PGA Tour Debuts Mixed Reality Integration At The Players Championship

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of The Players Championship being played at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, the PGA Tour teamed up with fan experience company The Famous Group to bring The Players Championship trophy to life.

The gold golfer, an amalgamation of past Players winners including Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler, will spring to life and jump down from atop the Tiffany & Co. trophy to recreate famous moments at the iconic 17th island green as part of a mixed reality activation, marking the first time the PGA Tour (or any golf organization) is bringing live mixed reality into a broadcast.

Debuting on Golf Channel and featuring across PGA Tour Live, ESPN+ and other Tour-owned and -operated platforms, the activation will change each day of the tournament from March 10-13, including featuring Woods’ iconic “Better Than Most” putt from the 2001 event—fist pump and all—on Saturday, and Fowler’s winning tee shot from 2015 on Sunday.

“As we head into The Players every year we’re always looking for what’s the new way we can push technology,” says Anne Detlefsen, PGA Tour senior director of digital content. “It’s usually a point in our schedule where we try to stretch the limits and bring new things to golf. This year for us, this is the way we’re doing that.

“There’s been a lot of (mixed reality) activations out there in the marketplace, but it has not happened in golf yet. We saw that, thought about it and thought about a way we could do it—not for the sake of throwing mixed reality into our broadcast but to really add some extra layer of storytelling to it—and The Players seemed like a great place to do that.”

While this will be the first-ever mixed reality during any golf broadcast, The Famous Group continues to make waves in the sporting world with its technology and storytelling.

The Los Angeles-based company has created a mixed reality raven for the Baltimore Ravens and a panther for the Carolina Panthers, as well as serves up the slime for the NFL on Nickelodeon with CBS during the wild card round. The Famous Group recently did mixed reality integrations for Super Bowl LVI and the NBA All-Star Game.

The mixed reality integration is able to look as seamless and real as possible thanks to scans and photos of whatever location is being utilized, whether it’s M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore or the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass.

Environmental changes like time of day and weather will be updated in real time while archival footage and audio serve as the template to make the experience as accurate as possible.

“We’ve previously done work in stadiums and arenas, but there’s nothing like the 17th hole at Sawgrass,” says Andrew Isaacson, executive producer at The Famous Group.

For the PGA Tour, not only does integrating mixed reality into its broadcast help highlight the tournament’s history, but is another calculated measure taken in the hopes of expanding its reach and fanbase as golf continues to grow and become more inclusive.

Similarly, the Tour has utilized sports betting to drive more engagement and awareness. In January, the PGA Tour also announced a Netflix docuseries with Box to Box Films, the same producers behind the successful Formula 1: Drive to Survive.

“Mixing this type of technology into the broadcast is huge for us to attract a new demo, and a demo outside of golf who may just be more interested in the sort of XR (extended reality) space and what people are doing in it,” Detlefsen says. “I think it’s a great moment for us and hopefully a very sharable moment outside of our broadcast across all of our Tour platforms and with our partners.

“We’re really excited about working with NBC on this and continuing to deepen our partnership with them and push the boundaries of the broadcast.”