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The Golf Business and Meet The Editor

Welcome to The Golf Business – a monthly publication that’s delivered to approximately 97 percent of all the golf clubs in the UK.

Published by HDID Media, The Golf Business is Britain’s biggest business to business golf club magazine and each issue profiles at least one golf club manager, one PGA professional, one course manager and one golf club.

In addition, the chief executives of The PGA, the European Tour, England Golf, Scottish Golf and Wales Golf all have regular exclusive columns in the magazine. And each month we provide legal advice from the National Golf Clubs’ Advisory Association on some of the complex issues that are pertinent to golf club managers. Plus, Craig Tracey MP, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Golf Group, is a regular contributor, and we have a specialist women’s golf and golf travel writer, Sarah Forrest, who provides expert commentary.

Online, this website, with more than 50,000 unique visitors each month, is far and away the leading UK B2B website in the golf industry, and on social media – Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook The Golf Business has more than 35,000 followers, nearly ten times as many as our next competitor, collectively generating well over a million impressions every month.

On LinkedIn, the social network in which hundreds of golf club managers discuss the industry every day, The Golf Business has more than 20,000 followers, more than every golf governing body in the world.

During events of major consequences for the industry, readers turn to The Golf Business to be kept informed. For example, during the two-month coronavirus pandemic lockdown in 2020, when golf courses closed, this website attracted more than four million page views.

From Google Analytics in mid-late May 2020 on the previous two months of activity on this website: Several stories generated more than 100,000 page views.

 

The Golf Business’s Twitter analytics for the previous 28 days in mid-late May 2020: More than 730,000 impressions

 

The Golf Business’s LinkedIn analytics for the previous 30 days in mid-late May 2020: More than 350,000 impressions

The Golf Business is aimed primarily at those running golf clubs – managers, owners, committee members, the head professional, the course manager and so on – to discuss industry trends, threats and opportunities, while showcasing best practice revenue and membership generating examples in golf clubs.

We have, for instance, reported on numerous clubs that have increased membership levels following, for example, innovative marketing campaigns, administration restructuring, reciprocal membership schemes or from offering free coaching to beginners.

The website, meanwhile, provides up-to-date news stories and in-depth features about what is going on in the industry in a bid to inform the marketplace of any important developments, as well as job vacancies.

We hope you will find The Golf Business to be a vital source of information to help you grow your club – and the game in general.

 

Meet the editor – Alistair Dunsmuir

Having graduated from the University of Southampton with a 2:1 degree in Modern History and Politics with Philosophy in the 1990s, Alistair undertook postgraduate NCTJ training and, as a freelance journalist, saw a number of his articles printed in publications such as the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and Red Pepper. In 2000 he was appointed as editor of Local Government News and over the next three years interviewed the likes of Ken Livingstone, Mo Mowlam and Charles Kennedy. It was during this period that he first became involved with golf; writing about the management of municipal golf courses.

In 2003 he moved to financial institution Aon as a senior corporate journalist. Here, he reported on socio-economic trends, threats and opportunities, which was used to increase the revenue streams available to Aon and reduce costs for its clients.

In 2005 Alistair became only the eighth person to edit Golf Club Management, a magazine that had been running since 1935. In 2017 Union Press launched The Golf Business, which was acquired by HDID Media in 2022. Since 2005 he has worked with hundreds of golf club managers, professional golfers, industry suppliers and experts to report on trends, threats and opportunities to golf clubs.