The past several months have been pretty big for GOLF.
Not simply the game, mind you, but the brand and its various media properties — from the relaunched website, Golf.com, to a reinvigorated magazine that starting in July will have even more content (much of it service and lifestyle-based) and an upgraded look and feel.
Without a single PGA TOUR event being played, May marked as the second-highest month ever in terms of overall and unique visits to Golf.com, behind only April of last year, when Tiger Woods seized a spotlight that shone far beyond golf by winning the Masters for his first major championship title in almost 11 years. Amid the pandemic, the website had a 42% year-over-year surge in May visits, over 1.6 million more than the previous year. For the team at GOLF, the past several months in particular have been validating, a bright spot during otherwise dark times.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, GOLF magazine and Golf.com had made a concerted and dramatic pivot. Instead of focusing primarily on news and what’s going on in professional golf world, the company embraced the lifestyle and passion of the game, doubling down on the service, utility, education and entertainment that golf provides as one of the nation’s leading participation sports.
“Nobody is fortunate at all during these times, but that strategy has really proven itself while the tour had been shut down,” said GOLF CEO Jason Adel. “For us, that sort of proves the point that there’s a niche in the market that we’re trying to represent. This message of quality, this message of embracing the game of golf, there’s an appetite for that with consumers.”
“We have a leader now who’s invested in golf in a variety of ways,” Adel says of Milstein, whose 8AM Golf holding company includes a suite of brands such as True Spec, Miura and Club Conex in addition to the Nicklaus Companies, GOLF and Golf.com. “It allows us to think a whole lot differently about how a media brand operates and presents itself within the construct of a larger golf organization, not just within the construct of a larger media organization.”
The repositioning has certainly served GOLF magazine and Golf.com well recently. May in particular was telling.
“We definitely learned a lot about what golfers want,” said Ashley Mayo, the Head of Brand for 8AM Golf and Editorial Director for Golf.com. “What they want is a mix of things, but really guidance and help – in terms of instruction, what to wear, how to work out, how to prepare for an important round, what bets to play on the course. All those things that you want when you talk to a friend or when you’re talking to somebody who really knows their stuff.
“Certainly, before Howard’s investment, the role of Golf.com played was very much as a news site,” Mayo added. “It still is, but now it’s so much more. It offers a more complete view of the game.”
Last year’s changes to the magazine included making it almost 20% bigger – in both physical size and content. Starting with this July’s issue, there will be even more enhancements, including upgraded coverstock and increased amount of edit.
“People who started reading magazines back in the day picked it up for a reason. That was because there was this special, tangible, keepsake nature to reading a magazine,” Adel says. “It felt special when you were able to sit back, relax and kind of lose yourself in the pages or the stories that magazines told. They’ve essentially lost all of that ‘specialness.’ They’ve commoditized and cheapened themselves to the point where, in a lot of people’s eyes, they’re throwaways. ‘I got all of this information online; I don’t need it.’ What we’ve done with the magazine is reinvigorated that feeling of specialness with the publication.”
With the continued success at Golf.com, the magazine will actually reduce its frequency, going from an 11-issue cycle to eight issues. There will be a monthly cadence in the buildup to the golf season, with single-month issues in March, April, May and June. Each will be themed around a topic: equipment in March, the Masters Tournament in April, travel in May and the U.S. Open in June. The rest of the year will feature double issues (July-August, September-October, November-December and January-February), with each focusing on a particular theme such as instruction or fitness.
“We’re creating keepsake-type products that can stick with you for longer periods of times,” Adel said.
On the website side, another key change is improved engagement that helps drive consumers further down the proverbial funnel. Golfers aren’t just being told how to better enjoy the game or what the best products are, they’re able to communicate and transact through a new, more efficient pro shop commerce product. The early returns in that evolution have been encouraging, with ecommerce orders up 109% month-over-month in April.
“Lo and behold, people do purchase things that Golf.com recommends and that’s been really fun to see,” Mayo says.
“We’re not just listening to what the audience wants and reacting to that, but also surprising them — you haven’t really told us that you want this, but here you go,” she adds. “It’s not like people said they wanted a magazine that was heavier, thicker and more premium feeling, but once we supplied them with that the feedback has been tremendous. I have no doubt this next iteration of change will do the same thing.”
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I’ve spent more than two decades in journalism, writing about sports and its prominent intersection with the business world while covering just about every major sporting
I’ve spent more than two decades in journalism, writing about sports and its prominent intersection with the business world while covering just about every major sporting event: Super Bowls, the World Series, the NBA and NHL Finals, the Olympics and golf’s major championships. I’ve played video games with NFL stars, golf in the shadow of the Great Wall in China and dug into the batter’s box at Yankee Stadium. My passion is golf, which has led me to drive 20 straight hours to make a tee time in Florida, crisscross the country to play two U.S. Open venues in consecutive days on opposite coasts, and travel to China to play Pine Valley since I’ve never teed it up at the celebrated one in New Jersey, despite spending my entire life in the state. I’m fortunate enough to be immersed in golf as editorial director for the National Golf Foundation, the industry’s leading provider of research (all the data that helps businesses in golf succeed). I still live in the Northeast, where I’m doing my part to grow the game of golf with my three kids, and am always looking to find someone in the world of sports with a compelling story or positive message. Know a person or company like that? I’d love to hear about it. Let me know by dropping me an email ([email protected]) or reach me on Twitter at @ematuszewski.