The athlete worshiping couch potatoes here with ESPN beer and hot wings at Hooters dreams about the future of disc golf don't want to hear that though.
Sadly the sports industrial complex has conned at least the last three generations of Westernized men into thinking their weekend afternoons and after work evenings should be idolizing those who play a particular sport the best, gambling on the results, eating artery clogging grease and overindulging on intoxicating beverages while watching said sport.
You know rather than go out and play it themselves, however lousy they may be at it.
You know, a lot of times I agree with you. The rest of the time I just want to slap you silly. :| This comment made me do both.
Here is a thing we forget: We were sold disc golf. Wham-O had a product. They promoted activities as a means to sell a product. This is completely different from how a sport like baseball or football or basketball developed.
Baseball, football and basketball were games people liked to play. Regular Joe Schmoe guys in regular Joe Schmoe towns played because it was fun. People came out to watch because they had friends playing or they wanted to support the community team out of civic pride or whatever. So there was a game, there was a crowd of spectators, and people moved in to exploit that for profit. So now you have that whole money-making mechanism, but the game and the spectators were there first.
What we have is a product (golf discs, the decedent of the Frisbee), a game (disc golf), a small group of players and a handful of small companies selling the product. The small group of players and the small companies want the money-making mechanism to plop down and make them all rich, but they somehow overlooked that the element that made baseball, football and basketball money-making mechanisms was spectators and we don't have any of those. For all the success we have had attracting players to the sport (and we have had a lot of success at that) we have gone nowhere with getting spectators. We still hold Am awards after the final 9 to force a gallery to hang around and look like spectators.
So at some point you have to let it go. We have a game that we like to play. We are getting new courses in the ground every year, keeping most of our old courses, and building a bigger base of participants every year. We are still nowhere close to being a money-making mechanism, and we might never get there. So ask yourself, "Is that OK." Is it OK if this is a good as it gets? Are you having fun? Is this a great sport to participate in? If so, let's just play and blow the rest of it off. If not, you need to practice your jump shot or your split finger fastball and take up a sport you CAN make money playing. Disc golf just is not a way to make money and isn't going to be for a long, long time (if ever.)