Golf in a financial hole

Half of the clubs have to turn over every euro twice

Upper Austrian Golf President Karl Dauerböck.(Bild: Karl Dauerböck)

Even though golf has recently generated an annual worldwide turnover of 77 billion euros: Away from the local greens, clubs, especially in Upper Austria, are often in the red . . .  

Six hundred times one thousand six hundred euros!

Thumb times pi is the budget projection in Austrian golf that is supposed to ensure that a club is in the black off the green at the end of a season. If the number of members and/or membership fees are lower, the club is usually in the red. . .

Like the GC Schärding, which filed for bankruptcy this week. Which the Traunsee-Kirchham Golf Club also had to do last summer. And even though the latter has since celebrated its resurrection as GC Traunsee Almtal, it is not only these two cases that underline the fact that golf courses in this country often have 20 rather than just 18 holes, as the clubhouse is often not only the so-called "19th hole", but also a financial one.

Filing for bankruptcy came as no surprise
"Half of all clubs in Upper Austria have to turn over every euro twice," says Golf Provincial President Karl Dauerböck. He is personally not surprised by the bankruptcy of GC Schärding, nor by the generally difficult local economic situation in a sport that has a worldwide turnover of 77 billion euros per year.

The problem for us in Upper Austria is that, with 28 clubs, we have the highest density of golf clubs in Austria.

OÖ-Landespräsident Karl Dauerböck

"The problem for us in Upper Austria is that, with 28 clubs, we have the highest density of golf clubs in Austria. This means that members and fees are spread across too many clubs," explains Dauerböck, who sees the cause of this problem in the fact that there was a golf course construction boom in the Land ob der Enns around 30 years ago.

Huge oversupply 
"Conversely, we have also lost a quarter of all players across Austria in the last 20 years - which has exacerbated the oversupply," says Dauerböck. Which in turn caused membership fees to fall. However, Dauerböck knows: "In Austria, a golf club needs around 600 full members to survive, who should pay no less than 1,600 euros a year."