Page 11 - GBC fall 2015

“Golf is the ‘Ultimate Business Tool.’ In fact, an estimated 90% of Fortune 500 CEOs play the game!1”
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last six years, you know that almost every article in any newspaper, magazine, blog or news segment on television about golf has been overwhelmingly negative. There have been depressing headlines and titles, such as:
• Local Course Closing Down After Fifty Years
• Participation in Golf Down 10% • Golf Losing Its Players
•Local Course Sold to Housing
Developer
• Private Course Opens to Public
in an Effort to Generate More
Business
• Local Club Dropping Member-
ship Fees to Attract More Players
in a Shrinking Market!
• Young People No Longer Playing
Golf
MAINSTREAM MEDIA & GOLF
The golf industry is not down only because of the 2008 recession or Tiger’s decline or changing tastes, it is down because the media has told everyone again and again that golf is in trouble. If you tell people a story over and over they begin to believe it whether it is true or not!
What is most galling of all is that every single negative article quotes the same paragraph or two from the National Golf Foundation based in Jupiter, Florida.
“About 400,000 players left the sport last year, according to the National Golf Foundation. There also are fewer places to play golf these days. Only 14 new courses were built in the U.S. last year, while almost 160 shut down, the National Golf Foundation said. Last year marked the eighth straight year that more courses closed than opened.”
In general, the golf industry has done a shockingly poor job of managing their story in the media! For the most part, the golf industry has sat back and watched the media annihilate anything positive golf has to offer, without the slightest effort to fight back!
At one time, you would regularly read articles in Forbes, Inc. Magazine, airline magazines or your city’s newspaper about the benefits of business golf. When was the last time you saw one of those articles?
1Investing in Golf: Barrons, March 30, 1998.
I monitor hundreds of news- papers and magazines, and I can tell you that I have seen just one article on the benefits of business golf in the last five years. Has the value of doing business on a golf course somehow diminished in the last few years?
Of course not! Golf is the “Ultimate Business Tool.” In fact, an estimated 90% of Fortune 500 CEOs play the game!1
It is not only business golf that is missing from the media’s pages — any form of positive article was last seen heading south in early 2008! No one in the mainstream media has anything good to say about golf! The good news is it doesn’t have to be that way....
“I monitor hundreds of newspapers and magazines, and I can tell you that I have seen just one article on the benefits of business golf in the last five years.”
Golf Business Canada 11