Jon Last shares latest research data about current state of the golf industry

We caught up with Jon Last, president of Sports & Leisure Research Group, at the PGA Show in January and he shared the latest research data from his company about the current state of the golf industry, including golfer behaviors, attitudes and expectations, as well as the things facility operators and golf marketers should know before making key decisions for their courses.

Full transcript below:

What’s the latest research data you have on golfer behaviors, attitudes and expectations? What should facility operators and golf marketers know before making key decisions?

There’s a number of ways to look at where the consumer is sitting right now. One of the things that’s been really intriguing to us over the last few months has been what we call this economic oxymoron in the sense that people are still very concerned about where the country is going. There’s a lot of concern and strife about economic feasibility. A lot of concern about inflation, but yet obviously, the golf industry has been enjoying such a huge resurgence in recent years. And our data shows that that will likely continue, particularly at the higher ends of the marketplace. I think, though, at the same time, operators need to be mindful that there’s a lot more discernment now as we go into 2025 and to some degree, we may be approaching the ceiling, if you will, in terms of the ability to push rates higher and the ability to really expect increased volume of play from existing customers.

You know, the good news is the inventory of golf courses is not as robust as it was prior to this latest resurgence. That will continue to create demand on the private club side and data that we’ve just collected a couple of weeks ago and data that we’ve been collecting for about 20 years, we find that 53% of private courses are currently full or have waiting lists. So that’s going to continue to show real demand at the higher end of the market.

Where the concern lies is on the other side of the market. We’re looking at credit card debt that was up 8.4% from a year ago at $1.17 billion. We’re looking at the average household needing $11,000-14,000 more per year to equal their pre-COVID lifestyle. We’re finding that you know, at the same time that all this is going on there is just this increased impetuousness where golfers and customers are wanting to actualize as quickly as possible “Live for today rather than for tomorrow.”…