In a little over a decade, the golf industry has swung from zero pricing power — heavily discounting pre-COVID amid a supply/demand imbalance — to considerable latitude, as demand swelled to over 540M US rounds in ’25 while supply kept shrinking. Operating costs rose too, with a real Capital Expenditures (CapEx) backlog to work through. But after 6 years of catch-up pricing, the question now on the intelligent operator’s and astute industry stakeholder’s lips is, “Where do we stop, or level off, for longer-term prosperity?”
In today’s world, the knee-jerk answer is “let’s ask AI.” The problem: there’s no public training data, structure or history for our artificial co-workers (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, etc.) from which to form an “opinion”. Pellucid is one of fewer than 5 entities in the industry with the raw data — and even we found it seriously flawed and in need of standardization. We love a challenge, though, and this question isn’t going away in an AI-enabled world, so we did the work. Here’s what we found for this month’s subscribers:
- Over the past 10-year period has golf pricing lagged, led or paced the Consumer Price Index (CPI) nationally and by how much?
- Is that trend similar across the Pellucid Public, Regulation-length facility types or is there divergence between Premium, Value and Price facilities?
- Geographically, among the largest public golf markets in the US, which ones may be “pressing their luck” at current levels of inflation and which appear to still have pricing runway vs. the national rate?
Like golf shots (each of which makes someone happy, either you or your competitor), there’s something in this analysis for both the bulls and bears on golf pricing as well as major (public golf) market guidance on where to tap the brakes or, perhaps, accelerate. For our subscribers, read on for the “full Monty” while our non-subscribers pause to consider the price/value, risk/reward of joining our merry little band of progressive industry thinkers one of three ways:
- Subscribe to the comprehensive Pellucid Publications Membership for $495/yr or $45/mo (annual term), subscribers get access to the following:
- Outside the Ropes monthly digital newsletter
- Annual State of the Industry report & video (75-slide PowerPoint presentation plus online access to Jim/Stuart Orlando presentation video)
- Geographic Weather Impact Tracking (US, 45 regions, 61 markets) or Cognilogic for daily/monthly Golf Playable Hours/Capacity Rounds for individual facilities
- National Consumer Franchise Health Scorecard (expanded data and tables underlying this issue’s summary figures)
- Subscribe to OtR, 12 monthly issues for $250/yr or $25/mo (annual term), with a money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied at any time during your subscription. Subscribers also get access to the historical archive of past issues (last two years) via the members-only section of the Pellucid website
- Subscribe to the Golf Market Research Center (for operators wanting a combination of insights and action tools) – Here’s what’s included in an annual GMRC subscription for either $500 annual or $450 for NGCOA members (or $45/mo or $41/mo respectively):
- Full suite of Performance Tracking reports – Market profile, comparative trends report and 7 KPI scorecard for any month and Year-to-Date for data provided by facility
- Facility-level Cognilogic historical weather impact portal/reports access, Golf Playable Hours & Capacity Rounds by day in current month, by months in current year and by day-of-week in current year with comparisons to Year Ago and the 10-Yr Norm
- Facility-level Foresight 60-day Capacity Rounds forecast, select forecast weather elements (hi/lo temp, daily precip etc.), variance to last year and long-term Normal. Not infallible but better than guessing or trying to collect all that yourself and organize it manually…
- Outside the Ropes monthly e-newsletter (consider this a sample of topics and treatments)
- State of the Industry Presentation, report & video (75-slide PowerPoint presentation plus online access to Jim/Stuart Orlando presentation video)
To learn more:
- Click here for 2-page program overview or
- Click here for 15-minute video demo (you do have to register to see video; don’t worry, you’re not signing up for anything)
- Click here to subscribe for a single facility
- Email us for multiple facilities or special situations
As always, samples of all our publications, reports and services are available on the Reports and Services pages of the Pellucid website.
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