Pellucid Publishes the ’24 Golf Consumer Base Scorecard: Continued Growth, Demographic Shifts, Involvement Softening
Pellucid’s announces the release of our industry-leading ‘24 Golf Consumer Base Scorecard. Pellucid partners with the National Sporting Goods Association and their annual sports survey (conducted continuously since ’85) applying our golf-customized transformations to their base consumer data to create our unique and proprietary annual scorecard. Highlights of the ’24 results are:
- The cardinal consumer base metric of Play Rate (Rds per Capita per Year, combines changes in US population, the golfer base and play frequency) was flat as a result of “puts and calls” in the underlying measures:
- Population grew marginally (but similar to the historical annual rate)
- The Participation Rate increased due to an increase in the golfer count that exceeded the population growth
- The number of Golfers grew which marks our 5th consecutive year of growth (since ’19, the sport has added ~4M golfers in total)
- The Frequency Rate (Rds/Golfer/Yr, using facility-reported rounds) was flat due to the facility-reported rounds increase roughly matching the golfer increase
- The demographic profile showed slight shifts vs. ‘23
- Both genders participated in the golfer base growth, females had a higher growth rate but males added more bodies
- Higher income household ($75K+) golfers grew offsetting declines in the <$75K golfer base
- Younger age groups (<54) drove the golfer gain while older ages declined; the post-COVID trend of attracting younger and mid-age participants continues
- Involvement (Casuals, Involveds, Committeds by annual frequency), by our metric of engaged golfers (Involveds + Committeds) as a % of total golfers, fell. This in part reflects the addition of new golfers (which usually don’t initially play at elevated frequencies) but it’s also a yellow flag since golfers leave the sport at a higher rate from lower (vs. higher) levels of involvement
The supporting figures for the above observations and changes in the national picture of the ’24 Golf Consumer Base are contained in this latest update. The deliverable is an Excel workbook with multiple worksheets outlining:
- Annual scorecard charts – provides up/down/flat arrows for the key metrics in several groupings of related and causal measures and at the summary level (i.e. broader income ranges and ages etc.)
- Annual scorecard summary – provides the summary groupings of the underlying demographics and play dynamics (participation/frequency/play rates, engagement levels etc.)
- Annual scorecard detail – provides the lowest-level of detail for the demographic groups by size and change (both numbers and percent)
How do you add it to your reference library of industry macro metrics and trends? One of two ways:
- Become a Pellucid Publications Member (PPM) – for $495 annual (also has a monthly option), you get all Pellucid publications throughout the year including the State of the Industry, Outside the Ropes newsletter, the monthly Nat’l/Reg’l Weather Impact Tracker and the US Golf Markets Strength Scorecard and Ranking report or…
- For course owner/operators, you can receive the ’24 Golfer Base Scorecard by subscribing to the Golf Market Research Center (GMRC) which provides single page, comparative period, weather-adjusted performance measurement of 7 KPIs from three facts you provide monthly (Rounds, Golf Revenue, Peak WE GF Rate)
Industry stakeholders often ask, “Why do I need to understand the size, shape and changes to the national golfer base if I run a smaller, localized business?” As we’re painfully realizing with the macro events and gyrations around tariffs, it’s because the macro trends do eventually ripple down to your business, health, investment decisions and “prosperity odds” in the near future. Good enough? If you have any questions about any of the numbers, measures or our methodology (what we’re willing to disclose), please feel free to reach out to us via email.
