Greetings golf stakeholders:
We’re barely into November and Chicago has had two snowfalls and much of the country has already been exposed to a wave of 20-30 degrees below normal; welcome to winter ’19-’20. For the northern climes, there’s no “November dividend” that we occasionally get but, for the southern geographies, this ought to be pushing more northerners to book their warmer weather getaways/golfaways earlier and more often. Our lead story this month takes us across the pond to the British Isles to look at the shrinking golfer base while the rest of Europe has played to a draw or slightly up in golf members. Publisher Jim Koppenhaver points out that, while we hold Scottish golf out to be the standard of how the game should be enjoyed, someone forgot to tell the Scotsmen as the member counts have declined by 9% between ’15 and ’18. For Jim’s quick tour through European participation via facts provided in the 2018 KPMG Golf Advisory Practice in EMEA participation study click on the link here: November Perspective
In addition, our November pre-Thanksgiving edutainment “feast” includes the following dishes:
• Contributing Writer Harvey Silverman does a follow-up to his story last month which highlighted an internet tee time provider on the wrong end of a TX back-taxes ruling to the tune of 7-figures by identifying the party with help from NGCOA’s Jared Williams. He then pivots to the resuscitated battle in El Segundo CA between TopGolf, the municipality and community activists where the former two parties had negotiated a much better deal for the city waylaid by the latter party saying, “Not so fast” and taking its plea to the public (only in CA…)
• Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay takes a light-hearted look at bad assumptions in several industry events and how things aren’t always as they seem. Not to spoil it, but one of them has to do with Frisco, TX and all the purported industry benefits that will emanate from that move and development efforts
• Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the October weather impact results and September YtD Utilization. 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 Orlando, FL (we’ll see many of you there in the near future) the 7th healthiest market by our proprietary, multi-dimensional scorecard. Rounding out the issue, our Comings & Goings section catalogues, classifies and comments on 45 (wow!) activities during the past month reflective of the annual “open season” when some number of northern owners decide it’s time to toss in the towel and either sell or close; a continuation of “culling the herd” (painful but necessary and….still too slow)
We recognize and thank our continuing sponsors; Troon Golf, EZLinks/Teeoff.com and KemperSports. 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.