Hello golf stakeholders:<\/p>\n
As a lead-in to our final issue of the year (our 16th in publication), we want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a fun (and safe) celebration to ring in the New Year when it arrives.\u00a0 Before you know it, it will be time for the \u201926 PGA Show and our 23rdconsecutive annual presentation of the SoI (working date\/time is Thu 1\/22, 1:30-3PM EST but not yet confirmed).\u00a0 Stuart and Jim have also been invited to do the abbreviated preview of that at the Golf Business Conference educational sessions on Tue 1\/20, 11-11:50AM for those of you attending.<\/p>\n
Publisher Jim K. has the lead story for the last month looking at the role reversal of the ascendency of digital golf (simulators, both on-course and stand-alones, and digital range makeovers) compared to the fading fascination with golfertainment (Topgolf and clones).\u00a0 You likely won\u2019t be able to miss his schadenfreude as he and Stuart have been saying for over a decade that golfertainment isn\u2019t accretive to owner\/operators, consumer equipment manufacturers or the majority of the legacy golf industry so its previous success was just creating a parallel entertainment industry (not a bad thing in and of itself for their investors and cheerleaders).\u00a0 As he outlines in his article, the advantages of digital golf are that it\u2019s largely on-premise which brings golfers to courses and reinforces the sport of golf via skill development, shotmaking, strategy etc. which has a much more likely chance of creating new golfers and getting existing golfers to play more.\u00a0 Any of our readers interested in any of those benefits not delivered by Topgolf?\u00a0 We thought so\u2026<\/p>\n
Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay, as he historically has, teases a few of his SoI topics regarding where the industry might be headed in \u201926 and the influences of AI, price\/value, technology changes and what we\u2019re seeing in a slight softening of the Key Performance Indicators coming out of the \u201925 season.\u00a0 He returns to beating a drum that we\u2019ve been banging for 10+ years which is the fact that Customer Franchise Analysis and acting on those insights is a key to success in \u201926 (starting with much dramatically improving golfer retention).\u00a0 The challenge is that much of that is locked up in your PoS system but the technology tools as well as techniques and measures that we\u2019ve pioneered and refined over the years are getting much closer to the automated nirvana which seems to be required for our industry to act.<\/p>\n
See below for the headlines to each of our recurring sections from the regional November weather impact (another single-digits downer, ouch) to By-the-Numbers which provides the October and Year-to-Date results for Rounds (month down\/YtD slight up) and Utilization (both up).\u00a0 We\u2019ve already compiled the November golf operations performance scorecard \u201cpreview\u201d, courtesy of our Golf Market Research Center (GMRC) early-responders, and the sneak peek suggests that Rounds might have actually been flat which would produce a surprising healthy up in Utilization.\u00a0 If you want to know those numbers on a regular basis, you can either participate in GMRC<\/a> (course operators) or sign up for a Publications Membership<\/a> (everyone else).<\/p>\n
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