The DP World Tour operates on a level of complexity that few sporting organisations face. Throughout the season, its teams rebuild an entire tournament environment—from technology systems and broadcast operations to data platforms, scoring infrastructure and crowd management—and then repeat the process in another country. Delivering more than 40 tournaments across 26 different locations each year requires a technology foundation that can travel, scale and perform consistently regardless of local infrastructure.
This is the strategic backdrop behind the newly formalised partnership between the DP World Tour and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now becomes the Official Cloud Provider of golf’s global Tour. For both organisations, the agreement accelerates a shift toward a unified, cloud-based model designed to support every aspect of the tournament lifecycle.
“We are one of the most complex sports to deliver,” says Michael Cole, Chief Technology Officer at the DP World Tour. “Our team creates a functioning smart city for every event, and being able to replicate that reliably across the season requires a partner with global scale. AWS supports that.”
The Tour had been working with AWS for several years, but the scale of the system and the rapid changes in fan and media expectations made a formal, longer-term partnership inevitable. Cole explains the core requirement: “Getting consistency of applications and data processing from tournament to tournament, country to country, continent to continent is essential. Delivering cloud-based services to every event becomes possible through AWS.”
AWS shares this view. “We enjoy working with partners who are genuinely committed to innovation,” says Nina Walsh, Global Leader for Media, Entertainment, Games and Sports at AWS. “Fans want immediate insights, personalised content and information delivered in the language they prefer. The DP World Tour understands how those expectations are shifting, especially among younger audiences.”
Evolving the fan experience
A major focus of the partnership is closing the gap between the two dominant audiences in professional golf: spectators on the course and fans watching remotely. “We want to bridge the gap between the on-course spectator and the armchair fan,” Cole says. “AWS provides the technologies to do that.”
This will be supported by new real-time and AI-enabled features built on AWS Media Services. Fans will be able to watch fast-round compilations automatically generated from live play, view shot insights that combine real-time and past performance data, and receive commentary translated instantly into multiple languages. Walsh captures the shift simply: “People want curated highlights and real-time data on their phones. They want the context behind a shot and they want it available in their language.”
The Tour’s vast 50-year archive is also being transformed into a fully searchable asset through AWS’s AI-powered media management capabilities. Historically, locating specific moments required manual effort across multiple systems. Cole sees this as one of the most valuable upgrades. “We’ve got an archive of 50 years of content that hasn’t been easily accessible. One of the first deliverables with AWS is making that archive usable and accessible in near real time.”
Walsh adds how meaningful this will be for long-term and younger fans alike. “It gives long-term fans access decades’ worth of information,” she says. “Down the track, they might be able to search for their favourite player and retrieve roughly 20 years of highlights on that one player. The ability to turn half a century of footage into personalised short-form content opens an entirely new layer of storytelling for the Tour.”
On-site, spectators will see an enhanced version of the Tour’s “Virtual Twin,” which digitally reconstructs each course. Using over a million data points per tournament, the updated model combines live conditions, historical trends and predictive analytics to give fans a clearer sense of the flow of play. “Not everyone can follow every hole,” Walsh says. “The Virtual Twin allows spectators to see action taking place anywhere on the course, even if they’re positioned on the opposite side.”
A cloud-powered tour
Behind the scenes, the partnership introduces an operational backbone designed to bring more predictability and structure to areas of the tournament that have historically relied on manual observation. For an organisation staging dozens of events in different countries, many of the logistical variables—crowd flow around key holes, volunteer deployment, queue length at concessions, grandstand occupancy, or even how spectators move across the course—shift constantly based on venue, layout and local conditions. Decisions often need to be made in seconds, with staff relying primarily on instinct and what they can physically see.
Cole sees clear room for improvement. “Data provides insight, and insight supports better decisions,” he says. “We want to give operational teams real-time information that helps them respond dynamically throughout the event.” With AWS’s cloud services and agentic AI tools, those insights can now be drawn from live data rather than manual observation, allowing teams to react earlier, allocate resources more efficiently and keep the on-site experience running smoothly across very different environments.
Amazon Bedrock and Amazon QuickSuite will support this shift by enabling staff to query operational data through natural language. Walsh views this as a meaningful step toward simplifying day-to-day decision-making. “Much of the operational decision-making today is manual,” she says. “With agentic AI, we can simplify that and give teams the information they need in a much more immediate way.”
All of this aligns with the Tour’s push to build a more standardised, scalable tournament model—one where scoring, media tools, operational systems and analytics can all be deployed in the same way across the global calendar.
Sustainability is integrated into this shift. With a commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, the DP World Tour is introducing Green Drive Live, an AWS-powered platform that tracks emissions, energy use, waste, water and logistics in real time. Cole explains the aim: “We want real-time sustainability insight rather than retrospective reporting, so we can make informed decisions during a tournament.”
Remote broadcast production already supports these goals. “Our ball-tracing technology is produced from New Zealand and delivered to broadcasts globally within seconds,” Cole says. “It removes the need to fly staff around the world and lowers our carbon footprint.”
Looking forward, Walsh sees accessibility and reach as clear long-term benefits. “Translating content into local languages in real time gives more fans the ability to engage deeply with the sport,” she says.
For Cole, the priorities are clear. “The personalisation of content and the efficiency of the organisation are the key drivers behind the changes we are delivering with AWS,” he says.
The DP World Tour’s collaboration with AWS represents a shift from rebuilding standalone systems at every venue to establishing a unified, cloud-driven platform for a global sports property. By integrating media, data, operations and sustainability into a single architecture, the Tour is laying the foundation for a more consistent, reliable and scalable future for professional golf.
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