Fastest Growing Sport in America?

[McMarkD]

Newbie:
My sister took me to Hudson Mills in A**2 and we played off the amature tees. This is cool! So as soon as I got back to Denver, I got on the internet, and ordered deluxe beginner grab 8 pack with a bag. But I had so much fun, I ran over to REI got a putter, a Shark (I could throw that straight) and a Valkaryie, and went over to Ken Caryl and threw at their course. My next question is, I got a sore arm... Help me learn how to snap better with a sidearm throw. Tons of words teaching about discs... Being an Aero Engineer... Stable and Understable... Those are simple... Wash-out and Wash-In on wings of airplanes! Glide and Speed... Yep I get those two also... Lift and Drag... But what is Turn and Fade? Do I put this Firebird in the closet and get it out a few months from now? Thanks for showing me the sport... I think I will come play tag with you, if anyone would just tell me what that means.

 

[Midnightbiker]

This should answer alot of your questions about discs and what "turn and fade" are:

http://www.adriandiscgolf.com/Default.aspx?tabid=87

 

[ERicJ]

Do I put this Firebird in the closet and get it out a few months from now?

Yep. Start with something on the understable side of the chart. If I'd thrown a Firebird when I was starting it may have had so much fade it might boomerang right back to me. Try a Valkyrie, Sidewinder, Eagle, Cheetah, TL, etc.. As your throwing speed improves you can move over to the more overstable discs. But when first starting out stick to understable discs.

 

[Pastime]

Well I got introduced to Disc Golf earlier this year. My friend at work kept talking about it and finally I got interested enough to get some details and now I've gotten 4 other people into the sport.

 

[Midnightbiker]

Its a fun sport. Today I plan on taking my neighbors out to play. One, I got into and he loves it and the other has never played, but he plays regular Golf. He is very interested in trying it out.

 

[treethacker]

New to this forum. I have been playing for about a year so I am still learning as I go.
Talk about promoting the sport,I have a bumber sticker that says "I love disc golf" and I have had lots of people come up and ask me what disc golf is.
I have a question though,do you think that disc golf is the fastest growing sport or just the fastest growing fad?

 

[djext1]

New to this forum. I have been playing for about a year so I am still learning as I go.
Talk about promoting the sport,I have a bumber sticker that says "I love disc golf" and I have had lots of people come up and ask me what disc golf is.
I have a question though,do you think that disc golf is the fastest growing sport or just the fastest growing fad?

I think we can rule out the "fad" notion. It's been around for a looong time, and only increases it's numbers.

 

[ERicJ]

Membership Growth

There have been over 2000 new membership numbers issued since mine in this past February. That's over 400/month. But I'm guessing with the recent change in membership period (now Jan-Dec) that rate will fall as the year progresses and then spike up again in January.

Attached is a chart I pulled from the PDGA website showing Membership growth from 1996-2007.

 

[ERicJ]

Oh yeah, and the DGCR database is up to 2669 courses as of today...

 

[Three Putt]

Yeah, one of the funny things about disc golf is you hear people complain al the time that we are not on TV and nobody knows about the sport. This is unintentional, as the PDGA has been working hard to get us to those levels. It's just not working.

The unintended side effect is that all of the grass roots work by local volunteers has created a very slow moving growth cycle that keeps disc golf from being labeled a fad. On the chart shown, you can clearly see the rate the sport began to grow, then the dip that happened starting in 1983 when the IFA was disband and all "Frisbee" sports took a hit. The growth then crawled along but always continued upwards at a small pace until the early 2000's when the sport resumed growing at it's original pace.

There is no "bubble," something that would have been a real possibility had the sport gotten on TV in the late 80's or 90's. That type of overexposure leads to a lot of people who really are not all that interested trying the sport and then quiting. It's a reality of life. Currently something like 25-30% of first-time PDGA members do not renew, which is a typical percent. Not everyone who tries something is going to like it. While that just shows they are no longer playing in PDGA events, you can assume that many of these people stop playing altogether. So far there have always been more than enough increase in new membership to offset this loss. When you get that mass media exposure, that percent can jump dramatically. If you subsequently loose your mass media exposure, your new members can't keep up with your losses and you loose membership. If the bubble lasts a few years, private courses would spring up to handle the demand. They would be opened in many cases by people with no attachment to the sport, just somebody looking to make a buck. When the bubble bursts, they then fail and go out of business. You then have to promote a sport with falling membership and closing facilities, which is something the PDGA has never had to face due to the slow growth of the sport.

The chart shows courses, and it is biased. Since most courses are on public land and are free, they are under no pressure to be successful. Typically the only way a course can "fail" is if it is pulled due to neighbor complaints or such. So the chart goes up even if the course is not successful.

As long as we stay with the original model of using parks and recreation facilities, we don't risk much in the way of closing courses. Some will close, but for the most part even unsuccessful courses will sit around getting little play. The parks and recreation industry is not under the kind of economic pressure to make the land profitable that a privateer will be. If we make the conversion to private pay-for-play courses, some of these invariably will fail and close and your upward chart can have a hick-up. I think play-for-pay is a logical and necessary step for disc golf, but I'd like to see more of an effort made to encourage parks and recreation departments to manage the existing facilities as pay for play. They will not be under the type of pressure a private course will be under, they will in many cases just need to make a small profit on operational costs and maintenance cost will not even be included as they would have to mow the grass anyway. Promoting disc golf courses as a profit-generating facility to your local parks and recreation department is how I would like to see the sport move forward at this point. It's not going to happen for a couple of different reasons, but that is what I'd like to see happen.

Anyway, that's a long answer but we ain't no fad.

 

[ERicJ]

@ Three Putt: very good insights. Reminds me a lot of the racquetball boom & bust of the 80's.

 

[ehillis]

I think we can rule out the "fad" notion. It's been around for a looong time, and only increases it's numbers.

First off, great graph, where did this come from?

ThreePutt is right in that the graph is biased and we can't take it completely at face value, but it does excite me. As more courses are built, more people in more neihgborhoods and parks will see them or have friends and coworkers introduce the game. Therefore, the rate of growth of growth of disc golf players is exponentially related to the growth of the number of courses, even if some courses are duds.

There should also be some breakthrough point where disc golf courses will become common enough that it will be thought of as more or less mainstream. Any predictions about whether or not this may happen?

That kind of breakthrough is usually what happens in fads, but then they die just as quickly as they surfaced. The longevity of the growth in the graph would suggest that once dsic golf does break through, it won't be dying any time soon.

Fastest growing in America? Endlessly debatable. But growing strongly and sustainably? I certainly think so.

 

[ERicJ]

First off, great graph, where did this come from?

http://www.discgolfassoc.com/discgo...discgolf-park-recreation-resources/index.html

 

[Donovan]

I just hooked another...I mean I just got another person I work with into the game. It is amazing how much people appreciate you letting them try out some discs and getting them to try the game out with no investment. It kind of makes you feel good all over. Bah, you know what I mean!