Many have voiced concerns that the rise of legalized sports betting has negatively affected behavior among golf galleries. Among those who have spoken out about the issue are golfers Jordan Spieth, Matt Fitzpatrick, and Wyndham Clark. Now, the PGA Tour appears to be taking the matter seriously, issuing a stark warning over the growing problem.
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“We are concerned about fans interacting with our players in a negative manner, and certainly the potential for fans to try to impact the competition in some way,” PGA Tour senior VP of tournament administration Andy Levinson said at the Tour Championship last week.
“We are trying to take as many steps as we can. At the same time, if you’ve got 10,000 people standing around a green and somebody decides to blurt something out, those things are really hard to control. So, we do rely on decorum a little bit at golf tournaments. In some markets we’ve seen that deteriorate.”
To combat the issue, Front Office Sports reports that the PGA Tour is taking steps to minimize disruptions to its product. As part of its efforts to curb poor crowd behavior, the American circuit plans to introduce additional security measures, including training volunteers to identify and report problematic spectators. The initiative should begin with the 2027 season.
“We’re revamping our fan code of conduct,” Levinson added. “We’ve put a lot of effort into that. We have an ambassador program, which is a group of volunteers that is being trained to be amongst the crowds and look for certain types of behavior and then notify security.”
The PGA Tour is also preparing to track and monitor fans’ online comments about players they bet on. Meanwhile, PGA Tour VP of gaming Scott Warfield claimed that less than 5 percent of ejections from the tour’s events are due to sports-betting-related incidents.
“One is one too many for us, and it’s why we spent the summer talking to players, getting their feedback on this, leading to some of the stuff we’re looking at for 2027 with the tracking of harassing comments that usually start on the course, go online, or vice versa,” he said.
Despite the growing involvement of sports betting companies in various sports, the PGA Tour remains unaffiliated with such organizations. And the players cannot sign sponsorship deals with such companies. However, the PGA Tour getting involved with such organizations isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.
“We’ll get in when we’re ready and when it’s right for our members,” Warfield continued. “It wasn’t in 2026; we’ll see what it is in 2027. We’re getting more educated.”
While the PGA Tour gives a warning, other major sports organisations in the United States, such as the UFC, MLB, and NHL, have already taken the leap. Meanwhile, the NFL and NBA have yet to get in bed with sports betting organizations. Yet the PGA Tour should be concerned about the regulatory status of prediction markets, especially since the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and states vie for control.
Nevertheless, the growing involvement in sports betting continues to affect the sport. Whether the PGA Tour’s latest efforts will help curb the problem remains to be seen.