Greetings golf stakeholders:
Welcome to our first “shelter-in-place” edition of The Pellucid Perspective. With both Golf Business Solutions and NGF reporting roughly 45% of courses closed for play, we expect this month’s readership numbers to go way up! (ha, ha) Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay plays the role of “closet optimist” with his article outlining the case that COVID could turn out to be a golden opportunity…for the courses that survive. While no one obviously was saying, “Let’s have a US pandemic to get supply/demand back in balance quickly” there is a factual case to be made that the multi-month business interruption from March and beyond will prove to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for (we’re estimating) hundreds of courses nationwide of all shapes and sizes. For Stuart’s always colorful take (and the music lyrics references), click here:
April Perspective
In addition, our April journey takes both a qualitative and quantitative look at how COVID-19 is impacting our industry and what the road ahead might bring:
• Contributing Writer Harvey Silverman highlights the ongoing discussion/debate occurring between state Governors and course owners/operators over open/close, minimum requirements for safe operation and periodic spot checks for compliance using all manner of remote (drones?) and direct (police) observations. Taking a page from the PGA TOUR playbook, some states are even encouraging phone-in “(COVID) rules violations.”
• Publisher Jim Koppenhaver lets curiosity get the better of him with all the various types of data being published on COVID and golf so he tries to take a quantitative “whack” at what the rounds and revenue impact may be by the end of the season both nationally and for a hypothetical northern geography Public-Value course. At the national level it’s a moderate haircut, for northern courses it will be a “high and tight.” (Marine reference)
• Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the March weather impact results (up!) and February YtD Utilization (up, positive rounds exceed favorable weather). We also chart the monthly timeseries for the year of Golf Playable Hours and Utilization while our Market Focus spotlight of the Top 25 US Golf Markets falls on Detroit, MI the 13th healthiest market by our proprietary, multi-dimensional scorecard. Rounding out the issue, our Comings & Goings section catalogues, classifies and comments on 10 activities during the past month with Closeds beating Transactions by a score of 5-4.
• 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 and KemperSports as well as welcome our newest sponsor, Golf Business Solutions (a continuance of the EZLinks/TeeOff.com sponsorship). 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 (>www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist) 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 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), email support@theigdb.com.
