30,000 Shots, One Fan Experience: Dave Giancola on AI, Data, and the USGA

I mean, we have 15 national championships.

So the U.S. Open and U.S. Women's Open, Senior Open, Senior Women's Open, but then down to the amateur game.

And the amateur game has absolutely exploded.

right? Not that it wasn't and always hasn't been huge.

The U.S. amateur was a major

back in the day,

right? Before the current state of professional golf took shape.

But the amateur game, greengrass golf for the average person has blown up since COVID.

I mean, the stats back it up and the interest we've seen in the amateur game has been huge, right? The college game has become bigger and you're seeing a lot of immediate impact, right? Like People that were in college or playing in the US Am are winning PGA Tour events shortly after turning professional.

You know, you look at a Jackson Coivin, right? He was a Walker Cupper a year ago playing in our US Am and all of a sudden winning PGA Tour events, all of the things.

And so people are seeing that trajectory and latching onto the amateur game.

So we're really proud of the amateur game.

We've had the US Amateur Women's Amateur for as long as we've been around since the late 1800s.

We're really proud of that.

They're the two biggest amateur events in golf.

And what's been great about particularly our broadcast and digital kind of suite is that we get great reach off of both of them, especially on the broadcast side with what NBC and Versant bring to the table in terms of their golf knowledge and storytelling, just the best storytellers in the sport.

And they can tell that arc from a junior all the way to a senior and really can pull that thread through for us and bring it out.

But on the digital side, In 2023, we launched the USGA app.

We used to have the US Open app, the Women's Open app, and everything else was kind of a website.

And we brought all of our championships into one app.

Now, that's a Herculean effort.

It's a lot to support, right? Different scoring systems, different formats.

But what we've tried to do is use...

No mystery that the U.S. Open and Women's Open have the largest volume of fans.

But can we then get them hooked to the rest of our championships by keeping them within our products, using the broadcast to promote the next broadcast, even if it's not the Women's Open? What's up next? It's the girls junior.

I mean, we have 15 national championships.

So the U.S. Open and U.S. Women's Open, Senior Open, Senior Women's Open, but then down to the amateur game.

And the amateur game has absolutely exploded.

right? Not that it wasn't and always hasn't been huge.

The U.S. amateur was a major

back in the day,

right? Before the current state of professional golf took shape.

But the amateur game, greengrass golf for the average person has blown up since COVID.

I mean, the stats back it up and the interest we've seen in the amateur game has been huge, right? The college game has become bigger and you're seeing a lot of immediate impact, right? Like People that were in college or playing in the US Am are winning PGA Tour events shortly after turning professional.

You know, you look at a Jackson Coivin, right? He was a Walker Cupper a year ago playing in our US Am and all of a sudden winning PGA Tour events, all of the things.

And so people are seeing that trajectory and latching onto the amateur game.

So we're really proud of the amateur game.

We've had the US Amateur Women's Amateur for as long as we've been around since the late 1800s.

We're really proud of that.

They're the two biggest amateur events in golf.

And what's been great about particularly our broadcast and digital kind of suite is that we get great reach off of both of them, especially on the broadcast side with what NBC and Versant bring to the table in terms of their golf knowledge and storytelling, just the best storytellers in the sport.

And they can tell that arc from a junior all the way to a senior and really can pull that thread through for us and bring it out.

But on the digital side, In 2023, we launched the USGA app.

We used to have the US Open app, the Women's Open app, and everything else was kind of a website.

And we brought all of our championships into one app.

Now, that's a Herculean effort.

It's a lot to support, right? Different scoring systems, different formats.

But what we've tried to do is use...

No mystery that the U.S. Open and Women's Open have the largest volume of fans.

But can we then get them hooked to the rest of our championships by keeping them within our products, using the broadcast to promote the next broadcast, even if it's not the Women's Open? What's up next? It's the girls junior.