Page 17 - GBC Winter 2020 ENG

Skiing is another participation sport with wide appeal and an infrastructure of business opera- tions providing the facilities, similar to golf. Hunting and fishing are big and very Canadian. Cycling is on a strong growth path. Football, soccer, basketball, baseball, tennis, track, and others are all capturing market share in both participation and economic impact.
Although not all sports evaluate economic impact the same way, there are enough clear indicators that golf is indeed atop the list in Canada. Hockey comes in at $11.2 billion GDP, including 41% of that from its spectator sport popularity, and only 5000 full time jobs.
Skiing does very well per ski facility, far outstripping the typical golf operation. However, there are so few compared to the number of golf courses in Canada. Total revenues, for example, are $1.4 billion. Golf course operations collectively achieved revenues of $4.3 billion.
At $18.2 billion GDP, the golf industry exceeds all other sports’ economic impact in Canada!
SO, WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?
Economic impact studies generally provide macroeconomic inform- ation, not microeconomics. That is to say that the content is primarily aggregated industry-wide financial results. How is that meaningful to
you, operating an individual golf course(s) or a related business?
They say “Knowledge is Power” so, for starters, being well informed of the dynamics of the industry you are operating within adds power to your strategic planning and execution. Benchmarking data enables more fact-based decision making rather than instinctual or emotional judgements.
The Canadian golf industry has historically been somewhat weak on providing such bench- marking and this Economic Impact Study fills one important void in that regard.
Hopefully, you can dissect some of that aggregate data through the lens of your own operation, applying some of that knowledge to your own decision-making processes. That could be capital investment, marketing plans, bud- geting, HR management, procure- ment, service levels, pricing, risk assessment, or specific tactics to execute. Wherever the facts and your business opportunities may intersect.
As an industry, we also need to track any significant trends. That is one important way to measure our overall success. For example, knowing what segments of our marketplace are growing or contracting, and to what degree, can influence programs to grow the game or to recognize new opport- unities to evolve forward.
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