Hideki Matsuyama is a golfer who feels like he has been around much longer than he has. Part of the effect is generated by his beautifully struck irons, which carry him serenely from tee to green and make his game seem mature beyond his years. In part it is his composed, friendly demeanour. Mostly, it…
On Twitter this week, flamboyant batsman Kevin Pietersen asked what the cricket equivalent is of the Masters. He received some excellent answers. Lords for the prestige. The Ashes. Newlands, South Africa’s spectacular stadium overlooking Table Mountain. An India-Pakistan rivalry. Boxing Day at the MCG. The IPL Final. Perhaps the new World Test Championship will become…
Products are only perfect if the right customers see them. In that spirit, SMS’ affordable new golf tourism segmentation methodology can help make the time-consuming, hard to measure process of tailoring marketing to different tribes of golfers easier than ever. Armed with detailed demographic, behavioural and psychographic profiling information that divides golfers into key segments…
Sports Marketing Surveys (SMS) Director Richard Payne is gearing up to address this year’s International Golf Travel Market (IGTM) Links. The event, which precedes a planned physical event in Wales in October, follows a successful trial of the online networking format in Autumn 2020. Richard’s presentation ‘The Golf Tourism Recovery: A Golfer’s Perspective shows…
Sports Marketing Surveys insights have formed a key part of Scottish Golf’s future strategy. A bespoke survey commissioned by the federation identified a clear preference among golf clubs and their members for the organisation to focus its efforts, and its investment, on the grassroots game rather than elite golf. 73% of golf clubs supported this…
After a delayed start to the year, golf fans, and particularly those who follow the Ladies’ European Tour (LET), will have much to look forward to in 2021. The announcement of a €19m record prize fund for the LET, to be distributed across a total of 27 events in 19 countries, has been welcomed across…
This article was originally written in January 2021 by SMS Director Richard Payne for The PGA Professional Magazine. If you want one word to sum up golf in 2020, try ‘resilience’. After course closures in April and May because of Coronavirus, the global golf industry could have been excused for feeling Eeyoreish at the…
They say that history repeats itself. It has to, because no one listens. Sometimes that feels true of research. After PureGym CEO Humphrey Cobbold weighed into the lockdown reopening debate to complain that ‘it’s all very well to hear that tennis and golf are reopening, but let’s be honest, those are rich people’s sports’, SMS…
]If we had told you at the start of 2020 that golf would face two plus months of closures and yet still end the year with an overall growth in rounds played in Great Britain, we might well have been committed to an asylum. At the very least, we might have found ourselves in the…
As the pandemic has lingered on, the public demand for outdoor space has never been greater. Across the globe, people are walking, running, cycling, roller-blading, rambling, picnicking and generally interacting with their local green spaces more than ever before. As part of that unlocking, many golf courses opened their paths and fairways to non-golfers as…
