The R&A

How The R&A Powers Real-Time Analytics for Global Sporting Events

“Druid provided the perfect balance of scalability and performance for the Open Championship’s real-time analytics needs.”
Patrick Green | Senior Data Engineer  |    The R&A

Summary

The R&A, based in St Andrews, governs the sport of golf worldwide (outside the U.S. and Mexico) and organizes some of the game’s most prestigious tournaments, including The Open and the AIG Women’s Open. Representing over 61 million golfers across 145 countries, The R&A needed a powerful analytics platform to deliver real-time insights during one of the world’s largest sporting events. By adopting Apache Druid, The R&A enabled subsecond analytics on more than 25 billion rows of data, ensuring operational teams, broadcasters, and event coordinators had instant access to critical information — from player performance to audience engagement.

Highlights

  • Ingested 250 million new rows every 15 minutes
  • Achieved 100% uptime throughout the tournament
  • Delivered subsecond query performance across 25+ billion rows
  • Transformed complex event telemetry into real-time, actionable insights

Challenge

The Open Championship generates massive amounts of telemetry — from player scoring and shot tracking to crowd movement, weather, and logistics. Traditional data warehouses couldn’t meet the demands for real-time speed, scale, and flexibility under the pressure of a live, globally broadcast event.

The R&A needed a real-time analytics engine capable of delivering instant insights — without risking downtime or performance bottlenecks.

Solution

The R&A selected Apache Druid as the core of their real-time event data platform.

Druid’s ability to continuously ingest millions of records per minute while delivering subsecond query response times at scale made it ideal for The Open’s dynamic, data-rich environment. Integrated into a modern, cloud-based architecture, Druid powered operational dashboards, performance tracking tools, and broadcast analytics applications — all refreshed with live data.

Even as the tournament generated hundreds of millions of new records every few minutes, Druid maintained fast, flexible analytics without operational complexity.

Impact

With Apache Druid, The R&A shifted from batch-driven reporting to dynamic, real-time event intelligence:

  • Operational teams monitored tournament logistics live.
  • Broadcast partners accessed up-to-the-second performance stats and audience engagement metrics.
  • Event coordinators responded instantly to weather changes, crowd flow, and player developments.
  • The Open Championship maintained 100% uptime, delivering flawless support for one of global sport’s most prestigious events.

Across operations and broadcast teams, Druid enabled faster decisions, better experiences, and higher resilience — helping The Open Championship deliver a world-class event.

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