Tag: golf industry

One in seven people in the U.S. participated in golf in 2022, according to report

Rounds played holding relatively steady, and golf’s economic impact has climbed since pre-pandemic years.

As Tuesday is the 15th annual National Golf Day in Washington D.C., it’s worth a look to see how the industry is doing in the wake of participation surges in recent years credited to the COVID-19 outbreak and golf’s offerings as a relatively safe outdoor pursuit.

The news is good for the game. The American Golf Industry Coalition has reported that roughly one in seven Americans participated in golf in some fashion in 2022, leading to a $102 billion direct economic impact.

One major indicator for the health of the game – rounds played in the U.S. – also tells a story of a game that has captured attention in recent years and has been able to hold it.

The National Golf Foundation, using data from Golf Datatech, reported this week that combined first-quarter rounds played from the past three years in the U.S. are up 17 percent compared to the same first-quarter periods of 2017-2019, pre-COVID.

The monthly comparisons for this year versus 2022 and 2021 aren’t quite as rosy, mostly attributed to weather. A recent NGF/Golf Datatech report showed that overall, rounds played in March 2023 were down 2.3 percent compared to March 2022, which trailed March 2021 when rounds spiked 45 percent as players looked for a break from COVID restrictions. Much of this year’s dip versus 2022 was attributed to the vast rainstorms that slammed parts of the Pacific Northwest and California.

Rounds played were also slightly down in February this year versus February 2022, also attributed mainly to weather. That follows a great January in which rounds played were up 7.1 percent versus January 2022.

The NGF points out in its latest report that the period of May through September makes or breaks any year for golf as a seasonal sport. But if recent first-quarter gains show anything, it’s that increases in participation as a whole in the U.S. have proved to be sticky, with players not abandoning the game as other recreational and travel opportunities have reopened after major COVID restrictions were lifted.

That’s good news as National Golf Day – which as a whole has been stretched to three days, May 8-10 – is presented in person by the American Golf Industry Coalition in D.C. after the two previous annual events were conducted virtually. The group advocates on behalf of the golf industry on legislative and regulatory issues. Leaders of the coalition include prominent voices from the USGA, PGA of America, PGA Tour, LPGA, World Golf Foundation, Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, National Golf Course Owners Association and other leading golf organizations.

Those converged in D.C. have quite a story to tell of golf’s impact in recent years. Some highlights from the American Golf Industry Coalition’s most recent economic impact study:

  • Roughly one in seven people in the U.S. participated in golf in 2022 for a $102 billion direct economic impact, an increase of 20 percent over its $84 billion direct impact in 2016.
  • Golf’s complete economic portrait in the U.S. totals $226 billion and reveals a significant ripple effect, with millions of players spurred to travel, make ancillary purchases and buy or build homes connected to golf.
  • The game enabled 1.65 million jobs including more than 1 million directly tied to the industry.
  • Golf is a vehicle for fundraising, with almost $4.6 billion raised in 2022, a 16 percent increase compared to 2016 ($3.9 billion) and close to 1 percent of all charitable giving in the U.S. Over 90 percent of golf-related fundraising was stimulated by events at local courses, with four out of five facilities holding at least one event in 2022.
  • Alternative forms of golf (such as Topgolf) have made the game increasingly accessible to a larger, more diverse audience, helping push golf’s overall participant base to 41.1 million (up from 32 million in 2016). In 2022, 48 percent of all golf participants (on- and off-course) were between the ages of 6 and 34, outsizing their share of the U.S. 6+ population (41%).
  • The on-course participant profile continues to diversify, with new high marks in 2022 in the proportion of golfers who are female or people of color.

Such details from the economic impact report provide great points of emphasis in D.C. for National Golf Day.

“We are very excited to have so many leaders join us in Washington to help advocate for the game of golf.” Greg McLaughlin, CEO of the World Golf Foundation, said in a media release discussing the economic impact report. “We are also pleased to release this new study that helps reflect the important role the game plays in the American economy.”

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After recent success, will golf thrive or struggle to survive in the age of coronavirus?

Golf’s two planets must work together to take advantage of its new-found position as one of the few athletic endeavors deemed COVID-OK.

The world of golf is made up of two planets: Planet Hollywood and Planet Humility.

Jay Karen, CEO of the National Golf Course Owners Association, once used that analogy at an industry conference and it’s apropos.

Planet Hollywood is everything we see on TV. It is Tiger Woods and major championships and sponsorship logos and $15 million bonus checks. It is The Match II, which attracted oodles of eyeballs to the sport on Sunday.

“We need that planet to be healthy because it provides a source of energy to our planet, which is aspiration and enthusiasm,” Karen says. “Our planet is 10 times as big as that planet when you add up the economic impact and dollars passing through 15,000+ courses.”

And so while matches with Tiger and Phil and Rory and Rickie grabbed headlines and the re-start of the PGA Tour, LPGA and European Tour seasons can’t come soon enough, it is Planet Humility – those people that make up the backbone of our game – that golfers should really be concerned about.

These are strange times living through a global pandemic. Suddenly, golf courses are packed in a way the industry hasn’t experienced since Tiger Woods was revolutionizing the game in the late 1990s and former PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem was predicting 50 million golfers by 2020.

Well, that didn’t happen, but golf has been given this new-found seal of approval highlighting its healthy aspects and its ability to provide safe recreation. As courses across the country re-open there is pent up demand among golfers to get out and play. Tee sheets are mostly filled and former golfers and those trying out the sport for the first time are emerging out of the woodwork desperate to be in the sunshine and doing something, anything that has been deemed “COVID OK.” There is renewed belief that golf can grab a bigger piece of the pie among recreational and entertainment options.

“This uptick in demand could have a more sustainable life than those that kicked the tires because Tiger’s a rock-star athlete,” Karen said. “People are coming to the game for the reasons that they end up staying for the longterm: to be outside, to recreate with friends, for enjoyment while social distancing. We want people to come to the reasons to keep playing into their 90s.”

But the golf industry can’t ignore the long road it has ahead of it. The pandemic simply exacerbates the existing battle for survival for many golf courses in a land rich, cash poor business.

“When cash flow gets turned off for a few months that is a serious existential concern for some businesses,” Karen said.

When asked in an April survey by Golf Now how long their course could go without green-fee revenue during golf season before their business “suffers irreparable damage,” 27% of 1,300 respondents said less than one month, 50% said from one to three months and the remaining 22% said they could go three months or longer.

The fear is that this unprecedented disruption of their day-to-day business due to state and city mandates arising from the coronavirus pandemic will accelerate the failure of businesses that had been fighting the good fight and hanging on by their fingernails. So far, we’re only seeing isolated cases of closings, but the City of Dayton’s decision to close 90 of its 108 municipal golf holes in the municipality’s portfolio, which according to the Dayton Daily News required a subsidy of an average of nearly $500,000 per year for the last four years, is disconcerting and could be indicative of a larger trend. After all, Industry analyst Jim Koppenhaver, president of research firm Pellucid Corp., concluded the city made the right call.

“Not the right call for golf, justice, and the American way but the right financial call for a city of their size, with budget issues and with COVID still the big unknown in operations, rounds, revenues and costs for ’20 and beyond,” he wrote in The Pellucid Perspective’s May issue.

Everyone mourns the loss of a golf course, but it has become an all too familiar story due to oversupply — Finchem’s 50 million golfers by the end of 2020 likely will be half that. According to the National Golf Foundation, golf course closings have outnumbered openings by a wide margin every year since 2006. With the loss of high-margin food and beverage sales, restrictions on cart use and membership rolls likely to take a hit with soaring unemployment rates, golf course operators can use all the rounds they can get; otherwise the figure for closings is likely to get worse.

“It’s a tightrope walk to keep the business alive, keep your people employed and keep the golf business from going into a depression and the other side of the rope is keeping your customers who need air, sunshine and want to be in an open space as safe as possible,” Karen said.

The golf industry rarely elicits sympathy and empathy from the rest of the world. This is the first piece of disaster-relief legislation since Hurricane Katrina that didn’t specifically exclude golf from qualifying for the disaster relief.

“That was a big step forward,” Karen said. “When the legislation is drafted, winners and losers are chosen and golf has for the last 15 years been in the ‘who doesn’t’ category. Federal support through PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) could be a lifeline for many courses.”

It was refreshing to see Planet Hollywood and Planet Humility join forces to triage the emergency and to sing the virtues of golf from the same songbook. That included issuing “Back2Golf,” a compilation of best practices into one set of guidelines.

The industry has rallied – and will need to continue to rally – to help its own. The PGA of America established the Golf Emergency Relief Fund to provide short-term financial assistance to industry workers facing financial hardships. The R&A announced a COVID-19 Support Fund, with a focus on helping “national associations and other affiliated bodies in Great Britain and Ireland.”

“The R&A Covid-19 Support Fund will enable national associations and other key bodies to provide support to some of their members,” Martin Slumbers, chief executive of the R&A, said. “We know that many challenges lie ahead but club golf is the bedrock of our sport and hopefully this fund will help to begin the process of recovery.”

The reality of Karen’s planet analogy is that both planets rely on each other for survival. Planet Hollywood needs the 24 million customers to keep playing golf to feed the lifelong nature of the fandom.

For the first time in a long time it feels as if the two planets in the golf universe are pulling together and orbiting in the same universe. It only took a global pandemic to do so.

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