2024 Golf Consumer Franchise: 5th consecutive growth year, +4%, +4M golfers since ‘19!
The results are in from our annual May ritual of analyzing and releasing the “Pellucid version” of the National Sporting Goods Association’s (NSGA) consumer survey on participation, demographics, involvement and churn. The healthy results show continued growth in the golfer base and shifts in the demographic profile toward the mid-Career age group while involvement (10+ rds/yr golfers) showed a modest decline. We also observed the continued growth of New-to-Sport (converting the never-exposeds) and, combined with the reactivateds (have played previously but not in ’23, returned in ’24), that produced a positive churn rate (acquireds/losts) and annual turnover rate of ~20%.
True to our historical form in analyzing the golfer base, we’ll look at the ’24 results across the four dimensions of size, demographic profile, involvement level and churn dynamics vs.’23:
- Size – We had a net gain ~+4% with the golfer base eclipsing 24M (we focus exclusively on actual vs. virtual/digital golfers included in the “bigger tent” definition of used by NGF). We’ll start with the cardinal metric of Play Rate (rds/capita/yr) which singularly captures the elements of population, golfer base, and frequency changes and then analyze further to the 2 component metrics of Participation and Frequency Rates
- Demographics – The headline is that the gender balance was relatively unchanged (both participated in the growth), higher income households (HHs) drove growth on the income dimension and mid-age golfers (35-54) drove gains by lifestage. We’re seeing shifts in the post-COVID growth era but the demographics appear to be (gradually) “reverting to the mean” (the legacy golfer profile)
- Involvement – We continued to see a gradual dilution in involvement as measured by the percent of the golf base defined as “engaged” (10+ rds/yr) which is sub-50% and declined by 4 pts vs. ’23 (partially a “feature vs. bug” because, when your customer base is growing, unless new players come in at or above median frequency, they’re going to dilute this measure)
- Churn – Our retention rate declined marginally but was offset by the influx of new golfers (both new-to-sport and reactivated). That resulted in a slightly accelerating attraction/attrition ratio of 1.2:1
This is just the tip of the iceberg for facts and findings from the ’24 golfer survey; for our subscribers, read on to get all the details, what’s changing and implications for our industry and your business in ’25 and beyond. For everyone else, you can get the rest of the story one of three ways:
- Subscribe to the Pellucid Publications Membership for $495/yr (most comprehensive coverage & detail, PPMs had the full scorecard results down to detail figures 2 weeks ago) – Annual subscribers get access to the following:
- Outside the Ropes monthly digital newsletter (including this issue for starters!)
- Annual State of the Industry report portfolio (PowerPoint presentation, PDF commentary report, access to Jim/Stuart video of presentation)
- Geographic Weather Impact Tracking (US, 45 regions, 61 markets) or Cognilogic for Golf Playable Hours/Capacity Rounds for individual facilities
- National Consumer Franchise Health Scorecard (expanded data and tables underlying this issue’s summary figures)
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- Subscribe to Golf Market Research Center (for operators wanting a combination of insights and action tools) – In addition to an OtR subscription (hence, this issue), you’ll get the State of the Industry presentation along with the full suite of Performance Tracking reports and weather impact services (Cognilogic for historical Golf Playable Hours/Capacity Rds, Foresight for the 60-day forecast for your facility location for Capacity Rds and daily key weather forecast variables)
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