I have one golf buddy who won’t play unless he gets a deal on his greens fees via a service like GolfNow. According to him, you’re crazy to pay full price when there are third-party websites out there virtually giving away open tee-time slots. And he’s not alone.
Many golfers these days are drawn to services like GolfNow in an effort to save money. In fact, GolfNow has gotten so big (it’s now part of the NBC Sports family) it’s suggested the company controls nearly half of the online tee-times in the U.S.
As a result, many in the golf industry are nervous these tee-time services are undercutting prices too severely, which might ultimately be detrimental to golf courses in general. True, GolfNow helps fill times for courses that would otherwise remain empty, along with providing digital tee-time logs instead of the old tee-sheet clipboard system – services many local mom and pop courses appreciate. But some who have considered the long-term market effects are beginning to grow concerned.
Handing customer relationships over to a third-party site is one potential problem. And coupled with the rock-bottom prices in general, golfers will begin to expect discounts everywhere (as with my buddy who is mentioned above), thus weakening the integrity of greens-fee prices within the market.
Seeing as it’s nearly impossible to ignore consumer demand, could this new lower-cost pricing model for greens fees ultimately put some courses out of business? For some course operators, using third-party tee-time sites, like GolfNow, has become a damned if they do, damned if they don’t situation. A recent in-depth piece from The Wall Street Journal (see here) captures this conundrum rather well.
This all being said, what are your thoughts on third-party tee-time websites? Are they ultimately good or bad for the golf industry? The poll and comments section are at your disposal…
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Hola! I’ve been reading your website for some time now
and finally got the bravery to go ahead and give you a shout out from New
Caney Texas! Just wanted to mention keeep up the great
job!
Discount tee time sites are artificially deflating prices resulting in courses revenue being flat or decreasing. Among the results of this are: staff wages being stagnant; lower staff sizes; inability to buy new equipment; inability to upgrade the courses and clubhouses, etc.
A course has to surrender on average 2 tee times per day that the service then sells at a huge discount. The course gets $0 while the service gets the cash. Over the duration of a season this translates to big numbers. 8 players a day at say $50 per player, 9 months (270 days) = $108,000 potential cost to the course. Pretty expensive for a tee time service and for most daily fee courses this is a huge percentage of their revenue. If the service charges $25 for the “Hot Deal”, and they almost always sell those, they bank $54,000. They have zero risk in the operation but reap huge rewards.