The boom is holding strong but, as the team from BRS Golf reveal on the Golf Club Talk UK podcast, flexibility and openness is crucial as the cost-of-living crisis starts to bite.
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’s participation figures remain buoyant – but clubs must be flexible and open about helping their members through the cost-of-living crisis.
That’s the view of GCMA Associate Partners BRS Golf’s Karen Moss and Kevin Murray, who took a deep dive into the latest numbers in a GCMA Insights podcast on Golf Club Talk UK.
They revealed that quarter 3, from July through September, saw 7.4-million-member rounds in the UK and Ireland – a 5% increase on the last quarter and a 1% drop on last year’s numbers.
Over the first nine months of 2022, a total of 19.6-million-member rounds were recorded with England accounting for around half of those played.
While Covid restrictions and huge numbers then descending on courses after lockdown has made comparing this year with 2020 and 2021 difficult, Murray said that the overall figures were 7.8 million rounds ahead of 2019.
BRS Golf had also added around 100,000 additional members since 2019 and Moss said that players were “definitely making full use of their membership, which is great to see – because it means that it’s an essential service for them”.
She added: “It’s not something they’re going to part with easily, which is important for clubs at the moment. You want to see that use from each member.
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“You want to see them out playing golf because otherwise, when it comes to what’s a luxury and what’s an essential these days, it’s very tough to make those kinds of decisions with the pressure that’s on households.
“Engaging members, making sure they’re out playing rounds, is so important at the moment and it’s great to see that’s continued.”
The total number of registered members remained at about 677,000 – up from half a million pre-Covid – and visitor revenue to the end of September was just shy of £9 million for BRS Golf partners.
But Moss said clubs needed now to be cognisant that “we’re living in a totally different world now to 2020 and 2021”.
“People’s incomes are being squeezed and we don’t have the luxury of time as well,” she explained. “We need to consider there has been that drop in living standards and, for the majority of people who play golf and are members of a golf club, being a member is still a necessity to them.
“But there might be those members who are hesitant about renewing and certainly will be taking the current economic factors into account when they’re making that decision about whether or not to renew.”
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She said BRS Golf offered custom payment schemes, could identify members who might potentially be at risk, and could see who was utilising their golf club membership and who was not.
Moss added: “Clubs just need to be flexible and open to helping their members through this time, as the members will hopefully then help the club through the times ahead as well.
“This is a cost-of-living crisis that doesn’t just affect people on a personal household level. There is the war in Ukraine and various other factors impacting the likes of gas and electricity bills.
“Golf clubs are facing big bills themselves. It’s definitely a difficult time.”
Murray, meanwhile, urged clubs to think about how to keep their members engaged and communicate with them about what they were doing to try and alleviate large subscription increases when renewal time arrives next year.
He said: “[It’s] pre-empting that rather than hitting somebody with a bill for £1,500, when it was £1,000 last year and it’s, ‘oh my God, what’s this’ and all of a sudden it’s, ‘I can’t afford that’.”
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!
