Hello golf stakeholders:
The ’24 Masters (the first of the 4 annual PGA TOUR vs. LIV Golf professionals’ contests) is now in the history books. This was penned prior to Sunday’s finish so we don’t know which “team” captured the green jacket this year or which group of players had the highest cumulative finish but hopefully it was great golf and contested down to the last hole on Sunday.
Publisher Jim K. gets the lead story this month jumping into the ongoing discussion about Municipal vs. For-profit golf business models, operations and results. Uncharacteristically, instead of taking a side and supporting that position with a set of facts, he chooses to simply outline how the size and shape of Municipal golf has changed in the recent past and what the driving factors are behind those developments. One thing is clear and consistent over the past 10-15 years; Municipal golf’s domain is no longer limited to being the low-price leader in its market and it’s no longer the dominant format as the on-ramp to the sport of golf.
Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay channels his “pre-golf self” (fun-loving, free-spirited ski instructor) with an interesting and fact-based comparison between the sport of alpine skiing and golf pre and post-COVID eras. As he makes the case, they’re very similar industries that share a common consumer base of those with generally higher affluence and having more discretionary time. That said, the skiing industry has more “concentration of power” (multi-mountain ownership corporations) and their tools and business practices reflect that with a higher maturity than golf. There are things to be learned on both sides of this coin and Stuart takes you through both perspectives.
See below for the headlines to each of our recurring sections from the regional March weather impact map (crazy good, broadly favorable) to Market Focus (Cleveland, host of the Women’s Basketball NCAA Finals followed the next day by a full solar eclipse). We’ve already compiled the March rounds “preview”, courtesy of our GMRC early-responders, and it suggests that Golf Revenue and Rounds again followed weather favorability upward but not linearly (producing a slight decline in Utilization, once again proving the necessity of being able to quantify weather impact). If you want to know those numbers on a regular basis, you can either participate in GMRC (course operators) or sign up for a Publications Membership (everyone else).
If you know of associates who would benefit from the topics and insights covered in this issue, feel free to forward this email and encourage them to register on the Pellucid website (http://www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist) to join the discussion and healthy debate.
We also continue to spread the word on Pellucid’s next-generation golf course database. The Internet Golf Database (IGDB), provided by Apparation LLC, is the industry’s most complete, accurate, accessible and useful golf industry directory. IGDB, along with Pellucid’s proprietary extensions, powers Pellucid’s Golf Local Market Analyzer, the Top 25 US Golf Markets Scorecard and the GMRC. For more information on high-value IGDB subscriptions options, contact Apparation at mike.dickoff@apparationllc.com.
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