With the Olympics now in the rear-view mirror and having the benefit of seeing how it all played out (literally and figuratively) as well as seeing the vast range of post-mortem reviews, I couldn’t resist weighing in from a perspective that few have undertaken: Will global golf growth or the trajectory of the industry in the US be better/worse/same in the post-Olympics period?
While the media folks care about the “exposure” gained and how much more TV programming in how many more countries they can reach/sell and the industry associations care about reinforcing their relevance in a golf world that seems to be caring less and less about “ruling bodies,” those of us in the operational side of golf are principally concerned with three things (in this order): 1) Is golf operations revenue increasing? 2) Are the number of rounds played going up? and 3) Is the size of the consumer franchise growing? Beyond that, all the emotional statistics (i.e. lives touched, people who have favorable views of golf, correlations with admirable character traits, most sportsmanship among professional athletes etc.) aren’t really of much relevance to the folks in the trenches day-to-day.
In this issue, we’ll take a mostly subjective and one-person’s view of what golf’s return to the Olympics achieved and where the organizers and supportive (mostly industry vs. general) media were living in la-la land with the build-up, coverage and post-event reviews:
• Kudos for the successful campaign to get golf back in the Olympics, a little hyperventilation in the build-up and some lofty expectations from the industry cheerleaders and media but that’s their job to generate excitement and anticipation
• The product (the men’s and women’s events) performed up to expectations (like a 225 yard drive, down the middle for the average male golfer) while the media coverage had a consistent and noticeable “draw” to it for more roll
• While the post-event analysis and predictions of future glory could be described as “eternal optimism living in a constant state of denial” (channeling the description of sales people in general by one of my former bosses); I predict little will change short-term in the industry trajectory, trends and challenges
Much like trying to sort out all the rhetoric of the current presidential campaigns and “he said, she said” (that actually works here…), what I found overall is that we had opposing camps coming in proclaiming it would be “the best of times and the worst of times.” The end outcome delivered neither but it was a solid performance and in the fairway positioning golf well for the approach shot in Tokyo 2020 (when we’re going to have 55M US golfers playing 1B rounds remember?). I only wish that we had the potential for that outcome in the November elections but I’m afraid that there we’ll face “the worse or worser of times” outcome until 2020. But I digress, back to the golf industry and the potential Olympics impact.
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