Describing a driving-range-meets-sports-bar-meets-nightclub atmosphere that’s “less hushed reverence, more Dave & Buster’s with 9-irons,” with clientele including kids with parents, couples on dates, and even a bachelorette party, the report notes that in the past five years, the company has opened 23 new venues, more than half of them since the beginning of 2015.
In a recent feature, Bloomberg Businessweek detailed a the driving-range-meets-sports-bar-meets-nightclub scene at a Scottsdale, Ariz., Topgolf facility, one of the fastest-growing recreational entertainment chains in the U.S.
Scenes like this are playing out at 25 other locations across the country—people eating, watching sports, nodding along to pop songs, and hitting golf balls, all without moving more than a few paces from their beers. The three-level Scottsdale location is packed by 8 p.m.; the wait for one of its 102 hitting bays, each of which seats eight, is half an hour, Bloomberg reported.
This wait is relatively short—the night before, the wait was as long as three hours. There are kids with parents, couples on dates, and at least one bachelorette party. Those waiting bide their time in a full-service sports bar, drinking margaritas and eating flatbread pizza, Bloomberg reported.
As should be clear by now, anybody looking for “a good walk spoiled” will want to skip Topgolf. “Golf is just the vehicle by which they deliver fun,” said Jim Koppenhaver, president of industry consultant Pellucid. “It takes away most of the barriers to fun of the traditional game.”
At Topgolf there’s no need to buy clubs, pay dues, or set aside an afternoon to play a full 18 holes. Instead, there’s the bare pleasure of whacking a ball with a club—plus beer, burgers, and flatscreens set to sports. The approach is less hushed reverence, more Dave & Buster’s with 9-irons, Bloomberg reported.
The first Topgolf opened in 2000 in Watford, England, a commuter town northwest of London. It was the brainchild of Dave and Steve Jolliffe, golf-loving twins who embedded radio-frequency identification chips in balls to track them. They invented a game to go with the balls, putting holes in the turf, each about 50 feet wide with a flag in the center, to use as targets. The “top” in “Topgolf” stood for “target oriented practice,” Bloomberg reported.
A hitting bay is pay-by-the-hour—$45 during peak times at this venue. Each player gets a Topgolf membership card and the basic rules include: No running up to the tee to hit, Happy Gilmore-style. Only one person at a time past the red line separating the couches from the tee. And no aiming for the carts that circle the outfield sweeping up balls. The 10 holes, ranging from 25 yards to 185 yards away, look like meteor craters. There’s also a “trench target” along the far net, Bloomberg reported.
Topgolf’s rules are generous by design. Any ball that rolls or drops into any hole scores. (You can choose more demanding scoring formats.) The farther away the hole and the closer the ball comes to the flag, the more points you get. Each player gets 20 balls per round. After each shot, a screen reports where the ball landed, the yardage, and the points scored, Bloomberg reported.
The original Watford venue, and two more that opened in England after it, had no flatscreen TVs and no music. There was beer, pub food, and a high-tech way to practice golf. Erik Anderson, founder of private equity fund WestRiver Group and chief executive officer of Topgolf Entertainment Group, decided to bring the idea stateside in 2005. He paid a licensing fee to Topgolf’s English owners and opened the first U.S. venue, in Alexandria, Va., in August of that year; locations in Dallas and suburban Chicago followed in 2007. They were still relatively modest: tees on two levels with a bucket of balls and a few deck chairs at each. Despite the recession and golf’s accelerating decline, people came and spent. By the end of 2008 the company had almost 700 visitors per day at its U.S. venues, Bloomberg reported.
In 2009, Anderson and a group of U.S. investors bought Topgolf’s technology for an undisclosed fee and decided to overhaul the floor plan for future locations. They added a third level, tripling the size of each venue to 65,000 sq. ft.; replaced the buckets with motion-sensing ball dispensers; and, in a key change, put TVs and lounges—effectively, the entire sports bar experience—at each bay. “We realized that this was really an integrated entertainment and sports experience,” Anderson said.
The first new-generation venue opened in Allen, Texas, north of Dallas, in 2011. Within weeks there were waits to get a bay on a Saturday night. When a Houston location opened the following year, there were waits from its first day. In the past five years, Topgolf has opened 23 venues, more than half of them since the beginning of 2015. A flagship in Las Vegas, featuring two swimming pools, a concert hall, and views of the Strip, opened in May. In September the company lined up $275 million in financing to build 7 to 10 locations a year (each costs $20 million to $25 million to open), Bloomberg reported.
“We think there’s room for 100 or so in the U.S. and an equal amount globally,” Anderson said, though other than the original locations, the company hasn’t yet opened any outside the U.S. Revenue last year was about $300 million; this year it will be about a half-billion dollars. Topgolf’s success has already inspired competitors. FlyingTee opened in Tulsa earlier this year, offering a similar combination of food, drink, and golf-as-arcade-game, Bloomberg reported.
Each new Topgolf employs about 450 people, about 30% of them full time. To find people who can foster its party vibe, Topgolf has created a custom interview format. At the San Antonio venue, hopefuls are greeted by a handful of employees, called the Tee-Up Crew, decked out in oversize sunglasses and leis and waving balloons and foam fingers, Bloomberg reported.
The 60 or so job seekers, mostly twentysomethings and teenagers, look like San Antonio—a mix of white, black, and Latino. The average age of a Topgolf employee is about 27, said Amber Weiss, the company’s head of talent acquisition and compensation. The awkward dance-along is part of a carefully staged process that also includes group brainstorming and an “X-factor” audition: 90 seconds for the applicant to do or say whatever he wants in front of a panel of three, Bloomberg reported.
“We’re with them for three hours,” Weiss says. “We’re looking for behaviors throughout that time. How do they treat each other? What do they do when they don’t think they’re being watched?” She says they divide applicants into three categories: rock stars, zombies (applicants who just go through the motions), and skunks (those who refuse to engage), Bloomberg reported.
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