Plastic Thunder
Eagle Member
I noticed the course I have opened up and have far fewer players this year. So i did a little research and found the active registered players has fallen off rather dramatically. The PDGA does a nice job of keeping up with all kinds of stuff so I looked at player statics and used the numbers from that to come up with my conclusion.
This data was taken in July.
2024 update, 3/13/24 total pages of all players is 34050, I will look again in July. But keep in mind 2023 was 139k pages of players. One thing that inflates the number of players, is that any player that played in more than one division will have additional entries. So if you played in Am 50 and Am 60 as I did you will be counted 2 times. Am to Pro, counted 2 times. I found over 1000 players that were listed up to 5 times on the Pro and Am side of the data. Sort by PDGA number and you can see this. It is for this last reason the 139k(2023) number is so different than the 34K(2024) number. By July we all will have played more events and skewed the 2024 player pages. I expect 34050 to possibly triple.
In order to get an accurate number of players I would need to look January 1.
Pro(all) Am(all) Am(female)
2023 20208 101327 8103
2022 30995 141605 11683
2021 31059 113698 9318
2020 22322 57980 4172
2019 23973 53288 4271
2018 22382 46283 3945
2017 20286 39566 3382
2015 16355 27652 2162
2012 8772 15403 1237
The number of Pro female in 2010 was 769 and in 2023 it is currently at 1559. I thought there would be greater growth in that area but those numbers have not kept pace with the larger picture. On the Am side, the numbers are more in line with overall growth the sport has seen lately.
So this year we have seen about 30% of registered player vanish from the PDGA ranks. My guess is the non-registered numbers are likely off by at least that much. 2024 will be very important year, if the numbers fall, the size of the number will matter. 2% loss and none really cares, 30% and some companies might have to consider getting out of the sport. I think the loss is more in the 10-15% range, just a guess. 2025, my guess is there is a bit more contraction and then in 2026 we get back to normal growth or at least find a bottom.
Our sport is not on deaths door, just normalizing. if you need any more proof, just look at you local disc store stocking levels. They have tons of new discs and used numbers are out of control.
The Dynamic sale was well timed but I am not sure I would have done a stock and cash deal. The stock might be a problem. That deal had some interesting side notes that puzzled me. But I don't own a large disc company so maybe I am missing something.
Now for those who say "but the rest of the world is taking up the sport". Not so fast, the US market is 75% of all register players. The other 25% is all other countries combined. Take Finland for example, 5562 registered player, it's only 10% larger then the North Carolina market at 5017. Finland's population is 5,536,146, not bad, but the population of North Carolina is 10,439,388. Larger market population. There is a side note, Finland does have 2 times as many courses as North Carolina. But courses don't buy discs. They just have more places to lose them......
Last item, we will learn about the health of manufacturers when the new signings happen, I think the 7 figure deals are dead for a while. To many great players to chose from and there are loads of them everywhere.
This data was taken in July.
2024 update, 3/13/24 total pages of all players is 34050, I will look again in July. But keep in mind 2023 was 139k pages of players. One thing that inflates the number of players, is that any player that played in more than one division will have additional entries. So if you played in Am 50 and Am 60 as I did you will be counted 2 times. Am to Pro, counted 2 times. I found over 1000 players that were listed up to 5 times on the Pro and Am side of the data. Sort by PDGA number and you can see this. It is for this last reason the 139k(2023) number is so different than the 34K(2024) number. By July we all will have played more events and skewed the 2024 player pages. I expect 34050 to possibly triple.
In order to get an accurate number of players I would need to look January 1.
Pro(all) Am(all) Am(female)
2023 20208 101327 8103
2022 30995 141605 11683
2021 31059 113698 9318
2020 22322 57980 4172
2019 23973 53288 4271
2018 22382 46283 3945
2017 20286 39566 3382
2015 16355 27652 2162
2012 8772 15403 1237
The number of Pro female in 2010 was 769 and in 2023 it is currently at 1559. I thought there would be greater growth in that area but those numbers have not kept pace with the larger picture. On the Am side, the numbers are more in line with overall growth the sport has seen lately.
So this year we have seen about 30% of registered player vanish from the PDGA ranks. My guess is the non-registered numbers are likely off by at least that much. 2024 will be very important year, if the numbers fall, the size of the number will matter. 2% loss and none really cares, 30% and some companies might have to consider getting out of the sport. I think the loss is more in the 10-15% range, just a guess. 2025, my guess is there is a bit more contraction and then in 2026 we get back to normal growth or at least find a bottom.
Our sport is not on deaths door, just normalizing. if you need any more proof, just look at you local disc store stocking levels. They have tons of new discs and used numbers are out of control.
The Dynamic sale was well timed but I am not sure I would have done a stock and cash deal. The stock might be a problem. That deal had some interesting side notes that puzzled me. But I don't own a large disc company so maybe I am missing something.
Now for those who say "but the rest of the world is taking up the sport". Not so fast, the US market is 75% of all register players. The other 25% is all other countries combined. Take Finland for example, 5562 registered player, it's only 10% larger then the North Carolina market at 5017. Finland's population is 5,536,146, not bad, but the population of North Carolina is 10,439,388. Larger market population. There is a side note, Finland does have 2 times as many courses as North Carolina. But courses don't buy discs. They just have more places to lose them......
Last item, we will learn about the health of manufacturers when the new signings happen, I think the 7 figure deals are dead for a while. To many great players to chose from and there are loads of them everywhere.
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