Greetings golf stakeholders:
Welcome to the Masters edition of the Perspective (wait, what, in November?). Just kidding, our loyal followers know that we’re focused on the operational side of the industry so, while we take delight with others in watching the annual golf competition pageant, we won’t pile on the plethora of media coverage which seeks to illuminate every stroke, story and suffering of the annual Augusta pilgrimage. Stuart Lindsay headlines again this month digging for the facts and “how did that happen?” behind a sizeable scam in credit card processing that fortunately got nipped in the bud by alert operators and with help from NGCOA and website/hosting/marketing provider 1-2-1 Marketing. To be informed so you’re not the next victim of these types of financial shenanigans, read on: The Pellucid Perspective – November 2020
In addition, our November epistle features the following analyses and professional opinions:
Guest contributor Craig Kessler (Director, Governmental Affairs, SCGA) takes to the soapbox to outline why the pandemic dividend will ultimately pale in magnitude and duration to two earlier industry trends, significantly “juicing” participants and rounds, which aren’t coming back. What were they? You’ll have to read his article to find out and see if you agree.
Stuart does double-duty this month as he also dove headlong into the TopGolf-Callaway transaction to try and figure out whether it was the publicized “marriage made in heaven” or actually a “shotgun wedding” when you look at the financials, the cash positions of various players (not in the press release) and the ultimate valuation of TopGolf relative to their previous predictions and reputation as a media darling the past 3-5 years. Beneath it all still burns the key question, “Is TopGolf accretive or dilutive to increasing participants, rounds or revenue for the core sector of our industry, golf course operations?”
Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the October weather impact results (slight up) and September YtD Utilization (way up again). We also chart the monthly timeseries for the year of Golf Playable Hours and Utilization while our Market Focus this month continues through our most recent Top 25 list; working our way up from the bottom we visit Philadelphia, PA occupying the 22nd spot in the recently-updated scorecard and ranking. Rounding out the issue, our Comings & Goings section catalogues, classifies and comments on 11 activities (this month it’s quite a humorous assortment instead of those boring, simple Opens/Closes) hitting our radar in the past month.
As a reminder, Pellucid recently introduced our Cognilogic Foresight product, Golf Playable Hours/Capacity Rounds forecast 60 days out, which can be ordered here at a one-time cost of $150. As we finalize our annual subscription access and pricing, for a limited time all one-time report fees will be credited back to subscriptions.
We recognize and thank our continuing sponsors; Troon Golf, GOLFNOW and KemperSports for their continued support of intelligent dialogue on key industry issues and health metrics tracking. For all those service providers and suppliers to the golf industry out there with the latest-and-greatest to offer to the industry thought-leaders who read our monthly publication, might we suggest considering joining our merry little band through our most popular 12-month sponsorship program? (offered at an improved value relative to our entry-level six month sponsorship rate) Twelve-month sponsors also receive all Pellucid industry-standard reports (State of the Industry, Outside the Ropes, Monthly Weather Impact Tracking (Nat’l, Reg’l, Markets), Top 25 US Golf Markets Scorecard, National Golf Consumer Franchise Health Scorecard and US Golf Supply on Sale report). Sponsorship provides monthly exposure to approximately 30K industry leaders and followers and associates your brand with Pellucid’s effort to expand intelligent thinking on today’s most challenging industry issues. For more “opportunistic” spenders, we might suggest one of our smaller-bite Ad Partner programs for those who may not be able to make a 6 or 12-month commitment (as short as 3 months are now available) or who may not need a half page or more exposure (quarter pages now available). If you’re interested in knowing more about sponsorship opportunities or our ad partner options, contact Publisher Jim Koppenhaver (847.808.7651, jim@pellucidcorp.com).
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 (Join our email list) to join the conversation, discussion and debate.
We also continue to spread the word on Pellucid’s next-generation golf course database, the Internet Golf Course Database (IGDB) with partners Apparation LLC, Never-Search and GolfCourseRanking.com which now offers annual subscriptions for <$2.5K (that’s a compelling value!). IGDB now powers Pellucid’s Golf Local Market Analyzer and the Top 25 US Golf Markets Scorecard and has added functionality to our project work like being able to tally and profile course closures within key US markets over time. For more information on our comprehensive database, updated quarterly and refreshed completely every 9 months (all 15K+ US courses), emails