Hello golf stakeholders:
Today marks the 1-yr anniversary, exactly, of the COVID restrictions here in IL. Since March 15, 2020 we’ve seen a variety of situations from “safer-at-home” (we only want to see you outside your home for critical tasks) to today’s mask-and-distance guidance and golf has experienced the ups-and-downs resulting from the states’ guidance on permissible activities. Trying to track “success” in a rising tide environment is, surprisingly, not as easy as it seems as Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay points out in his headline story, “Golf Math 404”. This (intentionally) dovetails quite nicely with Pellucid/Edgehill’s recently-launched pilot of the Golf Market Research Center (GMRC). See Stuart’s comparison of Golf Math 404 to 101 in words and tables to why you need to step up and take the advanced course in performance tracking to evaluate the ’20 season and prepare for ’21:
March Pellucid Perspective
- Our March treatment of the industry-at-large also includes:
- Publisher Jim K. takes a look at the past 6 months of golf course activity that we capture in the Comings & Goings section and outlines the trends and changes we’ve seen recently which are a mix of good news (closure rate slowing, if we could hold a sizeable amount of the demand increase this would indeed be appropriate), not-as-good news (multiples and time-on-market still depressed/longer) and a wide variety of curious transactions and restructurings of ownership. In his view, ’21 will be an interesting year to observe whether the COVIdend was a lifeline to some number of on-the-bubble operators or just a 12-month stay-of-execution as competitive activities for time and money come back online
- Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the February weather impact results (a “downer”) and January Utilization (double-digit gain, against unfavorable weather no less). We also chart the monthly timeseries for the year of Golf Playable Hours and Utilization. Our Market Focus this month continues working our way up from the bottom as we visit Detroit MI occupying the 18th spot in the latest scorecard and ranking. Rounding out the issue, our Comings & Goings section catalogues, classifies and comments on 17 activities the vast majority this month being transactions (as ongoing golf operations) and properties for sale
- You’ll also see sprinkled throughout the issue references to the recent launch of our Golf Market Research Center (GMRC) pilot which now provides owner/operators with a mini-market profile, monthly trend analysis and a comparative scorecard across Pellucid’s 8 critical Key Performance Indicators (including the weather-dependent metrics of % Utilization and Revenue-per-Available Round). Post-launch of the full product in the summer, we’ll also include market/peer group benchmarking in those markets with enough participating courses to create the blind and balanced sample. The free pilot runs until 4/16 for those interested in getting a login, putting their information into the web portal and seeing (immediately) their actual reports; contact jim@pellucidcorp.com if you’re interested in “playing”. To date we have roughly 50 facilities who have signed up and, in the data, we’re seeing a mix of the expected and some interesting surprises in our review of their data and conversations with participants.
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 our industry thought-leaders audience, might we suggest considering joining our merry little band through our most popular/best value 12-month sponsorship program? 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, may we 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 (http://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 powers Pellucid’s Golf Local Market Analyzer, the Top 25 US Golf Markets Scorecard and now the GMRC as the facility master-record “backbone” as well. For more information on our comprehensive database, updated quarterly and refreshed completely every 9 months (all 15K+ US courses), email support@theigdb.com
