New York tee time software
New York tee time software
Playing golf in New York is important to millions of residents and visitors of the Empire state. New York has hosted a large number of major championships and is home to one of the oldest and most influential PGA sections. The PGA Metropolitan Section has had more than 28,000 members and along with major championships to come, will host the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage State Park.
New York has produced a number of excellent golfers. Gene Sarazen (48), Walter Hagen (58), Jeff Sluman (18), Joey Sindelar (7) and Cameron Young (3) all come from New York and have combined for 134 professional wins.
New York state has well over 500 public golf facilities, spread across the finger lakes, southern tier, boroughs of New York city, the capital district and the Niagara Canada area. Tee time technology used by the public 18+ hole facilities has changed a lot since 2015. In the past, GolfNow reigned over New York like King Kong but today we see a number of tee sheet and booking engine companies growing fast and deepening their roots in New York.
Our review of tee sheet and booking engine providers in New York required a deep dive to help understand what companies own what brands in the golf management software industry. Here's a primer to help you understand our review:
GolfNow, owned by Comcast and operating within NBC Sports Next, has purchased several competing companies over the years and at times the companies purchased by GolfNow had previously purchased some of their competitors. From 2015 through the summer of 2022, the total number of installed booking engines shrank across the list of GolfNow brands. In 2015, the total number was 3,682 and in June 2022, it was 2,553. This is specific to public golf courses of 18 holes or more in the United States.
Here's a list of brands purchased, created, or acquired through acquisition by GolfNow.
- Fore!
- Tee It Up
- TeeLeader
- Crescent
- EZLinks
- Golf18
- GolfSwitch
- IBS
- TeeOff
- Active Golf
- Jencess
- Fairway Systems
- GolfNow
- G1
We looked for competing technology brands that have served New York public golf courses and settled on a smaller list of 8 brands.
Here are the brands we included in our GolfNow New York technology competitor list.
New York golf course owners and managers along with the management companies that help to run the golf courses, including Bethpage State Park Golf Courses, have made foreUP the number one installed booking engine in New York. In New York, foreUP, from Utah (not exactly a hometown favorite), has 61 booking engines in action, while the full list of GolfNow brands totals 60. If we include Vermont Systems, a sister company to foreUP, the installations are 72 vs. 60. foreUP and Vermont Systems live in Clubessential Holdings which is owned by Battery. Battery is a global, technology-focused investment firm.
When we stack up the New York competitor list and compare their booking engine installs to the GolfNow list of brands, there's a large gap. The competitors total 145 but that was not always the case. When we looked back to 2015, we found the GolfNow group with 109 installs and the competitors with just 41. 2017 was similar with GolfNow leading 99 to 58 but in 2019 the dam cracked (99-87 in favor of the competitors) and the gap has grown every year since.
2015 was the height of market share for the GolfNow group. The GolfNow group total of booking engine installs was larger than an even bigger total group of competitors than analyzed for New York. In 2015, the GolfNow group had more installs than the competitor group in 47 states throughout America. Today, that number is just 17.
Why is GolfNow shrinking?
While there is no single reason we are seeing GolfNow shrink in North America, we do see a consistent item across several tee sheet / booking engine companies that are headed in reverse. GolfNow and others do not offer an open API. Unlike those companies, foreUP, Club Caddie and Lightspeed have open APIs. They make their platforms available for hundreds of vendors to connect and provide added services and products to their customer base. GolfNow and others in the golf management software industry prevent their customers from working with a large list of vendors who want to help golf courses host more golfers. This fact, and others, are used by intelligent sales people who are sharing the story about why it's important for golf courses to use technology that 'plays well' with others. This is a meaningful, competitive advantage for fast growing companies like Supreme Golf, Lightspeed, Club Caddie, and foreUP.
The irony here is undeniable. Some tee sheet and booking engine companies believe they will prosper and prevent account losses if they deny their customer requests to connect with companies that want to help them. The golf course managers have become so savvy, they now end relationships with closed platform companies and are moving to open platforms with flexible terms and conditions.
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