Topgolf’s business model has cracked the millennial code and is being touted as a game changer. Now it’s coming to Canada

When a single-digit golfer is hitting it like a 28 handicapper, he or she seeks help, whether it’s a quick fix, or a long-term series of fixes. Many reach out to a qualified pro.

Shouldn’t this same philosophy apply to the golf industry?

No doubt, the game has been hacking it around since the economic downturn of 2008-09 led to dramatically lower participation rates, hundreds of course closings, and emptying tee sheets. To critics, the game seemed doomed by its decrepit demographic: old, white, and male. Besides, it was too slow, and too hard to play.

The Pellucid Report, issued each year at the annual PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, often offered a cryptic account of the game’s downslide.

Encrypted in all its data was a prediction that in 10 years, many of the baby boomers will stop playing. So, who will replace them?

Probably not the millennials, said Jim Koppenhaver, Pellucid founder. In 2016, he noted that the late-teen to 30-year-old age bracket has four million fewer players (U.S. numbers) than 20 to 25 years ago.

Surely a fix was in order – maybe a lot of fixes, right?

Jack Nicklaus was even trotted out at the PGA Merchandise Show in 2012 to unveil Golf 2.0, dubbed “Growing the Game: Friend, Family and Fun”. To survive, golf had to return to its roots, said Nicklaus. Let’s make it easier to play, he said. Other solutions offered, included: a move to 6 or 12-hole courses; games within the game, like “foot” golf; making the hole the size of a manhole cover so it was easier to score; pushing up the tees, relaxing the rulebook, blowing up restrictive dress codes, and heck, even adding music.

The goal was to ‘youthenize’ the game – making it palatable to millennials who, according to studies, like sports that are fun and social, and don’t take all day to play.

If some Luddites (aka ‘golf purists’) think these fixes gimmicky, one company has capitalized on drawing in millennials and creating a feeder system to ensure the game’s future.

Welcome to Topgolf, founded in the U.K. in 2000, and now spreading like poa annua grass across the U.S. heartland. According to Troy Warfield, its overseer of international expansion, its 41 venues worldwide (38 U.S. and three U.K.) welcomed 13 million in-venue guests in 2017. The gender split is 32/68 per cent female/male, but most importantly, half (52 per cent) of its customers are aged 18 to 34.

Drilling down further, a survey conducted last year by the National Golf Foundation, said 30 per cent of its guests have now graduated to traditional golf. “Topgolf is an approachable place where golf’s ‘latent demand’ activates that interest,” said Greg Nathan, NGF’s chief business officer.

Turning non-golfers into passionate participants, is a “wonderful evolution and just what golf needs,” adds Warfield.

How did Topgolf crack the millennial code and infuse a game stymied by its own polemics? Warfield, an Australian-born former executive director of customer experience at British Airways, with decades of sales, marketing and executive prowess at Kimberly-Clark, Avis, and Unilever, says its business model is “a great marriage between a young and old game.”

Yes, Topgolf has repackaged a golfing staple, the driving range, and turned it into a multitudinous funhouse, a high-tech, high wattage place to be, fueled by food, drinks, social interaction, and video gaming.

And next year, Topgolf opens its first venue in Canada. It has signed a licensing agreement with Cineplex, headquartered in Toronto. Cineplex president and CEO, Ellis Jacob, calls the relationship “a natural extension of our business and leverages our existing expertise, experience and infrastructure in the Canadian market.”

Cineplex operates in the film entertainment and content, amusement and leisure and media sectors, which marries with Topgolf’s mantra of full-service fun. Cineplex is one of the world’s largest providers of amusement games and arcade solutions, and will manage Topgolf venues’ day to day operations.

Comparing a Topgolf facility to a driving range (like the one made popular in the hit movie, Tin Cup), is like sitting your Samsung Galaxy S9 beside a rotary dial phone. They’re bright, loud, and playful. Guests enjoy point-scoring games using microchipped balls that instantly score themselves, showing players the accuracy and distance of their shots on a TV screen set up in a cozy, climate-friendly hitting bay.

The facility is usually three-tiered, 65,000 square feet, and features a chef-driven menu, top-shelf drinks, big screen TVs, music, programming for kids and families, social leagues, group events, tournaments, and even instruction from PGA pros. You can watch your ball fly on Toptracer technology (the one now used on PGA Tour broadcasts), or even play simulated venues like Pebble Beach.

In other words, Topgolf is an experience, and that, according to numerous demographic studies, draws millennials like moths to bright lights.

“We’re stunned to see the social media buzz about our brand,” admits Warfield. “People want to experience it.”

One of them is Drake, the Toronto-born, 31-year-old year hip hop and R&B icon. In many ways, he’s the composite drawing of a Topgolf customer. While on tour, he recently visited the Topgolf facility in Las Vegas, hitting balls accompanied by his own music, and all caught on YouTube.

Warfield rolled out Topgolf’s latest technology at this year’s PGA Merchandise Show. He also showed results from the NGF survey. He chuckles when recalling his first experience with a Canadian golf fan. He was on the elevator, when a fan asked: “So when are you coming to Canada?”

The location of this country’s first venue hasn’t been identified, but a good guess is in its biggest market, the Greater Toronto Area, headquarters for Cineplex.

Toptracer technology is a movable feast and is available to traditional driving ranges. Topgolf can also be set up in large sports venues, or even in hotels or at large shows and conferences.

Topgolf offers a wide assortment of games, and players get to pick from all kinds of clubs (irons to metal woods). There are also PGA pros on site to offer instruction. Topgolf also offers plenty of job opportunities for those in the golf industry.

Growing the game is one of the reasons why Golf Canada’s new CEO, Laurence Applebaum, says his organization is now partnering with Topgolf.

Topgolf works closely with kids and schools and offers programs to community groups, including veterans. First time patrons receive a membership, and its social media networks connect customers to a kaleidoscope of offerings, including loyalty programs.

Topgolf began in the U.K. when its founders wanted to make hitting balls a fun and social experience. Its high-tech inventions are attractive to millennials. Today, 37 per cent of its customers are non-golfers. The NGF survey said 75 per cent of its non-golfers are now “interested” in playing the real game.

Canadian Keith Pelley, chief executive of the European Tour, is a proponent of pushing the game into the 21st century. He delivered the keynote speech at the European Tour Properties Conference in March and encouraged venues to innovate and grow the game. Reps from world-class golf venues attended the conference at London Golf Club.

Pelley said: “We know that golf needs to modify itself and extend the demographic if it is to grow – and the best way to do this is to share ideas.”

During a question and answer session, he encouraged venues to embrace customer-centric innovation, and specifically referenced Topgolf.

The company’s incredible growth has caught the eye of Gerard Waslen, a CPGA pro and owner of the Timber Ridge Golf Course in Brighton, Ontario. He has 25 years of driving range experience, and owns the Markham Golf Dome, located north of Toronto.

He was one of the visionaries and owned ‘Launch’ a generation ago. The facility took the traditional driving range and made it a target game, with circles and squares and scorekeeping. Adding food and beverage, and heated hitting bays, fueled its initial popularity.

“But the Canadian weather was not our friend,” remembers Waslen. “Once the golf season began, players wanted to go outside and play the courses.”

He admits “the game part of Launch” just didn’t catch on.

But he’s a fan of Topgolf and visited two of its venues in Phoenix and Orlando. “It’s slick, well done, and the kids love it,” he said. “Anything that can grow the game, I’m for.”

Topgolf didn’t set out to save a moribund game from its dwindling demographics. But it has helped democratize the sport. There are no restrictive private-club rules, no idiotic dress codes, no interminable wait times at the tee box, and no six-hours to play.

“This is everyone’s game,” says Warfield, repeating Topgolf’s popular mantra.

And just what millennials (and the business of golf) ordered.