As things are winding down for many golfers around the country, Topgolf is just starting to heat up.
The driving range entertainment facility’s executive chair Erik Anderson was the featured interview at Tuesday’s Octagon Sports Marketing Symposium in New York and spoke glowingly about the growth and exposure Topgolf has accomplished and will continue to enjoy by rounding out 2018 in style.
“You should expect to see Topgolf where ever you see people coming together,” he said, according to Sports Business Journal. “Topgolf is really an idea, and it’s about community.”
That community will be growing in 50 markets by year-end, Anderson said, with conversations taking place around an IPO in the coming months.
“We are a candidate to go public for sure. It would be silly to say otherwise. We’re probably an interesting public company, like Starbucks was given how people connect with us.”
Anderson also propped up the clientele that consistently engages wherever a Topgolf is located. Anderson said that roughly half of Topgolf’s patrons were not active golfers when they had their first foray into the driving range-meets-bowling alley, but they have taken down a barrier to entry that has been historically difficult to overcome.
“The big idea for us was take out a lot of the barriers of golf, such as around time, cost and skill, and make it about fun and community,” Anderson said.
As for competitors such as Drive Shack, which has financial backing from TaylorMade Golf, Anderson said he is not as worried about a direct competitor as he is about other options that could steal his clientele’s attention, whether they be golf-related or not.
“I really spend my time thinking about the attention economy,” he said. “We’re competing for attention. All the things I worry about around competition are about what people are doing with their time, and my biggest focus is that.”
So far, so good.
