The Data: Rounds played in 2022

07/03/2023

“We have a lot more members per club – and they are playing a lot more than they did previously”

Kevin Murray, Market Data Analyst, NBC Sports Next, reports on the final participation numbers from 2022

With no lockdowns to reduce member play or post-lockdown booms to inflate member play in 2022, the 24.7 million member rounds was 1.8 million rounds ahead of 2021, 2.5 million ahead of 2020, and 11.2 million ahead of pre-Covid levels of 2019.

This represents an 8% growth on 2021, 11% growth on 2020, and a massive 84% growth on 2019.
We saw a very consistent level of member play, with the patterns of monthly rounds following what we would have seen as the traditional golf season.

In the main golf season (April to September) there were 14.5m member rounds played. This was down by 1.7m on the same period in 2021, though 2021 had the post lockdown bounce in April and May for all countries except Scotland to skew the figures. Comparing to pre-Covid levels, there were an additional 6.5m rounds played.

At the heart of the number of rounds played is the number of members of golf clubs. What we have seen over the course of the last three years has been a surge in the level of members at BRS clubs. At the end of 2019 we had 533k registered members using our BRS platform. Fast forward to the end of 2022 and we have 673k registered members. The number of clubs using BRS technology has remained fairly flat over the same period, so it is apparent that we have both a lot more members per club and also that they are playing a lot more than they done.

If we look at the England in a slightly more granular way, and split the country into three regions – North, South and Midlands – we can further see where the growth in rounds has been. Using 2019 as the base line we have seen 87% growth in the Midlands, 88% growth in the North and an impressive 105% growth in the South of England. This equates to in excess of 2.25 million rounds in the North, 1.8 million in the South, and over 1.8 million in the Midlands.

With the cost-of-living crisis and the huge increase in energy costs we have been experiencing there is no doubt golf clubs will be forced to pass on some of these costs to their members. What this does to our member base, will be important to track over the coming months.

GolfNow saw a similarly strong 2022, with demand for visitor tee times as strong as we have seen it. Over the course of the year, GolfNow generated £10.5m in visitor green fee revenue for course partners.

BRS Golf are the leading provider of tee time management booking technology and GofNow is the world’s biggest tee time marketplace. Together they provide tee time booking solutions to 1,500 golf clubs across England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, making the tech giant one of the largest and most trusted sources of participation data for golf in the British Isles.