Those in the golfing industry could probably answer this question.

[Moonlightgrm]

How much daily revenue most a golf course take in, just to break even? I realize there are many factors, but a reasonably maintained golf course, properly staffed, needs to make how much per day?

[RSinSG]

Not sure this question can be answered. It's like asking how much does a new car cost.

[acegolfer]

I had the same question as my local course doesn't get much crowd. They only have 8-10 carts ready for the whole day (no walking allowed) in the morning. It's always empty. I bet it has negative cash flow.  

[PJE]

I've also wondered about this.

Once I asked the Director of Golf at a muni in California about it. I've known this guy for a long time. He had worked his way up from an assistant pro in the shop when I was a kid working in the cart barn.

He said around 45K to 50K rounds to break even but he also said this figure varies a lot depending upon the kind of course: muni vs private vs resort, green fees, labor costs, infrastructure costs, and existing debt service.

He said he was under constant pressure to sell rounds. The number of rounds sold was the only metric anyone cared about in his business. He ended up quitting and becoming an assistant pro again at a private club.

[tw_focus]

Many, many variables involved, it's like asking how many dinners does a restaurant have to serve to break even. The McDonalds might need to serve 1000, the boutique kitchen might need to serve 10.

 

In general, if the tee sheet is mostly full, the course should not be losing money - but there are exceptions to the rule. Golf is a "loss leader" for some courses, which make the bulk of revenue on lodging.

[chisag]

... Management is key. About 10 years ago my local muni lost revenue as rounds were down. So the Park District Board came up with the brilliant idea of charging more to recoup their losses. As n one of them were gofers you could imagine their surprise when increased green fees resulted in less rounds and more losses. They hired a consulting firm that confirmed what most of us gofers know. 

Open up "member rates" with a card costing $25 that gives reduced rates to everyone, not just park district residents.
Get on GolfNow and other discount sites to bring in new golfers during times that don't sell. 
Reduce rates. 

... Golfers came back and while the course was not packed other than weekends, it was always busy and full of golfers. Not sure how much was needed, but they started turning a profit. 

[joeburger]

My course has upped the fees and has taken worse and worse care of it. A shame there arent more courses near me.

[Carolina Golfer 2]

As many said. It can vary widely.  But having some knowledge of this.  I”ll say this.  $10,000 to $15,000 on the low end and probably $35,00 upwards of $50,000 to $70,000 on the nice to high end.  

[Notashank]

My course is about 1 million a year to maintain. 

[2bGood]

 

39 minutes ago, Carolina Golfer 2 said:

As many said. It can vary widely.  But having some knowledge of this.  I”ll say this.  $10,000 to $15,000 on the low end and probably $35,00 upwards of $50,000 to $70,000 on the nice to high end.  

 

 

First we have to agree what we are measuring. For me I am only trying to count what directly involves golf -maintaining the course, course equipment and improvements, staff taking tee bookings etc (not the portion where they are selling shirts and golf balls)

 

I think your low end numbers are too high, if it is a year round course $3.65M is a pretty big nut to break even for a goat track. 

 

I owned a VERY low end 9 hole course for a time in a very rural area. Imagine a nine hole course at Tin-Cup's driving range. It was only open 4.5 months a year and if cleared $25K in a year I made money. This was 20 years ago, but you get the idea. We had one part time employee and an honour box for green fees and sand greens. 

 

According to the article linked below

 

The cost to achieve the condition players expect — or will tolerate — ranges from about $500,000 a year for a daily-fee course to $1,000,000 a year for a private club, estimates Bob Randquist, chief operating officer of the Golf Course Superintendent’s Association of America.

 

Golf Course Costs

 

Our private club spends more like $1.3M per year on just course maintenance part. But this does not include things like course management, Pro shop staff serving golf needs, insurance and capital needs etc. That is more like $2.5M all in or $6,800 a day. 

 

So low end for me is more like $1K a day (goat track). Super high end course? Hard to say, Pebble Beach brings in about $82K in green fees per day on average (based on their published rounds played and green fees). Frankly I would find it hard to believe they spend even half that on course maintenance and golf specific operations. $40K a day on a course is a TONNE of money spent. That is $14.5M per year. If your staff were averaging  $100K per year (and they are not) that is 142 full time staff. Remove holidays and correct for a 5 day week and you would have 5 staff spending 8 hours per day on each hole, with 9 or 10 staff back at the pro-shop. There is not nearly enough golf course specific work to go around no matter how nice you want your course conditions to be. My guess is Pebble needs $20K-30K a day to keep the course operation going. Then the need some more for capital projects to reinvest into the course depending on the ownership groups desires. 

 

 

[delftw]

Worked at a 36 hole city-owned facility that was highly regarded and sold tee times out fast (400+ players a day). Roughly 100 acres of grass. During our prime season, which lasted about 5 months, we brought in 35-40k in greens fees/merch daily. We ended up in the negative for the year just slightly.

[cristphoto]

Course expenses can't be calculated on a weekly basis due to wildly varying expenses and their recurring schedule.  Items such as fertilizer and insecticides are spread a couple times a year.    Water bills, tax bills, renewing licenses also a couple times a year or annually.  Maintenance for breakage (bad sprinkler, vandalism) can also be costly.  Then you have the wild card of weather.  One rainy weekend can offset income from a full M-F play. Extreme bad weather can impact course conditions and amount of maintenance needed.  Droughts or severe rainy seasons are killers. Trying to set a somewhat accurate annual budget is difficult.  Predicting a certain number of outings to be booked requires a crystal ball.  Factor in Covid shutdowns doesn't help either.  

[DonatelloNobodie]

I looked at a lot of data a while back, as I was considering buying a course.  I came away with the realization that it was incredibly difficult to break even or make a profit on the average course.   A previous post mentioned an annual expense budget of $1 million.  That's reasonable for a small public course in a rural area.  Even so, that takes 20,000 rounds  at an average fee of $50.  A small course in a rural area would generally struggle to hit that.

 

I also know of a local 27 hole course that cost $22 million to build.  After 2 bankruptcies, it was given to the local HOA for $1.   The HOA has yet to find someone willing to operate the course at no cost.  The fact that apparently there is no business model to profit from operating a course that cost nothing is amazing.

 

High end resort courses and privates with full memberships no doubt can operate in the black.  Smaller courses and lesser-known publics  have to be a challenge. Add to that, if the land has development value, especially near urban areas, running it as a golf course is hard to justify.

[MountainKing]

It's been a while since I've been in the industry, but a good chunk of public courses don't really make money from the daily fee golfer. Their money gets made in outings/weddings/events and certain types of memberships.  In general there's a reason there's been a push to get bigger clubhouses, there's a lot more money in the clubhouse than the course.  I dunno how much it sits today, but at one point there were some courses that jacked up the green fees to keep the daily golfers to a minimum so they could focus on what did make money.

[Carolina Golfer 2]

23 hours ago, 2bGood said:

 

 

 

First we have to agree what we are measuring. For me I am only trying to count what directly involves golf -maintaining the course, course equipment and improvements, staff taking tee bookings etc (not the portion where they are selling shirts and golf balls)

 

I think your low end numbers are too high, if it is a year round course $3.65M is a pretty big nut to break even for a goat track. 

 

I owned a VERY low end 9 hole course for a time in a very rural area. Imagine a nine hole course at Tin-Cup's driving range. It was only open 4.5 months a year and if cleared $25K in a year I made money. This was 20 years ago, but you get the idea. We had one part time employee and an honour box for green fees and sand greens. 

 

According to the article linked below

 

The cost to achieve the condition players expect — or will tolerate — ranges from about $500,000 a year for a daily-fee course to $1,000,000 a year for a private club, estimates Bob Randquist, chief operating officer of the Golf Course Superintendent’s Association of America.

 

Golf Course Costs

 

Our private club spends more like $1.3M per year on just course maintenance part. But this does not include things like course management, Pro shop staff serving golf needs, insurance and capital needs etc. That is more like $2.5M all in or $6,800 a day. 

 

So low end for me is more like $1K a day (goat track). Super high end course? Hard to say, Pebble Beach brings in about $82K in green fees per day on average (based on their published rounds played and green fees). Frankly I would find it hard to believe they spend even half that on course maintenance and golf specific operations. $40K a day on a course is a TONNE of money spent. That is $14.5M per year. If your staff were averaging  $100K per year (and they are not) that is 142 full time staff. Remove holidays and correct for a 5 day week and you would have 5 staff spending 8 hours per day on each hole, with 9 or 10 staff back at the pro-shop. There is not nearly enough golf course specific work to go around no matter how nice you want your course conditions to be. My guess is Pebble needs $20K-30K a day to keep the course operation going. Then the need some more for capital projects to reinvest into the course depending on the ownership groups desires. 

 

 

I work for a management company that has courses on both ends.  My ranges are pretty close to both.   Yes there are some less than my low end and some higher.  In both cases I’m talking about courses that are open and have play 12 months a year. 

[bcjim]

23 hours ago, delftw said:

Worked at a 36 hole city-owned facility that was highly regarded and sold tee times out fast (400+ players a day). Roughly 100 acres of grass. During our prime season, which lasted about 5 months, we brought in 35-40k in greens fees/merch daily. We ended up in the negative for the year just slightly.

Seems incredibly high. Thats over 5m/yr. Where is the money going?

 

 

 

 

[BEND OF THE RIVER GC]

It also probably makes a HUGE difference as to whether or not the course is "paid off", or not.

[2bGood]

2 hours ago, Carolina Golfer 2 said:

I work for a management company that has courses on both ends.  My ranges are pretty close to both.   Yes there are some less than my low end and some higher.  In both cases I’m talking about courses that are open and have play 12 months a year. 

Are you including all the costs, or just the golf specific operations? 

[DArnie]

1 hour ago, bcjim said:

Seems incredibly high. Thats over 5m/yr. Where is the money going?

 

 

 

 

City owned probably answers the question. 

[DonatelloNobodie]

11 hours ago, BEND OF THE RIVER GC said:

It also probably makes a HUGE difference as to whether or not the course is "paid off", or not.

 True for looking at just expenses.  No debt service.  However, if looking at the whole financial model, one must consider the value of the land for other purposes.  If the land value is multi millions, continuing to operate it as a golf course for meager annual profit is not good sense.

[DonatelloNobodie]

10 hours ago, DArnie said:

City owned probably answers the question. 

Very true.  Now the accounting is done for the course relative to the rest of the municipal budget can make the profit/loss just about anything that is desired.  Use staff and equipment expensed by another municipal department and the course can be seen as very profitable.  Use course equipment and staff on other municipal work, and the course shows a loss.  How capital and depreciation is handled is a similar, but more complex, example.  Accountants and politicians can be very creative!

[Carolina Golfer 2]

11 hours ago, 2bGood said:

Are you including all the costs, or just the golf specific operations? 

I wasn't really getting into expenses, the original question was how much daily revenue does a course need to bring in to break even.  Those are ranges on incomes, and the courses I based those from, have ben profitable most every year. 

 

And yes, those are from greens fees-daily and outing only.  Not considering pro shop or F&B Sales. 

Edited July 5, 2022 by Carolina Golfer 2

[myphriendmike]

On 7/4/2022 at 11:08 AM, MountainKing said:

It's been a while since I've been in the industry, but a good chunk of public courses don't really make money from the daily fee golfer. Their money gets made in outings/weddings/events and certain types of memberships.  In general there's a reason there's been a push to get bigger clubhouses, there's a lot more money in the clubhouse than the course.  I dunno how much it sits today, but at one point there were some courses that jacked up the green fees to keep the daily golfers to a minimum so they could focus on what did make money.

 

I agree that the trend is in that direction, but your average golf course restaurant loses money, and a lot of it.  

[mallrat]

On 7/3/2022 at 5:31 PM, Notashank said:

My course is about 1 million a year to maintain. 

That’s cheap. 

[mallrat]

We are a public, daily fee curse that does VERY well and are reasonably priced; $79 - $99 peak season rates. Summer is 250 - 290 rounds a day. Winter is anywhere from 10 - 240 a day

[mallrat]

17 hours ago, BEND OF THE RIVER GC said:

It also probably makes a HUGE difference as to whether or not the course is "paid off", or not.

I might say source of water makes a bigger difference

[AC168]

Some courses make a healthy profit at $4 million revenue per year … some courses spend $4 million in water every year.

[me05501]

On 7/3/2022 at 2:38 PM, PJE said:

I've also wondered about this.

Once I asked the Director of Golf at a muni in California about it. I've known this guy for a long time. He had worked his way up from an assistant pro in the shop when I was a kid working in the cart barn.

He said around 45K to 50K rounds to break even but he also said this figure varies a lot depending upon the kind of course: muni vs private vs resort, green fees, labor costs, infrastructure costs, and existing debt service.

He said he was under constant pressure to sell rounds. The number of rounds sold was the only metric anyone cared about in his business. He ended up quitting and becoming an assistant pro again at a private club.

 

Correct. I think the only way to try to answer this is in the number of rounds played. That's the only metric that could be consistent across a wide range of courses. 

[david.c.w]

Not in the industry, but on the board of our country club ($70k+ current initiation)

 

This may not be 100% apples to apples, but looking at the 2022 golf only related expenses (golf ops and grounds) we are around $3M.   This includes energy and water, but not any administration/tennis/wellness/pool costs.  or any accounting related things like depreciation.

 

So to maintain the current services level we need ~$8,250/day.

 

 

 

[CDM]

On 7/3/2022 at 12:06 PM, RSinSG said:

Not sure this question can be answered. It's like asking how much does a new car cost.

 

Too much 🤪