Ohio Golf Journal February 2020

Is Golf Really Broken? By Fred Altvater At the 2020 PGA Show, the International Network of Golf (ING) hosted their annual state of the industry presentation from analytics veterans Jim Koppenhaver of Pellucid Corp and Stuart Lindsay of Edgehill Consulting. Some key data highlights from their presentation: – 2019 showed 20.6 million golfers played 432 million rounds. Those numbers are comparable to 2018, but are well below 2000, when there were 29.8 million players. – Percentage of population who played golf in 2000 was 9%; the percentage of population, who played golf in 2019 was 7%. – Average rounds per facility in 2000 was 36,500; the average rounds per facility in 2019 was 32,300 each. – The golf course industry has remained steady using 55 percent of tee sheet capacity; this percentage is the same as during 1990-2000 boom, but back then there were many more courses, with more added annually. – Since 2000, there has been a net loss of 815 golf courses operating in the United States. – There is no evidence to suggest that “alternative golf facilities” (Topgolf, Drive Shack, etc) are creating a cross- over effect for new players to green-grass golf facilities. Don’t kill the messenger and feel free to draw your own conclusions from the data, we just report the facts. Ohio Golf Journal