The latest participation figures from the team at BRS Golf have revealed that the crucial 18-to-34 age group has remained engaged with the game…
This article is part of GCMA Insights – topical content for golf industry professionals, discussing the things that matter to those who work in golf clubs.
Golf has done a “phenomenal job” of keeping younger people and women interested in the sport in the wake of the Covid participation boom.
Figures from BRS Golf showed that nearly 25-million-member rounds were played across their partner clubs in 2022 – numbers the tee time company and data experts described as “quite staggering”.
And they’ve come, the company’s Karen Moss and Kevin Murray revealed in a GCMA Insights edition of the Golf Club Talk UK podcast, by the industry retaining a demographic of player that was “totally different” to that they would normally see when looking at golf club members.
Murray said the team saw five-million-member rounds in the last three months of the year – statistics he said were “pretty staggering”.
It was a 95 per cent increase on pre-Covid numbers and came despite some particularly inclement weather in December. There were 1.25 million member rounds played in the final month of last year alone.
Overall, there were 24.7-million-member rounds played in the whole of the year, figures which Moss added showed that the sport had managed to keep many of the players attracted to playing the game after the first lockdown in 2020.
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Moss said: “It shows that golf has managed to retain, quite well, a lot of these people and they’ve managed to engage them in the sport.
“We’re talking about a massively different set of golfers – totally different demographics to what we would normally see in terms of golf club members.
“We’re seeing a lot more of that 18-to-34 age group and a lot more women joining as well, which means that clubs have had to change and adapt their strategy in order to keep these people engaged in the club.
“It’s really phenomenal that they’ve done so well here at this because, for a lot of them, it could be a completely new demographic for them to appeal to and not necessarily people that golf has appealed to in the past.”
In total, there were 12.4 million member rounds played across clubs in England in 2022 – an increase of 1.2 million year on year. Ireland accounted for 5.3 million (an increase of 865,000). There were 1.7 million in Ireland, an increase from 200,000) and a rise of 100,000 in Wales to 1.2 million.
“Scotland was just shy of 4 million rounds, but it was actually 600,000 down year on year,” said Murray. “When we looked at it, Scotland was the only country to keep golf open in Q1 (in 2021) and the levels of golf we saw were similar to post lockdown so we had higher than expected golf.”
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Golf Now also saw strong demand for visitor tee times, generating just over £10.5 million in green fee revenue for partners – “in excess of 420,000 rounds played” for the 1,500 clubs on the platform.
1,440 partners sold at least one round with the average basket value at just over £54 and the average price per player being £25. That was 25% higher than before the pandemic and four golf clubs generated more than £100,000 in green fee revenue.
Murray said: “There is a lot of potential for golf clubs on the platform the utilise it and make some incremental visitor revenue, which in this day and age is probably critical for a lot of golf clubs.”
To listen to the whole podcast, click the player above or visit Golf Club Talk UK.
This article is part of GCMA Insights – topical content for golf industry professionals, discussing the things that matter to those who work in golf clubs.
Get involved in the debate. To join the GCMA, click here, or to organise a call with a member of the GCMA team, just complete this form and we’ll be in touch!
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