VPAR

Market

Target market

We target customers in every segment of the golf industry; tournament organisers, club members, golf courses and, in particular, passionate golfers looking to improve or enhance their enjoyment of the game. There are over 60 million people worldwide who already love and play golf regularly.

Stuffy members’ clubs and paper scorecards are a reflection on an industry that has been slow to adapt to progress. Our technology satisfies not only the traditionalist but a new, demanding, modern golf fan who’s emerging.

“We are moving quickly towards a world in which digital technology is ubiquitous, even in emerging markets, and these technologies are rapidly becoming mobile, local and social.” - HSBC Golf 2020 Vision Report.

These new golf fans play video games, are used to technology being central in every aspect of life, come from broader cultural backgrounds and aspire to be like and follow their favourite Pro golfer on social media. Even in golf-mad USA, less than 20% of its 25.1 million golfers have an official handicap - previously only available to club members.The new generation are looking for status and inclusiveness in the game without the expense or inconvenience of being tied to a single club.

"Youth playing the game has increased by 20% from 2.5 million in 2010 to 3 million in 2015. An estimated 6.3 million millennials play and they are playing often, an average of nearly 15 rounds per year." - Tim Finchem, PGA Tour Commissioner, quoted in Forbes 2016 about the US.

Characteristics of target market

The golf industry has an economic impact, of roughly $177 billion a year, around £2 billion of which is in the UK - 7% of GVA attributed to all sports. The impact is deemed big enough in fact that the UK parliament had a specific debate to discuss its value to the UK economy. In the US, golf contributes about $4 billion of charitable giving alone, estimated to be more than NFL, NHL, MLB and NBA combined.

"Golf is so much more than just a game. It is a significant industry, a major contributor to the American economy. GOLF 20/20 published its first national report in 2002, which demonstrated that golf in 2000 was a $62 billion industry, a bigger job creator than spectator sports, performing arts, and the amusement and recreation industries." - World Golf Foundation Golf 20/20 Report.

When you look at each product and the potential market scale, there are hundreds of thousands of golf events (over 140,000 charity tournaments in the US alone) for our Tournament Live Scoring Service, 30,000+ courses for our Club Platform and over 60 million active participants in the game to become app users.

Golf attracts a highly affluent demographic. VPAR’s technology directly falls into a major consumer spend bucket in the industry with around $5.6 billion a year (just in the US) being spent on golf equipment, clothing and accessories - which the app sits in.

Marketing strategy

The key objectives for VPAR are to:
1. Grow our app community.
2. Increase the number of courses who integrate our club software.
3. Provide our Live Scoring Service to more tournaments.
4. Democratise the golf handicap.
5. Become the number 1 technology brand in golf.
Growth in each objective, feeds growth in the other areas of the business by design, through functional overlap, creating a virtuous cycle.

The App.
We will continue the growth of our app community via a mixture of online marketing activity, organic growth (currently 44% of app user growth), strategic industry partnerships and our existing users. We will continue to build partnerships in the industry, a strategy that has already shown success, with companies such as Hilton, Callaway and Golf Digest. These partners give us a relevant platform to get the app into the hands of a large number of real golfers.
Online marketing activity has also been very successful and we will continue to invest in the channels which perform and lead to loyal users, fastidiously tracked to maximise return on investment.

The Clubs and Events
The expansion of our club and event business is a simple equation which has been successful thus far - ‘events breed events’. With more sales staff in more territories we will continue to tap into the hundreds of thousands of golf events which occur yearly and those 30,000+ golf courses.
Supported by offline marketing efforts, we will invest in industry partnerships to give us an audience with multiple PGA pros and golf course operators. This will be backed up by roadshows, showcase events and tradeshows such as the PGA Show in Orlando. The key is to educate and get our products into the decision maker's hands so they can see VPAR used in a live environment.

Competition strategy

There are competitors in both the club and app space, but we believe that none exist across both in the way that VPAR does. VPAR also has a unique penetration and brand recognition at thousands of tournament and hundreds of golf clubs, both of which are crucial to the long term growth and retention of our app audience.

Since launching Live Scoring, a number of apps have appeared in the market place which have replicated some of VPAR’s features. However many don’t have any key scoring functionality and focus purely on GPS, which also exists in VPAR. This functionality alone lacks use outside of the individual and doesn’t provide long term integration potential within the fabric of golf clubs and tournament play - both hugely significant in the golf industry.

A key hurdle in the mobile app space (across all sectors not just in golf) is retaining users. Consumers are fickle and, especially as the market matures, VPAR has a few important competitive advantages; by offering more features than our competitors, our app being crucially linked with our club and tournament product, and our experience in product design and usability. This has meant our retention rates during the 2016 golf season were above overall industry benchmarks. *

In the club space, there are a couple of main competitors who have approached the space from different angles. Both have specialised and focussed on what the club wants in a top down approach, rather than any mass consumer product which golfers are so obviously demanding. Ultimately mass adoption will come from both consumer demand in the best product, as well as clubs and tournaments adopting the platform that integrates seamlessly with that.

*Golf season set as June - October.