Golf Australia report shows small decline in participation in 2017

The ongoing engagement challenge faced by golf has been highlighted in the 2017 Golf Club Participation Report which shows a 1.1% decline in membership since 2016.

The latest report from Golf Australia, the fifth of its kind, provides annual figures and trends on membership, competition rounds, general participation and specific program participation.

Making use of participation data recorded by the Australian Sports Commission’s from its AusPlay survey, the report breaks data into states/territories, districts, gender and age and includes comparison trends with other sports.

The Report shows 389,672 golf club memberships across Australia in 2017 - comprising 80% male and 20% females - represents an overall 1.1% decline since the 2016 report.

A Golf Australia statement accompanying the Report advises that the decline “reflects the challenges facing traditional sports from a range of societal and demographic pressures.

“Despite this, club golf remains vital to regional communities and golf remains the most popular club sport for adults in Australia.”

Regional areas recorded an overall membership decline of 1.5% while metropolitan areas fell by 1.1%. Social memberships increased by 4.3%, now accounting for 5.7% of total club memberships. South Australia was the only state to record membership growth in the year with a 3.4% increase.

Golf competition rounds remain steady. In 2017 10.3 million rounds were recorded, a slight increase on 2016 and an increase of 0.7% over five years.

The Report does not include data on non-membership based and casual golf participation.

Click here to view the Report.

Image courtesy of Golf Australia.

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