Episode 81: Ryan Ewers of Supreme Golf

Ryan Ewers, co-founder of Supreme Golf, joins Sean Melia to discuss the evolution of the company, the impact of COVID-19 on golf pricing, and consumer preferences in the golf industry. 
They explore tee-time pricing trends across the U.S., the importance of value and convenience for golfers, and the rise of membership programs. Ryan shares insights on the global golf market and the future of golf pricing.

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Transcript

Sean Melia
I want to welcome in Ryan Ewers of Supreme Golf. Thanks for joining us today.

Ryan Ewers 
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Sean Melia 
You have a very important role in the world of golf, helping people get to the first tee and find tee times. And I thought we could just kind of jump in with the simple, like, tell us a little bit about Supreme Golf. What made you start the company? And just give us kind of an overview of what you do. And then we're gonna get into some nitty gritty about, you know, tee times and prices and some trends that you have seen in your time in the golf industry.

Ryan Ewers 
I appreciate that. So Supreme Golf, we're actually on both sides of the industry. So we work direct with golf courses on a number of things, including marketing and marketing of tee times. We also have membership software that allows courses to run public golf memberships at their facility that integrates with their tee sheet and point of sale. And then we have a consulting arm of our business where we help price tee-times for golf courses all the way down to helping on the retail side and buying equipment and pro shop goods at a discount from manufacturers.

On the other side of our business is the consumer marketplace, and that's Supreme Golf. We work with other brands, including Barstool Sports and CBS Sports. We've got a relationship with the Weather Channel. So we're just trying to sell as many tee times as we possibly can and put golf course inventory in front of as many consumers as we possibly can.

We actually have the world's largest selection of online inventory from which consumers can search and ultimately book. And the way we do that is through aggregation. So we aggregate big brands like Golf Now, which I'm sure you're familiar with. So we aggregate their inventory and then we also work with small brands. I'm sitting here in the DFW, the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex right now. We have a smaller company called Golf North Texas that works with a couple dozen golf courses locally and we aggregate that inventory as well.

And then we list courses working directly with their tee sheets and we allow courses to list their inventory at no cost on Supreme Golf. And that's ultimately what gives us the largest selection. And to your question of why did we, why do we do this? It's simply because, you know, our goal again is to connect as many golfers to golf courses as we can. And we feel like having the best selection in the industry, having a great user experience and great customer support are critical in ultimately fulfilling that mission.

Sean Melia 
That's a lot of a lot of you got your hands on a lot of things within the golf industry. Where did Supreme Golf start? What was the nugget of the idea? What made you start this company? 

Ryan Ewers
Yeah, so we launched in 2011, right? And so me and my co-founder, and I'll be honest with you, we failed many times over several years. We had a national radio show where Hank Haney was the host on SiriusXM. We had a daily deal site that was golf-specific. We even had a golf expo. And just trying to find a niche in the marketplace, and you know one evening I'm actually just sitting in bed with my laptop and I'm looking at all these different providers and thinking Well, maybe we just need to become an affiliate of one of these we have some traction on our website. Maybe it's a way for us to monetize it, and all these different providers these different third-party marketplaces had different inventory, and it's not like it's a new concept. I mean kayak existed at the time. Travago existed at the time, and just sitting here going. my god, It's like right in front of right in front of our face. There is no complete inventory in golf and that was about 2014 literally the next day my co-founder and myself we sat down and like let's get after this. Let's go hire a developer, a CTO and that started it and so for the last nine years I'd say we found our niche and fortunately for us we've been able to grow the marketplace.

Sean Melia 
Golf's changed a lot in that decade to 13 years.

Ryan Ewers 
It has for sure, and you know we've been fortunate along the way in a lot of respects, a lot of great partnerships, we work with lot of great golf courses and golf course operators and multi-course operators but it's changed a lot in the last 13 years for sure.

Sean Melia 
Yeah. What's your connection to golf? Did you grow up playing? Is this a later-in-life thing? You're not old. You're younger than I am.

Ryan Ewers 
Yeah, I don't know about that, we'll see. So I grew up, I did grow up playing golf, but I'm not, I wasn't a collegiate golfer. I didn't play on any tour, mini tour, anything like that. But I do love the game of golf and I wish I were better.

I used to be better in my prior life. I was a single-digit handicap. That's about as good as I got. But nowadays, I'm a bogey golfer. But like most of us that work here at Supreme, I mean, we obviously love the game of golf, and I was drawn to it. And it just kind of became trying to solve problems within the industry that we thought existed and that's ultimately what we've tried to do.

Sean Melia 
Yeah, golf can swallow you whole for sure and just get into getting your blood pretty quickly, no matter what it is, whether it's your competitor or you want to get in the business side of it or a little bit of both. And, I think the beauty of it is, you don't have to play college golf or be a great golfer to be part of  the game and impact other people, and bring the game to other people, Which I think is pretty great. I don't know if that's always the case with other sports. That's what makes golf so unique, I think.

Ryan Ewers 
I agree completely.

Sean Melia 
So one of the big things I kind of wanted to talk to you about today as I live in Massachusetts and spend a lot of time looking for tee times, spend a lot of time kind of trying to figure out what's a good value. and you have come up with and shared the average price of a tee time across the country in each state.

It was interesting just to look at the numbers and the range of prices and, then looking at Massachusetts and the surrounding States in New England, just to give people kind of like a pretty quick glimpse. And you can see this on their website, and I'll stick it in the show notes, but you know, Alaska is $14 is the lowest, it's the lowest edge of the price. And then you've got Nevada at the other end of 143, which was not a surprise. Hawaii is the second most expensive, but even if you just take those two outliers away at 143 and $108,  Colorado's $80. So, it's a $66 range in this average tee time market. And I just wonder as you kind of looked through these numbers and pulled them together with all the information you have, was there anything that surprised you from this, whether that be a good surprise or a bad surprise or just strictly a surprise?

Ryan Ewers 
You know, not really because this is something that we've monitored and tracked for a long time, right? And I'm sure we'll get into this later and probably discuss how pricing has changed over the last several years and what we're seeing there. Nothing really surprises me. I think the Nevada rate coming in that high maybe was a little surprising only because it's seasonal in Nevada or in any desert. In Arizona, the rates for the same course could be a couple hundred dollars in their peak season, which is winter for me and winter for you, but then drop dramatically to 50 bucks for the same facility, but it's 120 degrees outside, right? And so to see Nevada holding that high, I mean, it's just such a tourist destination with Vegas. Those prices are gonna stay high most of the year. So that may have surprised me a little bit with this subset of data, but by and large, this is kind of the way we see it year in, year out really.

Sean Melia 
Yeah, so you mentioned kind of the swings in prices. How does that come into play when someone's looking at these average prices? Are you pulling from a specific time of year? Are you kind of creating an average for a course that's in Scottsdale and then throw it in? That's part of the mix. I'm not a data guy, so that's a part for me that seems interesting.

Ryan Ewers 
Yeah, so we looked at over 5 million tee times for this particular subset of data from multiple seasons, right? So we tried to be fair across the board. I mean, the Alaska rate at $14, that's just a population issue, probably, and just the number of golfers and demand. But yeah, so we try to be fair when we do this and look at these numbers and bring in both the on-season and the off-season for those that are open 10 to 12 months a year with seasonality because, for example, you're up in Boston, right? Your courses will close mid-October, November through the end of March, sometimes later if you have a late snowfall, right? And so we try to be fair when looking at the data and look at all seasons.

Sean Melia 
Are there courses that don't end up on this kind of, like where do you draw the line for a public golf course?

Ryan Ewers 
Yeah, so that's a great question because it this data is coming directly from courses that we have a relationship with so either through a third party like our golf now relationship, for example, or they're listing direct with us through their tee sheet and point of sale. 

So you are going to have those resort courses, you know, Pinehurst, Pebble Beach come to mind that, you know, they're not listing anywhere online or they have to be a stay and play to get to play the facility. But then on the opposite end of that, you also have courses that are in retirement communities or different types of communities that may not be selling online because they're sustained by that community environment. They technically are open to the public, but they get so much play from that community that they're not online either. Or in many cases, they might not even have an electronic tee sheet. They're still operating off of a paper tee sheet, and I can't list them even if I wanted to.

Sean Melia 
OK, that's a good piece to know.That feels like it would probably, most likely, if those were on there, would drag up those averages a touch, because those are the ones that are generally a little bit more money. So if you're looking at, I think, off the top of Massachusetts is like in the mid-40s.

Maybe if you threw in a couple that aren't listed with you or in North Carolina, if you're thinking about Pinehurst, it's it might drag up the price a little bit. But when you're looking at 5 million tee times, it's probably not going to pull it up that much. You've got a pretty good average as far as that number.

Ryan Ewers 
That's fair, yeah.

Sean Melia 
Let's talk about pricing over the years. you've been in this game for 10 years now, and you mentioned when you're talking about the surprises, you've been pulling these numbers and looking at these numbers. So nothing really surprises you. The quick answer is they're going up. But what are the trends that you're seeing maybe in different regions of the country as far as prices and demand in the last decade? And obviously, half of that is post-COVID almost now, which is kind of crazy to think about.

Ryan Ewers 
That is crazy to think about. But yeah, so it's been a different world post-COVID, certainly pre-COVID, right?

We can talk about that. I think it's been well documented, right? COVID led to millions of new golfers coming into our industry, which is great. So we had a massive increase in demand. The golfers that were already in the industry were playing more. We have inflation impacting pricing. And if you look at over the last four years, cumulatively speaking, it's been about a 15 % increase in pricing for those courses work with us over that four year period. 

Prior to that, there were a lot of years where the pricing was stagnant or, in some states, would even be going down a little bit, but that's just economics 101, right? I mean, we had an oversupply of inventory and less demand pre-COVID and post-COVID. The demand has been substantial. And for Supreme, you know, for our market place. I continue to see record growth. 

We continue to grow our marketplace, but it's a little different for us than it is a local golf facility in that we're worldwide, we're national, we're adding new courses every week to our platform. We're adding new golfers. The golfers we've already acquired, they're repeating and they're buying more golf. So it's easier for us to continue to grow year over year. 

And I think what's really interesting is a lot of these multi-course operators we work with, a lot of these single course operators and owners that we work with, they're starting to say they're seeing some cracks in that demand. Over the last, let's call it six months now. It's not that they're not growing because I think that as a whole the industry continues to grow, but not at the same pace they were the prior six to 12 months.

Sean Melia 
Yeah, for sure. mean, even up here in Massachusetts. So I'm currently trying to play every golf course in the state. Since COVID I started this little project, and I've played 135 and I think looking back now there's like four that have closed since I've played them. And then a few are also now turning into like nine whole courses that have development on them. 

It seems like it's because courses now have an opportunity to maybe make a little bit of money or families are seeing the value of their courses as high as it's going to be. And it's a family owned business. That's kind of another trend that I'm noticing.What do you see looking forward now, like just in your experience, like the trend going forward are prices, you said 15 % in the last four years. that doesn't seem sustainable. What do you see for the next five years as far as tee times and rates?

Ryan Ewers 

For sure. I don't think you'll continue to see that level of rate increase, right? And in fact, a shameless plug, a few months ago we launched something called the Supreme Golf Club, which is a membership program for our users. But what it really does is it allows golf courses that are seeing those cracks in demand to provide some pricing benefits or a perks. Possibly that perk being range balls every round you book or free beer, some free lunch. It’s really for the course to promote those underutilized tee times, the areas where the demand is softening, because Saturday morning they're still gonna sell, right? Sunday morning they're still gonna sell. But there are days when the demand is softening. And so this program allows the golf course to get those offers in front of our members. 

Then from a consumer standpoint you know, for $9.99 a month, $99 a year, you get access to these course benefits, you get booking fee credit at Supreme Golf, and you get access to a vendor partner program where, you know, there are exclusive discounts at TaylorMade, at Sun Ice, at Vice Golf, at Flag and Anthem, I mean, some really cool brands that we've put a part of this program. And so it's really, again, just all to try to create that marriage between golfer and golf course and provide value for both sides.

Sean Melia 
Yeah, I've noticed too around here and I think people are seeing it maybe in other parts of the country. There's public courses that kind of provide early access to certain tee times, you know, if you pay a little bit and become a member, you can book seven days in advance and the rest of the public can book five days. You get the 48 hour window where you can get that Saturday at 6:30 am tee time. 

There are also there are some places that are even just saying you can book the seven o'clock on Saturday for the summer or for the season. And that's your tee time. So there's definitely ways that clubs are trying to find it. It sounds like you're trying to give people some value as they're fighting for tee times. I mean,it can be hard to get a tee time at popular golf courses these days still, even with those cracks.

Ryan Ewers 
Yeah, well, you're exactly right. That membership you're talking about where you're paying for early access, we have many clubs that are leveraging our membership software and doing just that. It might not even be a discount that you get as a member. You're just buying access—you're buying those additional days. And that's been profitable for many facilities.

Sean Melia 
Yeah. Within these average ranges, I'm curious if you have a sense of, people typically paying for and buying rounds through your siteat courses that fall above the average? Is there any trend there, or is it catch as catch can, and people are just really looking for tee times? Because I think that's also an interesting part of having an average price and what people are looking for when they go to play golf.

Ryan Ewers 
Yeah, it's nationally, it's the latter.

I mean, we fall pretty close to that average range, right? So I think what we published was averaged by state. If you look nationally, it's like 50, a little over $56 is the national average for this subset of data. And the same at the same time and the same data, as far as rounds that are purchased by Supreme golfers, it's like just over 54. So it's a little less for sure, but there's no great story behind that, right? We're right in that average range of what they're pricing them at.

Sean Melia 
Cool. Do you have any sense through surveys or anything, what people do value when it comes to picking a course or why they're picking certain places to play?

Ryan Ewers 
For sure, we survey our customers all the time, right? We try to learn as much as we can about their buying habits. And there are really three things that always come to the top when we do these types of surveys. And number one, without a doubt, is value, right? They want value. But value doesn't always mean lower prices, right? 

You and I, we could go pay $350, $400 or more dollars to play a round of golf. And if it's the nicest golf course we've ever played, when we're walking off the 18th green, we're gonna sit here and go, that was incredible and we're gonna feel like there was value in that, right? 

Regardless if we spent hundreds of dollars, there's value in that because it was such a great facility. And then on the other end of that, you could go play a $35 local municipal course that's well maintained, the bunkers are good, the greens are good, the fairways are good, the staff was friendly, and you walk off of there thinking, you know, I would have paid $70 for that experience, or I've paid 70 for worse experiences.

And there's value in that as well, right? So without a doubt, number one is value. 

Number two is typically convenience. A lot of people golf whenever they're traveling, and a lot of people take golf-specific travel trips. But the majority of the rounds we play, like you say, you're playing 135 courses in your neck of the woods. Majority of the rounds we're playing are convenient to us, right? 

Texas, we're a little more spread out, right? So I'm probably willing to drive a little farther than other markets. 

And then the last one is price. right? Everybody, even though, you know, they rank value high, price is important and, you know, nobody wants to over pay. Things are expensive right now. So they want to try to save where they can save.

Sean Melia 
Yeah, it's hard to pull sometimes the price and the value. Those two things for a lot of people are synonymous. And it's interesting that you kind of, they're two different things just because the value speaks to the experience that you have and maybe the conditions of the golf course and.

And even the convenience of just as 10 minutes down the road or am I driving an hour and a half to go play a place that costs a little bit more money, and I'm driving home wondering what just happened that wasn't a great value for the day. 

I think some people just will go on, I'll do this sometimes, I'm just looking at how much am I paying to play golf today because I paid a bunch last week or I played a couple of places in the last month that are a little bit pricier, I've got to find like a $30 spot to play today. 

How about nine holes versus 18 holes? Is there any trend or anything in that respect right now for folks?

Ryan Ewers 
Yeah, that's that's an interesting question. 

So let me give you some context as far as courses that are on supreme golf The vast majority are only offering 18 hole rates, right? So I do want to put that out there before we talk about that Because as a percentage of our overall sales, nine-hole rates is pretty small.

With that being said, I will say an interesting thing that we saw post-COVID, certainly for the first two years post-COVID, was we had a 3X increase in the total number of nine whole rounds that were booked. prior to the two years prior. 

Now, obviously the reason is I think everybody was working, more people were working from home or if not everybody was working from home. And we actually ran an analysis on the time of day they were booked. And so to any potential employers watching, it was actually quite late in the afternoon or early evening. wasn't like one o'clock by and large, you know, they were mostly into the day. 

It was one of the few things you could do at that time and get outside. And so it was interesting that we saw such a spike in those nine whole rates. Now, I will say that's normalized a bit in the last couple of years versus the first two years after COVID, if you will. But it was an interesting stat anyway.

Sean Melia 
Yeah, for sure. mean, I can speak from experience. There's a nine-hole golf course that’s 15 minutes away just outside the city. And I would book the very last tee time and I would go play like four holes with my wife at sunset. Paying for a nine-hole rate that's like $26 for nine, you're like, I'll go play four holes. Maybe we get five in; it'll be dark, but we got outside, we got out of the city for an hour and a half. 

That price just feels more palatable when you're only playing nine holes. So I'm sure there's a bunch of people who've kind of felt that way, too. If I'm not going to get nine holes in, at least I'm only paying for nine holes versus putting down for 18. 

You mentioned that this is not just a United States company as far as what you're offering to people and finding tee times.

As you look globally, know the R&A just released that more people are actually playing golf globally than ever before. And it seems like people are coming over from Topgolf and like those types of things might be actually losing people, but they're, looks like they're actually transitioning to Greengrass golf. So just as far as what, what trends are you seeing internationally? What countries are kind the most popular as far as what you see?

Ryan Ewers 
Yeah, so United States obviously is number one, Canada, Mexico are two and three for us. But to be fair, we have such a long runway in North America that the overwhelming majority of what we spend in our marketing efforts go to North America. 

Now, we are global. We do have inventory in 31 countries right now. We have some great providers overseas, Golf Now being one, Golf Spain, Greenfeet 365, all throughout Europe and Asia. So we do sell inventory, but primarily for us, we're selling Americans inventory when they're traveling is what we're seeing. 

We don't have a huge presence in Europe or in Asia yet, simply because we've got work to do here, right? We've got a lot of work to do here, so we're staying focused on North America.

Sean Melia 
Got it. Got it. So if you're, if you're traveling, it's a good way to maybe find a place. And if you're traveling within the country, obviously Supreme golf is a great way to find new golf courses, which in whatever state you're going to, or maybe a new country as well.

Ryan Ewers 
100 per cent.

Sean Melia 
What have I left on the bone here as far as things that you think are interesting to the topic of tee times and the rates and where people can kind of maybe find some value as far as what they're looking for?

Ryan Ewers 
Yeah, well, I think, I think, you know, the biggest takeaways here are, I think these drastic increases in pricing are, are going to slow a little bit, right? Just from what we're seeing and what we're hearing. You're seeing it as you played your 135 courses and look back, right. 

Some of them are closed, so I think we're going to start to see that soften a little bit, which is good for the game of golf. Maybe not great for golf courses, but good for golfers.

And I think that as that happens, value is kind of in the eye of the beholder, right? Like I said earlier, a $30 rate could be valuable to you. You felt good about that. You needed a lower price. You may have a spot locally that the experience is always nice. Maybe it's not the best course in the world, but the experience is always nice. So I think long term, that's what we're looking at. Prices are going to slow down. The growth, it's going to slow down a little bit. And I think that's going to be good for the golfer.

Sean Melia 
Yeah, you just sparked another, just another thought within that, what are people looking for? That idea of consistency too, which kind of goes with value. If I go to a place in May, will I get the same kind of feeling if I show up again in August? Will it roughly feel the same? Will the golf course still be in good condition? 

Having that consistency in a golf course is another piece of the value part that I think sometimes gets lost if you go play a place once. But those people who are going back or maybe playing a place three, four, five times a year and knowing they’re going to get the same kind of experience, it's like going to a restaurant. You want to know you can order the same dish each time. It's going to be the same or the same cocktail or whatever and the places that maybe don't quite hit the note every time are sometimes the places that struggle.

Ryan Ewers 
That's right. And that's where the good courses excel and the good operators, right? If they can keep that offering consistent and keep that experience great year in, year out, all year long, I mean, they're going to get that repeat business. And even golfers that stop with Supreme, where we have thousands of courses that they can pick from, will continue to go back, and we see it in our data.

They continue to go back to the same course over and over, even though they continue to book with us because some of these courses do it well. They do it right.

Sean Melia 
Do you capture anything about courses? Is there a rating system? Is there anything within Supreme Golf that people can have a sense of maybe what they're getting?

Ryan Ewers 
Sure, we aggregate reviews as well, right, which is great. So it's not just reviews that we're getting from Supreme or Barstool; it's reviews we're getting from Golf Advisor. So, we bring all of that in to give the user a complete picture of the ranking system. And then we also have what we call the Barstool Best, for example, where it focuses, you know, more specifically on the last 18 months because a lot of times you can have reviews for 10 years; you could have reviews that really drag down that overall average that were posted seven years ago. They've completely redone the course and so we want to make it fair for the golf course as well so that you're not just sitting there going, it's a three-star course, but in the last 18 months, it's four and a half stars, right? And so that can really help the purchasing process for our golfers.

Sean Melia 
Yeah, that's amazing. That's one of those things I just struggle with as with what I'm trying to do is I've played places like three or four years ago and I tell there's places I really like that I played four years ago. I don't know if it's still in good shape. I don't know if it's the same place it was four years ago. It's important to try to have some sort of snapshot of real-time quality of a golf course, for sure. 

Well, Ryan, was really great to chat with you. I know I asked for about 40, 45 minutes. I want to honor your time. You've got hot weather over there out there in Dallas. I hope you're managing to stay cool.

Ryan Ewers
Certainly, sir. We're trying. We're trying. It's not the high switch fees you're getting, but that's okay. We'll get there.

Sean Melia
Yes.

Sean Melia
Give us just, know, so people can find Supreme Golf if they're interested in looking at tee times and maybe becoming a member. Where else can they find socials or any other places that they can kind of find you and connect.

Ryan Ewers 
Yeah, so supremegolf.com, can download our apps, iOS, Android, just search for Supreme Golf. We're on Twitter, X, Instagram. So we've got Supreme Golf, we're everywhere, Facebook. But yeah, download the app. That's in my opinion the best experience. So go download the app.

The UX is great; I think you'll enjoy it. And as I said, we've got a greater selection than any other marketplace in the world. So why shop anywhere else?

Sean Melia 
Yeah, go find a new golf course and enjoy the as the as the days get later here in the fall in the Northeast. Go find some new golf courses to play on Supreme Golf.

Ryan Ewers 
There you go. Love it.

Sean Melia 
Yeah. Thanks, Ryan. Appreciate your time. This was fun.

Ryan Ewers 
Likewise. Thank you, Sean. Appreciate it.