Thanks to DraftKings‘ partnership with ESPN and the PGA Tour, golf viewers will have access to a whole lot more betting content in 2026 than they did last year.
The PGA Tour announced on Monday that DraftKings is now the wagering provider for the golf body’s existing live betting stream on ESPN and that the coverage will double from six tournaments to 12, giving DraftKings a consistent presence across ESPN’s golf broadcasts.
ESPN Bet was the previous sportsbook partner behind the PGA Tour Live BetCast feeds, before ESPN and PENN Entertainment pulled the plug on that sports betting venture in November, a little more than two years into a 10-year deal. With DraftKings now on board as ESPN’s primary betting partner, the online gaming giant’s involvement will level up the watch-and-bet stream.
PGA Tour sees DraftKings as the course leader
PGA Tour Live BetCast features not only integrated odds but also golf-related betting discussion and live betting analysis, previews, tournament features and more. In its debut year in 2025, the feature encompassed 50 hours of coverage across six events.
Presented by DraftKings in 2026, it will span 12 events, starting with this week’s WM Phoenix Open and running all the way to The Players Championship and FedEx Cup Playoff events. Viewers of the stream will be able to access more than eight hours of coverage during each round of the tour on the ESPN app and ESPN+. In total, the live betcast will total more than 400 hours of content throughout the season, a 700% increase from the ESPN Bet days last year.
PGA Tour Vice President of Gaming Scott Warfield said in a statement that the expansion will include a host of new betting markets as well as a vast increase in the number of events and hours streamed. Per Golf Digest, he added that a new partnership with Sportradar means that viewers can expect more parlays and micro in-play betting markets to become available as the year progresses.
“Our collaboration with the PGA Tour and ESPN reflects a shared, forward-looking approach to fan engagement,” added DraftKings Chief Marketing Officer Stephanie Sherman. “For those who see betting as part of their entertainment experience, by integrating our industry-leading golf offerings into PGA Tour LIVE Betcast, we’re creating a more immersive, real-time way to follow the action from the first tee shot to the final putt, while fostering a sense of connection and community around the sport.”
PGA Tour’s betting ties
While the DraftKings-aligned product will take the PGA Tour’s live betting integration to a scale not seen before, the golf entity has experimented with that kind of offering for years. It first unveiled a BetCast product back in 2021 on a much smaller scale, in partnership with then-broadcaster NBC Sports and now-exited U.S. sportsbook PointsBet.
Meanwhile, DraftKings has been an official betting operator and the official daily fantasy game of the PGA Tour for years. It opened a retail sportsbook at the TPC Scottsdale in Arizona in October 2023 under a market access deal with the PGA Tour.
As well as DraftKings, the PGA Tour has FanDuel as an official betting operator. DraftKings’ biggest rival is also the Tour’s official online casino.
As it continues to lean into betting, the PGA Tour works closely with Integrity Compliance 360 (IC360) and announced in January that it had extended its partnership with the independent integrity monitor to fully integrate the ProhiBet service for betting monitoring and compliance into its integrity program.
The partners said that ProhiBet will allow the PGA TOUR and sportsbook operators to help ensure that players, caddies, officials and administrative staff remain compliant with regulations that prohibit them from betting.
