White Eagle Golf Club provides live streaming at the Illinois PGA Tournament

The White Eagle Golf Club in Naperville, IL was proud to host the 71st IL PGA Tournament. For 2020 it was decided to expand the audience experience by offering real-time streams from the course itself to be available not just at the clubhouse but on the course itself. With a firm date and plenty of time to prepare normally connecting the cameras at each hole was not a problem.

The event was thrown a curveball when COVID-19 hit, necessitating that the tournament is rescheduled. Unfortunately, this new date was being driven by the pandemic, and hence it was impossible to predict exactly when. The challenge was to be able to move rapidly and connect the cameras with little advance notification. The cameras being used were HD and streaming the content in real-time meant the network solution had to support gigabits capacity and have reliable, low latency.

As this was a championship-level PGA event, the esthetic beauty of the course had to be maintained. It was not ideal to have cables scattered throughout the fairways, interrupting the field of view for all participants.

Siklu EtherHaul™ 614 TX Point-to-Point radios were deployed, 3 complete links spread around the courses. These links delivered on the high capacity and low latency streaming cameras required in order to give the audience a high-quality video experience.
The links were installed in days and the event was a success, due in no small part to the new streaming offered to spectators in the clubhouse. This was the first time the IL PGA had ever offered live streams, and the response was enthusiastic.