The medium-term trend of membership decline in Australian golf clubs appears to have slowed to negligible levels.
This is the main positive to arise from Golf Australia’s 2014 National Golf Participation Report released recently, along with a big increase in rounds of golf played.
The main points are:
· National club membership for the year ending 2014 is at 397,234, a reduction of 0.7 percent on the previous year. In actual numbers, this represents a decline of about 3200 members.
· Rounds of golf increased by 7.2 percent in 2014 to 14.3 million rounds.
· There has been a cumulative loss of 7.2 percent of club members since 2010. While the 2014 report continues the downward trend, it is a lower reduction that in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
· Western Australia was the strongest performing state in 2014 with an increase of 2.2 percent, while Victoria and South Australia recorded small increases. New South Wales dropped 2.4 percent while Queensland, Northern Territory and Tasmania also experienced declines.
· The attrition rate of club members is around 12 percent.
The participation report is an important tool for Golf Australia since it shows us how the game is tracking and also identifies areas where more research is required.
From the 2014 report, we can see that the membership decline that began around five years ago has slowed to a trickle at 0.7 percent. Of course, there are still areas that require work, such as in New South Wales where the figures skewed the national average, but already in the early part of 2015 there have been some positive signs coming out of the most populous state.
Even accounting for the slight drop in membership numbers it is worth noting that more golf has been played, with a seven percent increase in rounds. Our assessment of this number is that over recent years quite a few inactive members have dropped out of golf clubs in Australia, a reflection of tougher economic times when people rationalise the number of clubs and organisations that they have membership of.
I note that 44 percent of clubs grew membership in 2014, and 15 percent grew membership by at least 10 percent, which shows that some clubs are performing well.
Attrition rates, which show the drop-off of club members, are higher in Queensland and Tasmania and the challenge for those states is to bring those numbers down and build attraction rates. Realistically, an attrition rate of 10 percent or so is acceptable for a sport with an older membership.
Another positive is that 38 percent of new members are in the age bracket 25 to 44 years, which typically is a difficult demographic for us to connect with. Against that, only 17 percent of those new members are female, below the national average of 21 percent. We would like to grow that figure.
The challenge continues as Australia experiences the same trends as occurred in golf around the world. But we are encouraged to see rounds played up and the decline in membership back to next-to-nothing. We have seen almost five years of a downward trend and hopefully soon, the graph points upward again.
View the 2014 Golf Participation Report