Golf and Independent Media: The New Partnership
Independent media companies have built huge audiences - now golf companies are leveraging them.
Every Monday, I write a newsletter breaking down the business in golf. Welcome to the 61 new Perfect Putt members who have joined us since our last newsletter. Join 6,066 intelligent and curious golfers by subscribing below.
Pictured above is Sand Creek Country Club in Chesterton, Indiana — a Concert Golf Partners Golf Club.
Concert Golf Partners is the leading boutique owner-operator of upscale, private clubs nationwide. Since its founding in 2011, Concert Golf has developed a reputation as the buyer of choice for private club owners seeking to pass the torch to a high-quality operator.
NGF recently named Concert Golf a Top 100 Business in Golf — a high honor.
Concert Golf has a portfolio of 29 boutique golf clubs in the United States — below are a few.
Hiwan Golf Club — Evergreen, Colorado
The Players Club — Omaha, Nebraska
The Club at 12 Oaks — Raleigh, North Carolina
Concert Golf is actively seeking to add to its boutique portfolio. If your club or you know of a club looking to explore an acquisition — reach out to the Concert Golf Team below.
Hey Golfers —
Golf is growing. Golf is changing.
National Golf Foundation recently released its United States golf participation study. Overall — golf participation checked in at 41.1 million golfers — up 10% versus last year.
The participation study placed golfers in three different buckets.
On-course only — 13.2 million golfers
Off-course only — 15.5 million golfers
Both — 12.4 million golfers
For the first time — total off-course engagement exceeded on-course engagement.
But off-course golf isn’t the only thing that has changed. How we consume golf-related content in the last decade has dramatically shifted.
As of June 2022 — more than 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Compare this to May 2013 — 100 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute.
YouTube has allowed content creators to build massive audiences that have become viable advertising opportunities.
Golf equipment companies have taken notice of independent media companies in the industry as an additional channel to introduce golfers to products.
In January 2021 — Fore Play partnered with TaylorMade. And just one month ago, we saw two huge partnership announcements.
No Laying Up — Titleist
Good Good — Callaway
I worked with my friend Will Crowley to analyze the shift and trends within the independent media golf space.
Millions of golfers have consumed hundreds of millions of hours of golf-related YouTube videos.
While YouTube subscribers are important — video views are far more significant a data point.
A YouTube Channel with 1 million subscribers and only posts once per year will not do nearly as well in video views as a YouTube Channel with 100,000 subscribers that posts weekly.
Video views are the key correlation to ad revenue on YouTube.
Good Good is a relatively new YouTube Channel joining in July 2020. They have caught fire and quickly added over 1 million subscribers and 230 million video views.
In the last month — Good Good has put out six videos. The video views range from 536,000 — 1.4 million.
Good Good’s YouTube video announcing they partnered with Callaway has 665,000 video views. They are bringing incredible value to Callaway on that video alone.
And the Good Good Callaway partnership is serious. Callaway CEO, Chip Brewer, brought Good Good up in their recent earnings call — Callaway is a $4 billion company — they aren’t mentioning them for fun. The Good Good partnership with Callaway is rumored to be worth at least eight figures.
Good Good has already launched and sold out of putters. They were priced over $300.
No Laying Up filmed a video with Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas in coordination with their Titleist announcement — the video has 697,000 views —massive value back to Titleist in an organic fashion.
Golf-related YouTube channels have grown significantly in the last five years. Since 2017 — five channels have entered the market. They all have at least 45 million views or more.
Random Golf Club Films launched its YouTube channel in 2007 and has been going at it the longest from the group mentioned above. Random Golf Club Films has a public partnership with Precision Pro.
It is worth noting that Rick Shiels signed a brand ambassador partnership with Toptracer — which is under the Callaway brand umbrella.
Callaway and Titleist owner Acushnet are publicly traded companies but don’t disclose their marketing spend.
It isn’t uncommon for a business to spend 2 - 5% of revenue on marketing. Let’s say that each organization spends about 3% of its revenue on marketing.
Estimated marketing spend:
Callaway — $120 million
Acushnet — $66 million
While I believe golf equipment companies aren’t necessarily spending more marketing dollars to partner with independent media companies. Instead, they are shifting their marketing dollars around and spending less in some areas.
Before we get too excited — YouTube isn’t the only valuable platform for building an audience. It is the best way to provide a transparent apples-to-apples comparison of the different media brands.
Here’s an example of Apple Podcast Reviews:
Fore Play — 10,000 reviews
No Laying Up — 5,800 reviews
Good Good — 1,300 reviews
These three media brands bring something unique to the table with their partnership.
Of the eleven media brands mentioned in this piece, No Laying Up has the least amount of YouTube subscribers and video views. I would speculate that their partnership with Titleist is one of the richer brand partnerships of the eleven. And that is because No Laying Up leverages a multi-platform approach and an engaged audience.
Independent media brands are valuable partners for major golf companies. We are just seeing the beginning of these partnership styles. Leveraging an audience in growing a brand is a winning strategy.
Have yourself a great Monday. Talk to you next week!
Your feedback helps improve Perfect Putt. How did you like this week's newsletter?
If you enjoyed this week’s newsletter, please share it with your friends :)
Are you interested in partnering with Perfect Putt? Click the button to learn more about sponsorship opportunities.
You missed Mr Short Game YT channel.
I think the only terminology here that needs to be addressed is "independent"
The ForePlay podcast has an ownership group (Penn Entertainment) and managing company that oversees brand activity and content. Everyone else (while they still have an agency or agent managing the brand) is able to create content without influence from a board of directors.