PGA Tour Live’s betting-centric feeds on ESPN will double in 2026, to debut at WM Phoenix Open
The metrics proved to Scott Warfield that the PGA Tour Live’s Betcasts are ready to advance beyond the test phase. If last year’s six betting-centric alternate feeds were experiments of sorts, they were not only successful but worthy of doubling in frequency for 2026.
Warfield, the tour’s vice president of gaming, pointed to Betcasts' time-watched numbers and continued growth of betting on golf, which saw a 20-percent increase in handle year over year, as proof that the Betcasts are a proven commodity.
“We feel pretty confident based on the stickiness that we saw last year that if we can get people in, they stay,” Warfield said.
The PGA Tour continues to listen to its growing audience who love betting on golf with an announcement Monday that the PGA Tour Live Betcast feeds, in partnership with ESPN and DraftKings, will be available for 12 events for the 2026 PGA Tour season, starting with this week’s WM Phoenix Open in the first round. The betting-centric feeds will bring more than eight hours of coverage during each round on the ESPN app and ESPN+, bringing more than 400 hours of content on the PGA Tour Live Betcast feeds throughout the season.
Other marquee PGA Tour events that will also have accompanying Betcasts include The Players Championship and most of the signature events, including the three FedEx Cup Playoff events. Warfield also pointed to the 50-percent increase in betting growth year over year during the FedEx Cup Playoffs, with the Tour Championship handle more than doubling as a likely result of the format change.
Jonathan Coachman will host the feed with former PGA Tour player Matt Every and former caddie/ESPN personality Michael Collins on the show as analysts. Graham DeLaet, Jeff Eisenband, Steve Scott and Kevin Sylvester also rotate in as hosts and/or analysts, and leading golf data analyst Rick Gehman will contribute across the betting feeds throughout the season.
The key to the success of these shows are voices who bring authentic betting insights to golf betting enthusiasts, while also speaking to the more novice gambler who wants to dip their toes into the experience. Last year’s telecasts did that with fun banter between the hosts, while also providing expertise from folks like Gehman, who has run a data website for nearly a decade catering to serious golf bettors. Every and Collins proved well-versed in betting lingo and odds and combine that with their tour expertise.
Golf’s unique latency or time between shots, compared to other sports, allows for live betting opportunities not seen in other sports, which makes the Betcasts nicely suited as a way to nontraditional way to watch golf. And bettors continue to agree—with 2025 being the fourth straight year that handle has increased in golf betting by more than double digits.
Warfield pointed to conversations with its partners showing that the PGA Tour is outpacing its competitors in terms of engagement with a live-betting show. The Betcasts could be the tour’s version of college football alternate casts, proving a successful second-screen or even primary way to engage with golf.
“There's starting to be a belief across our operator [DraftKings] and our broadcast partner [ESPN] here to like maybe the Betcast can also us to uniquely be an experience for both sports fans and golf bettors,” Warfield said. “We're trying to grow the pie and get more people engaged around the sport. … We saw that manifest last year and believe it will continue in 2026.”
A new partnership with leader in sports betting data provider Sportradar, which acquired IMG Arena last year, will also lead to more integration of more agile live betting markets within PGA Tour Live Betcasts. Warfield also says that golf bettors should expect more micro markets to be available later in 2026.
“What you're going to find is a pretty nimble product development team that's looking at all sorts of opportunities to integrate into the live feed, like single game parlays and new micro markets that we might not have been thought about or offered before,” Warfield said.
Just like the tour, Golf Digest continues to see our gambling content, including our weekly experts picks column, be some of our top performing content every week.