On the surface, golf clubs are asset-rich businesses.
They own land; have loyal members; attract visitors; and operate in a sport enjoying somewhat of a post-pandemic boom.
However, according to Rob Corcoran, co-founder and director of The Revenue Club, many clubs still leave significant revenue on the table because pricing, marketing and data aren’t joined up.
“We generate additional revenue for golf courses through their online channels,” Corcoran explains.
“Pretty much every golf course in the country has decent software and digital tools available to them – they just don’t really use them with a commercial focus.”
Founded in 2017, The Revenue Club works with golf clubs across the UK to optimise pricing, drive demand through digital marketing and use data to guide commercial decisions.
Today, the business supports around 275 courses, with plans to pass 300 by spring and reach 400 by the end of the year.
A rogue path
Corcoran’s route into the business was anything but a traditional one.
He began his career in golf and leisure marketing in the early 2000s, working at Golfbreaks.com before moving into sales and marketing roles in the travel sector.
In 2004, he took a very different path, joining the Royal Navy as a warfare officer.
“I was a navigating officer, driving minehunters and later a destroyer,” he tells BusinessCloud.
“The responsibility for safe navigation, and manoeuvring the ship in warfighting scenarios rested with me.”
His naval career spanned seven years and included intelligence work alongside the Royal Marines during the early stages of the Arab Spring – an experience he says shaped his capacity for pressure, decision-making and leadership.
When he left the Navy in 2011, Corcoran returned to the golf industry, joining Teeofftimes.co.uk (now part of Golfbreaks.com).
Over five years, he progressed from account manager to account director, working closely with many clubs as the idea for his own business started to form.
“That’s where Chris [Knight, co-founder] and I really saw the opportunity,” he says.
“The clubs that actively adjusted their pricing based on demand were always the top performers.
“But most clubs just didn’t have the time, confidence or understanding to do it themselves.”
Dynamic pricing
At the heart of the firm’s model is dynamic pricing – adjusting green fee prices based on demand, time, weather, competition and seasonality.
He says: “Most clubs set prices at the start of the year and then leave them.
“But demand changes constantly – summer weekend mornings are high demand, wet weekday afternoons aren’t.
“You have to be adaptable.”
There are also regional nuances, even in the UK.
Courses around Manchester, for example, often struggle in winter due to conditions, while links courses in North Wales thrive, allowing prices to increase rather than fall.
Last summer offered a perfect case study and was a blossoming one for the business.
“The weather was incredible, McIlroy won the Masters and then you had the Ryder Cup at the end of the season,” he recalls.
“If you undercooked your rates during that period, you missed out on revenue.”
Marketing that actually converts
Corcoran explains that many clubs also struggle with visibility and digital marketing.
“You can have the perfect pricing structure, but if no one’s finding you online, it won’t matter,” he says.
Over time, The Revenue Club expanded into email marketing, social media and paid search.
Today, the company communicates with around 400,000 golfers every fortnight on behalf of its clients.
He continues: “That combination of pricing and marketing is what really supercharges sales.
“There are lots of marketing agencies out there, but none of them understand how critical pricing is in golf.”
Data over instinct
A big differentiator is The Revenue Club’s in-house reporting suite, which Corcoran describes as the largest collection of visitor golf data in the UK.
“In the last 12 months, we’ve logged around £65 million worth of visitor green fee sales,” he says.
“It helps us to show clubs what’s working, what isn’t and where opportunities exist.
“Managers love it because it’s not anecdotal.
“We can say: ‘the market is up 25%, you’re up 10%, here’s why and here’s what to do about it’.”
Professionalising sales with CRM
For larger or more commercially ambitious venues, The Revenue Club offers an enhanced service built around HubSpot, effectively creating a blueprint for professional sales and marketing operations in golf.
“We’ve professionalised CRM in golf clubs,” Corcoran says.
“Membership sales, golf days, corporate bookings – all of it integrated.”
The approach is already being used by multi-site operators such as Get Golfing and Crown Golf, helping venues move away from manual processes.
A remote team
The Revenue Club now employs 18 people, operating fully remotely, with regional account managers supporting clubs nationwide.
Growth has increasingly become inbound and the company has seen clubs coming to it now, rather than the other way around.
“We hit a tipping point last year,” Corcoran says.
“Once you reach around 13% market penetration, the business starts to self-generate.”
The focus remains the UK and Ireland for now, with Scotland and Ireland representing growth opportunities.
Longer-term, Corcoran sees adjacent markets, including driving ranges, padel and indoor simulators, as more attractive than an immediate leap into a market such as the US or Australia.
He explains: “The principles are the same – pricing, marketing, reporting.
There’s no rush, because there’s still huge opportunity right here.”
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ASCEND
As the business scaled, Corcoran became increasingly aware of what he didn’t know.
That drove his decision to join GM Business Growth Hub’s ASCEND Scale Up Programme.
“The more you find out, the more you realise you don’t know,” he says.
“Myself and Chris feel as though we have the sales and marketing side of things covered, but I wanted to make sure that I had that full suite of corporate knowledge that I need across all functions.
“The programme is helping to build knowledge in things like legal responsibilities, finance, technology.
“That’s the kind of thing that keeps you awake at night when you’re running your own business.
“I travel up from Shrewsbury but I very easily see the benefits that I certainly wouldn’t have known about or had an awareness of had I not done the programme.
“There’s so many different elements of it which I’m taking away that will really benefit the company overall.”
Building on AI
The business also uses AI behind the scenes, both to personalise marketing at scale and to help make sense of the huge volumes of data it works with.
Corcoran says it plays a big part in flagging where clubs could be doing more, but a human is still at the end of the process.
“Our team still makes the final decisions,” he says.
“But AI helps us identify where revenue opportunities are being missed.”
With strong retention – attrition was just 4% last year, says Corcoran – and a growing client base, the co-founder believes the model is working.
“Golf clubs don’t lack demand,” he says.
“They just need the tools, data and confidence to realise their full potential.”