’20 Year-End Rounds Gain Assured: Next Up, Revenue Parity vs. ’19?
As most of you should by now undoubtedly know, August continued the healthy “comps” for rounds played registering +21% according to Golf Datatech. This eclipses the June ’20 gain (+20%) and completes the summer trifecta of double-digit gains for the 3 most important months of the year, Jun-Aug. It’s been a great 3-month run and early indications for the September numbers suggest that it’s likely we’ll get another 10%+ gain as COVID restrictions moderate and some forms of TV sports return to the airwaves as “attention competition” for our energized golfer base, the lapsed and newcomers.
Those results take all the fun and guesswork out of the industry’s previous speculation about whether ’20 will claw its way back to a Year-End (YE) rounds increase; the answer is “yes” and what’s now up for speculation is how much we’ll beat it by (I’ll outline that in this issue). The more important question now, and focus of this issue, is whether we’ll get enough of a rounds “premium” to cover the revenue loss and profit hit (higher safety costs) inflicted by COVID. That does hinge on answering the question of where rounds end up so we’ll cover the following ground in attempting to answer the revenue question:
- From an All Facility rounds perspective, I’ll explain what’s in our crystal ball and provide a by-month graphic of how the year has played out and what appears to be a 5-7% gain by YE
- From a Public Facility rounds perspective, I’ll outline that they took a bigger hit in Mar-Apr and were slightly later to the recovery party than their Private counterparts which results in our crystal ball projecting them to finish with a 4-6% gain by YE
- From a Private Facility perspective, I’ll outline that they only saw a 1 month dip (Apr) which was big enough to drag their Year-to-Date (YtD) figure into negative territory but they saw a May rebound which was strong enough to put them back in positive territory and have never looked back since. These results and our Sep-Dec projection peg them to finish with a very healthy 10-12% gain by YE
- In summary, I’ll attempt to tackle the harder question of “What’s the revenue outlook/objective for the average public facility?” Public has a shot at getting back to revenue parity but it will require multiple things to “go right” based on our YE weather impact forecast. We don’t have enough datapoints to make even an informed guess on the Private sector but, as noted above, they’ve got a stronger rounds tailwind behind them coming out of September
The good news is that we’ll end the year with significant gains in rounds benefitting both sectors of golf operations which took multiple body blows from COVID in early season. As you see above, the rounds benefit will be distributed differently between Public and Private and that presents different revenue stabilization challenges for each. For Public, the rounds gains have a much more direct effect on recovering lost revenue because that’s their primary driver. For Private, rounds losses aren’t nearly as devastating due to the membership dues model but they lost significant ancillary revenue (special events (weddings, banquets, corporate), charity outings etc.) that won’t be replaced this season. We’ll use the previously-published (August Pellucid Perspective) pandemic economics by colleague Stuart Lindsay as the foundation for our projections regarding what it will take in incremental rounds for the balance of the season to get back to revenue neutrality.
For our subscribers, read on for our method, math and projections for YE rounds and the “stretch” we’ll need for revenue parity for public facilities For our Executive Summary recipients, you can get the rest of the story one of three ways (all can be previewed and purchased at
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