ClubCorp bets on bringing modern vibe, more affordability to its golf venues (3/24/16)
By Karen Robinson-Jacobs
On a blustery, sunswept Sunday, three lanky tweens giggled their way across a new miniature golf course near an al fresco dining area of the country club popularly known as Prestonwood.
Nearby, 30-year-old Glenn Smith, a club member since August, lounged in a patio-like setting a few paces from an outdoor bar. Smith, accompanied by 8-year-old daughter Allana, joined the club through a young executive program, an effort launched during the economic downturn that aims to attract younger golfers with promotional pricing.
“I’m looking to play golf a little better,” said Smith, who was accompanied by a group of friends. “I sucked so bad at Topgolf, I decided to come here.”
Topgolf is the high-tech entertainment complex that is part driving range, part bar and grill. ClubCorp is the nation’s largest owner/operator of private golf and business clubs and the owner of the Preston Road country club that’s part of The Clubs of Prestonwood.
Both Dallas-based companies are fighting trends that have seen golf participation levels weaken considerably across the country.
Topgolf has found success as a millennial magnet and a low-cost date night option.
Clubcorp, where fees can easily stretch into the thousands of dollars, is promoting lower-cost memberships, some of which have nothing to do with golf.
“We don’t like to consider ourselves a golf company,” said Eric Affeldt, who’s been chief executive since 2006. “We’re in the membership business, and we make money by creating an environment that would be [appealing] to people that aren’t just golfers.”
Range of activities
In the young executive program, “we’re trying to encourage younger executives to come out and enjoy not just the golf but the dining and the fitness and the social and the swim and everything else,” he said.
To become more attractive to families, many of ClubCorp’s 207 properties have added activities including Friday Night Out, which can include live music, karaoke and grilling on the patio; Movies on the Lawn; Margarita Golf, which includes a cocktail, group instruction and a few holes of golf; local wines of the month; craft beer tastings; grilling and cooking classes; and complimentary golf and tennis clinics.
In 2015, ClubCorp invested in a multimillion-dollar update at The Clubs of Prestonwood, which includes the Creek Clubhouse on Preston Road and the Hills Clubhouse in Plano. The update gave the main dining area at the Preston Road location a “modern mid-century design,” with multiple flat-screen TVs, a communal table with charging stations and a walk-in wine cellar. The club also added a covered patio and the outdoor lounge area that hosted Smith and his pals.
The Hills Clubhouse also received new dining area, lounge with media area and lobby.
“Our clubs offer I won’t say something for everybody, but something for a lot of people,” Affeldt said.
The company says that today, at least half of the members in its “golf and country club segment” don’t play golf. Other memberships include use of the tennis, fitness and or dining facilities.
Based largely on the $260 million purchase of Sequoia Golf Holdings in 2014 — the largest acquisition in company history — ClubCorp topped $1 billion in revenue for the first time in 2015 and saw total membership jump to 183,000 from 146,800 in 2013 .
The 183,000 marks the highest membership level ever. That’s 11 percent higher than in 2006, when the North Texas-born company was purchased by KSL Capital Partners.
The company, which launched in Farmers Branch in 1957 with Brookhaven Country Club, went public in 2013. KSL sold off the last of its ownership stake in 2015.
Upgrading clubs
Acquisitions (nine clubs were purchased in 2015) helped plump up the top line, but ClubCorp still ended 2015 with a $9.6 million loss. That was a swing from the $13.3 million profit in 2014. However, the company posted losses of at least $27 million in each of the three prior years, according to regulatory filings.
That was partly due to an aggressive campaign to update properties in the portfolio, said Frank Molina, ClubCorp’s vice president of investor relations.
In 2015, the company spent $52.1 million to expand and improve existing properties, including major renovations.
Affeldt said the company will continue to grow through purchases, which adds to both revenue and the member rolls. Recently it announced the acquisition of Santa Rosa Golf & Country Club, a member-owned club in the Sonoma wine country of Northern California.
Acquisition has been crucial to ClubCorp’s business model since its early days, accounting for most of the revenue and membership growth. For 2015, membership at existing clubs slipped by 353 while new or acquired clubs added more than 5,000 members, according to regulatory filings.
Affeldt said he expects an uptick in memberships this year, noting that interest last year in Texas was at least partly watered down by unending days of rain.
“That tends to dampen people’s interest in coming out to the club,” he said of the rains in Texas, which accounts for 30 percent of business. “They want to play a round to give it a test drive. When the rains came as they did, as hard as they did, that slowed down our membership momentum.”
Participation dips
As it looks to increase membership, ClubCorp is facing an industrywide challenge. The number of people who play at least one round of golf a year dipped to 24 million in 2015. That’s down from 29 million a decade ago.
More than 200 golf facilities closed in 2015 and are not expected to reopen.
Many millennials are more likely to be drawn to Topgolf. The company says its 24 locations serve 8 million guests annually, including about 7 million in the U.S.
It costs $5 to get a lifetime membership at Topgolf in The Colony, which includes free club rentals. Players rent a bay starting at $20 an hour with a group of up to six people.
While there are some encouraging signs, traditional golf, particularly for private clubs, continues to struggle, said James J. “JJ” Keegan, who runs the website jjkeegan.com. He was complimentary of Affeldt’s efforts to diversify the activities available at a ClubCorp’s facility by appealing to a broader demographic but said, “The headwinds are against him.”
Overcoming obstacles
The biggest barrier, he said, is the difficulty and time its takes to become a competent even as a recreational golfer.
Another hurdle, Keegan said, is the cost, which varies by club. At ClubCorp’s Gleneagles location in Plano for example, the initiation payment is $32,500. Add to that $800 in monthly fees.
Then there’s the cost of equipment. Given the cost of clubs, “you could easily spend $2,000 before you hit your first shot,” Keegan said.
As Leo Cardenas of Lewisville scanned the aisles at the recent DFW Golf Show in Irving, he said his reason for not joining a private club is pretty simple.
“We can’t afford it,” said Cardenas, 42, who plays about once a month. “I’m not in a situation where I can spend a few hundred bucks to belong to a club that I probably won’t use very much.”
ClubCorp hopes to address the affordability concern through promotional programs like the young executive one. Adding events and amenities is meant to give members — and potential members — more reasons to visit.
To address both membership and retention, which has slipped to about 83 percent for ClubCorp’s golf clubs, the company this year combined both functions under one leader.
The company has membership sales and retention goals for each of its clubs, but it declined to release those.
“We’ve spent millions and millions of dollars providing a contemporary dining experience and pools and fitness and tennis, so that it’s not so much a golf phenomenon as it is for the whole family,” Affeldt said.
With the rains having abated and new attractions launching, “we would anticipate that membership would grow this year,” he said.
http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2016/03/seeing-green-clubcorp-bets-on-bringing-modern-vibe-more-affordability-to-its-golf-venues.html/
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