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The top line results from the new 2021 Proponent Group Compensation and Operations Survey are now posted near the bottom of the homepage on the members’ website for downloading. Proponent Group members may request a customized report that closely matches your particular position, location and facility type. To request a customized report, you must have participated in the survey.
Here are a dozen of the most interesting highlights and trends we saw in this year’s data:
Only 47% of member coach revenues come from one-on-one private golf lessons as program offerings continue to broaden ($75,795 out of $160,497 total average revenues).
The largest increases over the past five years in average program revenues occurred in group lessons (up 231 percent since 2015 from $7,554 to $17,514) and long-term coaching programs (up 67 percent from $9,554 to $15,941.)
The average hourly rate at private facilities rose only 4 percent from $129 to $134 over past five years. This was less than the inflation rate during this time in the U.S. of approximately 8 percent. Meanwhile, the average hourly rate at public facilities rose 19 percent from $133 to $158.
Over the past five years the average revenue share back to a facility has increased by 1 percentage point from 21 to 22 percent overall for those who report revenue sharing. Private clubs averaged a 4 percentage-point increase from 15 to 19 percent while public facilities saw an average decrease of 1 percentage point from 24 to 23 percent. What used to be a gap of 9 percentage points between private and public facilities is now only 4 points.
The percentage of members working at private clubs is down 9 percentage points over the past five years (47 to 38 percent). Meanwhile those working at public and semi-private facilities increased 13 percentage points (26 to 39 percent) and those working at an indoor off-course facility increased 8 percentage points (2 to 10 percent).
Coaches working under a golf management company increased from 14 to 17 percent over the past five years.
The percentage of members teaching with a launch monitor is up 6 percentage points over the past five years (80 to 86 percent).
Over the past five years, the percentage teaching with TrackMan rose 21 percentage points (42 to 63 percent). Foresight doubled its market share from 8 to 16 percent. Ernest Sports held steady. FlightScope dropped 4 percentage points.
Electronic scheduling remains very fragmented in the golf instruction space. USchedule continues to lead in market share but dropped from 31 to 19 percentage points over the past three years. ThrivSports has moved up from 5 to 11 percent for second place in market share while more than 20 other options were mentioned by members.
When asked which non-launch monitor teaching technologies were purchased by members or their facilities we found that the biggest gainers over the past three years were K-Motion jumping from 12 to 37 percent market share, FocusBand moving from 3 to 20 percent and ARCCOS was up from 4 to 18 percent.
Over the past three years, Instagram has become the new leader in business usage by golf coaches jumping from 48 to 79 percent market share. Facebook slipped from 86 to 71 percent. YouTube decreased from 55 to 49 percent. Twitter was down from 73 to 46 percent and LinkedIn slid from 55 to 36 percent usage for business purposes.
Members having a written agreement with their management is up 22 percentage points over the past eight years (from 39 to 61 percent).
To download the entire summary report which includes many more trend notes, scroll down the homepage on the members website to the green “Compensation Survey Results” button near the bottom of the page. The summary breaks out most of the data into four categories: All, Employee, Independent Contractor and Academy Owner to allow you to better match your job situation to your peers.
If you are looking for specific information not found in the summary report, please contact our team for additional assistance at: lbombka@proponent-group.com