Grow the sport you say?

[jakebake91]

Perhaps I took curtesy for others further than most would, but it still bothers me to see large groups of new players making bottlenecks on courses, cutting people off, etc. Then again, it also bothers me to see regulars on courses playing in groups of 5+.

I wish more people had that attitude though. I've played on a local small nine holer when it was PACKED and there are still multiple people/groups of people throwing multiple drives and taking multiple putts. If the course is super busy, IMO, definitely not the time for that.

 

[Golden Tuna]

Sounds like you experienced your first real look at new players trying to deal with a course with ****ty signage.

Even the best signs are useless to people who don't read them... On average, our city has some of the better signs I've seen. But, people still make throws that have me scratching my head.

An adjacent challenge of these growing pains is that the number of ambassadors is not growing at the same rate as the new player segment.

It was the ambassadors that showed us the way when we started. They let us join their groups and showed us around the course, what and how to throw, and, most importantly, the etiquette of the sport. It is hard to be patient, but we all need to chip in to help the new generation learn the way we did with the added teaching supplements of the internet.

 

[aphilso1]

I wish more people had that attitude though. I've played on a local small nine holer when it was PACKED and there are still multiple people/groups of people throwing multiple drives and taking multiple putts. If the course is super busy, IMO, definitely not the time for that.

Agreed. Yesterday I played a round with a buddy, and he asked if he could throw a second tee shot on Hole 1. My response was "only if we allow the guys walking up to the tee pad to play through." Second shots are only for when there is zero impact on other groups.

 

[Dingus]

We won't know if this is the new normal or not until next year, I'd wager.

If it is the new normal, cities that don't charge to play are going to see how much extra money cities that do are getting with passes/green fees. More courses will be pay to play in the next couple years if this growth is actually permanent. But, if it is, and more courses charge a daily fee, we should also see more courses pop up due to that.

Pay to play barely covers mowing costs. Parks departments have significantly larger budgets than you would expect, a paid disc golf course would be a tiny blip on the radar.

 

[donnyv]

Not to thread drift, but...


I imagine you'd have to be located closer to more of the population for that to be feasible.

And therein lies the rub. To generate enough traffic to turn a decent profit, you need to be easily accessible to more people... which means property closer to population centers, which is usually much more expensive.

Yes, more people are playing now than ever, but I wouldn't plan on quitting your day job just yet.

However, I could see it being a enjoyable way to supplement your income during retirement, given that the cost of installing the course was incurred already, and it's just a matter of maintaining it, which presumably you'd have more time to do.

Just my $0.02.

Pretty much my goal was to make it something as a retirement/supplemental income. Over the past 7 years we've been open my main goal was keeping the course kinda a hidden secret to limit the amount of people requesting to play or just showing up unexpected. Every dg website, except the PDGA site, I put in fake addresses to throw off random people from popping in. Example, our lat/long location on DGCR is listed as if we're in the middle of Lake Huron. As Evil as that sounds, some people don't quite get that private means private. The phone calls, texts and messages to play here can get pretty crazy sometimes. No shows and last minute cancellations drive me nuts to the point where if you want a tee time you're going to have to prepay for it unless I know you well enough.

On a side note, I'd love to have you and Rupor back over for a round sometime. The course has improved tremendously and I bet you guys will feel more comfortable to review our course on DGCR as a complete course now than the time you guys played 5 or so years ago.

Much love to you Dwayne and Steve for keeping it real on this site. Not too many people I know use DGCR, yet we've had players from 32 different states now

 

[VictorB]

Pay to play barely covers mowing costs. Parks departments have significantly larger budgets than you would expect, a paid disc golf course would be a tiny blip on the radar.

Source? Pay to play or free, mowing happens no matter what, so it's already budgeted in.

Since I moved here around start of 2017 - We've had additional sets of baskets installed at each city course as well as lots of new pin locations added, improvements to prevent erosion, and a lot of overgrowth maintenance. An 18 hole winter course has been installed also.

Parks departments may have big budgets, but the money from disc golf revenue is put directly back into the courses here.

 

[Jay Dub]

Source? Pay to play or free, mowing happens no matter what, so it's already budgeted in.

Since I moved here around start of 2017 - We've had additional sets of baskets installed at each city course as well as lots of new pin locations added, improvements to prevent erosion, and a lot of overgrowth maintenance. An 18 hole winter course has been installed also.

Parks departments may have big budgets, but the money from disc golf revenue is put directly back into the courses here.

Source is common sense. How much do people pay to play where you are? Around here it's $5 a day, that might cover gas but does not cover the cost of the mower(s).

 

[VictorB]

Source is common sense. How much do people pay to play where you are? Around here it's $5 a day, that might cover gas but does not cover the cost of the mower(s).

Common sense?

It's not like they aren't mowing if no one plays. That money doesn't need to be "earned back" because it's budgeted.

City fees are $5/day or $50/yr. And thousands of annual passes are sold.

 

[Jay Dub]

Common sense?

It's not like they aren't mowing if no one plays. That money doesn't need to be "earned back" because it's budgeted.

City fees are $5/day or $50/yr. And thousands of annual passes are sold.

OK, you mean city parks around here pay to play is all private except for a $15 annual fee to the county parks.

 

[Dingus]

Common sense?

It's not like they aren't mowing if no one plays. That money doesn't need to be "earned back" because it's budgeted.

City fees are $5/day or $50/yr. And thousands of annual passes are sold.

I don't know many places where courses are being installed into already maintained spaces. Usually they have to clear out areas to create the course. Without the course the area would not be mowed. Or if it was mowed, it is on a monthly basis or even less.

I'm not saying a pay to play course doesn't turn a profit. I'm just saying the profit is negligible. Which works fine, because the cost of replacing baskets and teepads is negligible in the grand scheme of things. But no parks department is setting up a disc golf course as a profit center.

 

[Dcinmd]

I am fortunate to have five very good "home" courses, each within a half hour or so. Two have been around since the 1990s, but the other three were installed or significantly redesigned in 2013, 2015, and 2018.

I'm happy to keep the gates open a bit longer.

Don't go to Rockburn on a weekend. Since the redesign there is a minimum of a one group on every hole. And was like that on the Sat after Thanksgiving. I don't want to ponder what it will look like this summer.

 

[VictorB]

I don't know many places where courses are being installed into already maintained spaces. Usually they have to clear out areas to create the course. Without the course the area would not be mowed. Or if it was mowed, it is on a monthly basis or even less.

I'm not saying a pay to play course doesn't turn a profit. I'm just saying the profit is negligible. Which works fine, because the cost of replacing baskets and teepads is negligible in the grand scheme of things. But no parks department is setting up a disc golf course as a profit center.

I think we're approaching this from 2 different angles - my perspective was for courses that currently exist and aren't pay to play adopting a daily/annual fee model. It's a lot easier for the city to justify that than creating new spaces that are fee based since those older spaces are already budgeted thus don't have to 'earn' their keep - any additional income could be used for upkeep/upgrades with the heavily increased traffic

 

[uncle pennybags]

Source? Pay to play or free, mowing happens no matter what, so it's already budgeted in.

Since I moved here around start of 2017 - We've had additional sets of baskets installed at each city course as well as lots of new pin locations added, improvements to prevent erosion, and a lot of overgrowth maintenance. An 18 hole winter course has been installed also.

Parks departments may have big budgets, but the money from disc golf revenue is put directly back into the courses here.

Some park dept's do. Mine can barely manage to get the grass mowed. Tree and limb removal...forget about it, even if it's a dangerous widow-maker.

Granted I'm in a small town in Iowa. My course is pretty empty most of the time....until this last year or so. I had never seen casual super-groups until now. :thmbdown:

 

[txmxer]

When I was learning how to play, I would go out by myself at the crack of dawn. I knew I was slow, and knew I should be throwing multiple shots to build muscle memory. And I didn't want to bother the serious players by getting in their way, so I intentionally played when the course wasn't busy. Then after discovering uDisc and realizing there was an unpopular 9 hole course just a little further away from my house, I started playing there so that I really wasn't in anyone's way. I am currently learning how to mountain bike and following the same thought process. Staying on less popular trails, or hitting popular trails at less popular times.

Perhaps I took curtesy for others further than most would, but it still bothers me to see large groups of new players making bottlenecks on courses, cutting people off, etc. Then again, it also bothers me to see regulars on courses playing in groups of 5+.

Hope you aren't mountain biking alone. Easy to get injured and not get immediate assistance if needed.

Hope that doesn't sound negative—it is not intended to be.

 

[txmxer]

Since DG as we are discussing is played in a public park, there isn't much that can be done. Try putting up a rules or play guidelines board and most won't bother to read them.

 

[autocrosscrx]

I don't know this, but I suspect there is a possibility that setting up a public disc golf course to earn income opens a whole new world of political and budgeting and reporting requirements that could potentially cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

 

[Monocacy]

Don't go to Rockburn on a weekend. Since the redesign there is a minimum of a one group on every hole. And was like that on the Sat after Thanksgiving. I don't want to ponder what it will look like this summer.

Ugh - I am not surprised, Rockburn has always been popular.

I still need to play the redesigned course, but based on your advice maybe I'll do so on a weekday.

 

[aphilso1]

Hope you aren't mountain biking alone. Easy to get injured and not get immediate assistance if needed.

Hope that doesn't sound negative—it is not intended to be.

No offense taken. That is good advice, especially since I didn't clarify where I'm biking or what kind of trails.

I'm sure I will eventually move onto more technical stuff, but for now 80%+ of the time I am just riding out my door up to the local trailhead. There's lower (green line) and upper (blue to black lines, depending on which direction you go) trails, and I pretty much stick to the lower green line trails. They are less popular, easier, and less punitive if you do crash.

I have thought about what I will do this summer though. I haven't met a riding partner yet, and there are some fantastic MTB trails up the mountain once the ski resorts dry out in June. But those trails are as you describe -- higher injury risk (crash, rattlesnake, and moose risk). I'm hoping I find a MTB riding partner before then.

 

[coupe]

The bolded was already a problem and is rapidly becoming moreso. The onus imo is on the manufacturers to institute some policies dictating at the least a design inspection for courses to be installed on public property.

While I strongly agree with the sentiment, I'm more than a little skeptical that any mfg will risk the financial hit from lost sales due to course designer pushback on Auslanders advising, much less signing off on, their masterpieces. While it may have been practicable back when there were only a handful of outlets for acquiring baskets (Steady Ed used to require prospective buyers to submit their course design for approval before accepting an order back when DGA had a monopoly—and pissed off a lot of potential buyers in the process—but that disappeared when the patent expired and other mfgs started entering the market), there are simply too many outlets from which to acquire baskets these days that don't involve purchasing directly from the mfgs.

 

[Dingus]

I think we're approaching this from 2 different angles - my perspective was for courses that currently exist and aren't pay to play adopting a daily/annual fee model. It's a lot easier for the city to justify that than creating new spaces that are fee based since those older spaces are already budgeted thus don't have to 'earn' their keep - any additional income could be used for upkeep/upgrades with the heavily increased traffic

gotcha, yeah that makes sense, I thought you were implying that courses would be built specifically to be pay to play as a revenue stream.