The PGA Tour is launching a new integrity program designed to protect against influence on its tours by gambling interests.
The program will go into effect January 1 and will cover all facets of competition and operations on the six Tours overseen by the PGA Tour, including players and their support teams, all tournament staff and volunteers, the entire PGA Tour staff and the PGA Tour Policy Board, the tour said in a press release.
The tour already prohibits players from betting or related activities at events. The new plan is more comprehensive, the release said.
The program’s 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 tour has partnered with Genius Sports, a leader in sports integrity services, to provide several key services. This includes its state-of-the-art bet monitoring system which tracks real-time betting activity and utilizes proprietary algorithms to identify potentially suspicious patterns occurring in global betting markets,” the release said.
“The bedrock of PGA Tour competition are the inherent values of golf and the honesty and integrity of our members,” PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said. “We recognize, however, that no sport is fully immune from the potential influence of gambling. So, we felt it was important to move forward with an Integrity Program to further protect our competition from betting-related issues. Genius Sports will provide essential support as we roll out the Program across the entire PGA Tour.”
The plan includes a tailored educational program that will help players, caddies and officials to identify, resist and report incidents of potential betting corruption. Educational workshops will reinforce the tour’s regulations and highlight the potential consequences related to betting corruption. Additionally, custom-made e-learning modules will be available on a worldwide basis to all PGA Tour players in multiple languages, the release said.
