"What matters is making someone who has taken up golf play it for life. If we analyze golfers and would-be golfers by life stage and offer them tailored value, a fresh leap forward for the golf industry is entirely possible."
Lee Jun-sung, a professor of applied sport industry at Yonsei University, made the remarks in a keynote speech at the 2026 Korea Golf Industry Forum, held on the 11th at The Plaza Hotel Seoul in Jung-gu, Seoul, under the theme "Strategies to Strengthen Golf Industry Resilience."
Speaking on the topic "The Future of the Golf Industry Found Outside the Course," Lee proposed that "we need to look at the golf industry again through the lens of the golfer lifecycle." He said, "People who try golf for the first time become more familiar with it through screen golf, and then they start taking lessons or paying attention to tour events. They also consume various parts of the market, such as equipment, to improve their game, and they come to feel a sense of belonging in communities of fellow golfers." He stressed, "Because a life cycle emerges through this kind of natural progression, what matters for the sustainable growth of the golf industry is not simply counting the number of visits to courses, but understanding where each individual golfer currently stands in that life cycle and working out how to deliver the value that suits that stage."
The Korea Golf Industry Forum, now in its third year, is hosted by Seoul Economic Daily and Seoul Economic Daily TV, organized by Seoul Economic Daily Golf Monthly, and sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Korea Golf Course Business Association and the Korea Ladies Professional Golf Association (KLPGA). About 100 industry officials from across the golf business — courses, equipment, technology, apparel and marketing — gathered to hear the talks and exchange views.
The golf industry enjoyed an unprecedented boom during the pandemic as about 3 million new golfers took up the game, but it slid quickly into stagnation as the pandemic wound down. According to the Korea Golf Course Business Association, total visits to the country's 524 golf courses came to 46.41 million last year, down about 1 million from a year earlier. After peaking at an all-time high of 50.58 million in 2022, the figure has fallen steadily, to 47.72 million in 2023 and 47.41 million in 2024.
Even amid that trend, Lee said, "attention should be paid to the fact that the golf industry as a whole expanded from 20.8 trillion won in 2022 to 22.4 trillion won the following year," citing data from the Yuwon Golf Foundation's golf industry white paper. "The golf industry is drawing its momentum from secondary and tertiary markets rather than from courses. Golfers open their wallets more outside the course than inside it," he said. He pointed to meaningful growth in screen golf, the equipment market and golf tourism as evidence. His assessment is that "golf did not disappear when the pandemic ended; this should be understood as abnormal, pandemic-driven growth returning to normal, an overheated market finding a new point of balance."
"Bringing new golfers into the market requires a targeted approach built around the golfer lifecycle," Lee said. "We should note that people typically enjoy golf in a cycle that runs from screen golf or lessons, to buying equipment or club fitting, to joining a community, to golf travel or watching tour events, to consuming golf content." He added, "We should benchmark the way Topgolf, the driving range brand in the United States, and Golf Digest Online (GDO) in Japan provide content aimed at a range of age groups." Topgolf has indeed broadened the scope of range practice by combining food and beverage with gaming elements, while GDO has built an integrated ecosystem by linking tee-time bookings, equipment sales and lessons with its customer database and media operations.
Lee stressed that "to strengthen the resilience of the golf industry, the sector needs a fundamental shift in thinking, from a product-centered mindset to an experience-centered one." Just as a single well-taken photograph from a round can carry a golfer back to the good memories of that day, the industry must satisfy the varied experiences that individual golfers are seeking, he said. "Only by accumulating data across a range of categories can you create value that matches what people need," he said. "But rather than traditional data such as visitor numbers or spending per head, you have to collect experience data — how many golfers are visiting for the first time, what the return rate is, whether they are still playing after one month, three months or a year. That is how you build relationships rather than numbers."
