Hello golf stakeholders:
With May in the rearview mirror and the continued strength we’re seeing, it’s on to June which leads into the penultimate national rounds month which is July. The COVID surge is showing some signs of abatement but not nearly as large a “giveback” as Jim K. had forecast in January’s State of the Industry (one bet on which he’d love to be wrong). On that point his headline article this month asks the question of “Is the prosperity party nearing its end?” For numbers support he brings pictures and a table of how Jan-Apr has performed on rounds vs. both ’20 and the non-COVID baseline which he’s defining as the ’17-’19 three year period. We won’t give away his answer to the headline question, you’ll have to read it for yourself.
Our June panorama on the industry at large also includes:
- Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay is in familiar territory with his “Tech Talk” topic this month of how the upcoming changes to cookies and “passive” website visitor tracking is going to change in the near future. For most operators which haven’t been doing web retargeting, you haven’t missed anything and you’ll now be on a new, level playing field. For the more sophisticated operators who have been doing that, it’s going away so it’s back to square one. Stuart makes the point that having 1st Party data in the future will be even more critical as well as several other pointers for readers in this brave new world
- Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the May weather impact results (up slightly) and April Utilization (way up, rounds gain beat the healthy weather improvement). 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 Houston TX occupying the 15th spot in the latest scorecard and ranking. Rounding out the issue, our Comings & Goings section catalogues, classifies and comments on 11 (slightly low) activities dominated by transactions (Sales for continuing golf operations, Private sector unusually represented recently) with our usual funny situation of the month, this one involving a course which straddles the US-Canada border in the era of COVID
- You’ll also see the initial call for Charter Members for our Golf Market Research Center (GMRC) which completed the free trial pilot phase on 5/31. For a mere $500 annual subscription fee (lower for NGCOA members, see your SmartBuy site for details), all facility owner/operators are invited to join and get the insights and benefits that just under 100 facilities saw as they participated in the pilot. More information on the program is available either by reading the 2-pg program summary or viewing the 18 minute webinar demo by Jim K (you have to register to view the video, don’t worry, you’re not signing up for anything, we just want to know who’s viewing our content as the quid pro quo). As you’ll see, there are multiple value-added benefits to those signing up as Charter Members (during the period 6/1-7/31) vs. waiting and just being a subscriber post-7/31
We recognize and thank our 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 discussion and healthy 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.