tourist
Potentially looking into to amend the injury policy yeah it’s a great question it it is injur the topic of injuries and how injuries are communicated and then not just injuries but also withdrawals is a topic that we are currently in the middle of studying and trying to figure
Out with our competitions um and our rules team on how we can do that a little bit better so there are you know a lot of nuances to consider here um this is an individual sport versus a team sport uh the fact that we’re a membership organization uh there’s more
Nuances here than um than perhaps in in in other sports so um the number of instances where where we encounter an you know a player kind of unexpectedly withdrawing um are very very few and and minimal and that gives us some comfort but I think you know we’re here acknowledging that
We need to do a little bit better uh on how we’re identifying communicating reporting injuries and and uh handling withdrawals related to to injuries as it relates to the betting market so definitely under review and um and and a topic that that’s at the top of our list
