What Do We Think About Tournaments?

2021 State of Disc Golf

Tournaments

 

One of the categories that I look forward to the most when it comes to looking at the survey results is that of tournament play. I’m always interested to see what tournaments people play, why people do or do not play, and what it would take for people to sign up for a tournament. I played my first tournament after playing disc golf for about a year. I was hooked! For me, it wasn’t so much for the competition as it was a social event that happened to revolve around disc golf.

Since then, I found that there are a lot of people who like tournaments, but a large number of people who have no interest in tournaments. For some, it’s the strict rules. For others, they are completely happy just hucking with friends in a casual round. There are cost issues, time issues, and travel issues, among the other reasons people don’t play. The survey covers a lot of those things, so let’s jump into the results.

Covid19

 

Once again, Covid19 had a huge impact on the tournament scene last year. Thankfully, it appears that we may have a nearly normal tournament year this year. (I am so looking forward to Worlds!) But, the survey results definitely reflect the dismal year we had last year. We’ll start with the question about whether or not we played in a tournament or other event last year. Here is what we found.

The survey question read, “Did you play in at least one disc golf tournament or event in 2020?”. Over half of us indicated that we did play in at least one event. There were a few tournaments that were played before Covid19 really affected things, a few at the end of the year, and a smattering of events throughout the year. That added up to a decent year for disc golf events. Not what we hoped for, but it could have been much worse. Here is a graph of the results:

 

 

To put things in perspective, here is a graph of the previous year’s tournament/event attendance. Attendance was down from 66% last year. I was expecting it to be a bigger drop.

 

 

Sanctioned Tournaments

 

Along with data about how many of us are playing competitively, it is also interesting to see what kind of tournaments people do play. Since the overall percentages were down for event attendance, it will be interesting to see if sanctioned versus non-sanctioned tournaments were affected more. A ‘sanctioned’ tournament is one that approved by the PDGA. There are additional requirements for the tournament, and PDGA rules are supposed to be enforced. Nearly 40% of the people who took the survey played in a sanctioned tournament last year. That is down 13% from last year. Here are the charts:

 

 

Of the people who played in a sanctioned tournament last year, 59% played in three or fewer tournaments. That is up significantly from 45% for 2019. Again, not surprising. Even with restrictions and cancellations, a very lucky 2% of us played in twenty or more tournaments last year! That was down 5% from the previous year.

 

 

Non-Sanctioned

 

When I checked out the non-sanctioned tournaments for last year it was apparent that something wasn’t right with the data. According to the survey, only 4% of us played in a non-sanctioned tournament last year. In 2019, over half of us played in non-sanctioned tournaments. Even with Covid19 throwing a wrench in our season, that 4% number couldn’t be right. I checked the raw data and it turns out that some of the results were missing for that question. I’ll see if the data can be recovered and post the info later.

Why Tournaments?

 

Now we know how many of us play in tournaments, let’s look at why we play. For most of us, there are multiple reasons we play. Nearly 25% of us like the competition. That is the number one reason. That leaves 75% of us that play for other reasons. It’s good to see that the next most popular answer is that we like to play tournaments for fun! Along the same lines is the number three answer, for social reasons. I’m surprised that category wasn’t higher because so many tournaments that I go to are like reunions. It’s always great to see our disc golf family again at tournaments. Here is a graph of reasons why we play:

 

 

Why We Don’t Play

 

On the flip side of that coin are the reasons why many of us don’t play tournaments. For 2020, you can probably guess the number one reason why people didn’t play. Yep, tournaments getting cancelled due to Covid19. The second most popular reason is that we don’t feel like we’re good enough to play. Nearly 20% of us chose that as one of the reasons. If you are one of those, I would recommend giving it a try. Play in a lower division and just relax and have fun. It is always more fun if you win something, but playing in a tournament helps you meet new people and gives you the tournament experience. Then the next one won’t feel quite as intimidating. Here are the results:

 

 

Tournament Persuasion

 

Looking at what things would motivate people to play, we see the number one answer is that people would play if they were better. That aligns with the previous graph results. The next most popular response is that of convenience. Finding tournaments on the days we can play, and at a location that is reasonably close would make a lot of people more inclined to play. Bigger player packs would also motivate a lot of people, nearly 40%. Here are the survey results:

 

 

Check back next week for more State of Disc Golf results!

How did Covid-19 Affect Disc Golf

2021 State of Disc Golf

How did Covid-19 Affect Disc Golf

One of the the things we included in this year’s survey was the thing that affected nearly everyone in the world: Covid-19. We wanted to see how the pandemic was affecting disc golf for everyone, since we’ve know how it’s affecting people’s lives in other ways. From a broad perspective, disc golf is one of the many sports and activities that are nearly perfect for the restrictions and guidelines that we witnessed during the past 12 months. Since the pandemic didn’t affect every region the same, and since local governments were allowed to write their own rules, to a degree (at least in the USA), we saw a variety of different restrictions that affected how we play disc golf. Let’s start with how much we played, then we can look at how Covid-19 affected that.

Let’s Play Disc Golf

We asked people how many rounds per month they played on average in 2020. Over half of us played between 5-14 rounds per month. That might sound a little low, but that is the average. If winter months bump that number down to 3-5 rounds, that bumps the summer months up to 16-18 round. That’s four or so rounds per week, which seems like a good average. Here are the numbers, broken down by the number of rounds:

Graph showing rounds of disc golf played ruing the covid boom

Covid Affecting Disc Golf Play

Now let’s throw Covid-19 into the mix and see how that affected how often we played. We asked “How did Covid-19 affect your options to play disc golf?” Since some areas closed down even outdoor facilities, many of us didn’t even have the option to play. In other areas it was business as usual. In fact, nearly a third of us played more casual rounds in 2020 than in recent years. According to survey results, about half of us played as many or more rounds than usual. There were a small number, about 14%, that indicated that they didn’t get to play some casual rounds because of Covid-19.

When it came to leagues, about 15% of us said they missed some leagues because of cancellations or closures. That was a surprising number for me because of all the leagues that were cancelled in our greater area. Even more surprising, even though a larger percentage, is the number of people who said didn’t get to play in some tournaments because of cancellations and closures. A little more than a third of us indicated that they had to miss a tournament. I would have thought that number would have been a lot higher.

Open or Closed Disc Golf Courses

One aspect affecting the number of rounds we played last year was whether or not the courses were even open. Nearly half of us weren’t able to play certain courses at times throughout the year due to closures. While others remained open all year. Here are the numbers:

Graphs showing courses shut down because of covid

Another option in the question about courses staying open or not was to indicate if you stayed home even though the courses were open. There were 767 people, or about 12% of the total respondents that indicated they chose to stay home. Some also said that courses around them were closed, but that they still stayed home. We should have phrased the question better to give a more accurate picture, but the number is still valid. I was curious about the makeup of the 767 people, so I cross referenced their age groups to see if the demographics were lopsided. The results were surprising. Here is a graph of the age groups who opted to stay home:

I would have thought the age based higher-risk groups would have had more people who would prefer to play alone, and not even on a course. But, the numbers look almost exactly like the graph of age groups from the first blog in this series. Here is the graph of the number of people who took the survey, by age groups:

Ages of surveyed disc golfres

That’s all for this week. Check out next week’s blog for more data, graphs, and information about the 2021 Disc Golf Survey. Check out previous posts here

Week 1 – Demographics: https://blog.infinitediscs.com/state-of-disc-golf-2021/

Week 2 – When did you start playing: https://blog.infinitediscs.com/when-did-you-start-playing/

 

When Did You Start Playing?

 

2021 State of Disc Golf:

How Long Have You Been Playing?

 

In last week’s blog we looked at the ages, gender, and where we live. This week we will look at when we started playing, and check out some other data related to when we started. We will also look at people who started recently, as in during the pandemic, and see what their motivation was to start. I wanted to explore some other questions, but I think they will fit in better with other blog subjects.

We all got introduced to the sport of disc golf at some point, and in some fashion. For me, I’m happy to say that I invented disc golf! Well, sort of. My brothers and I were tossing Frisbees around the yard in the mid 70’s and we came up with a cool game. We selected nine objects around my parent’s spacious yard, and our disc golf course was born. It wasn’t until decades later that we heard there was actually a sport similar to what we were doing, complete with formal baskets and discs. It wouldn’t be for a couple more years before we would get actual discs and play on a ‘real’ course. (The first real course we played was Creekside in Salt Lake City).

Finally Getting Real

 

Although it wasn’t for another many years until we considered ourselves disc golfers, the seed was planted and we were hooked. Today, when people ask how long I’ve been playing, I refer to my 2013 beginning, since that was when I got some ‘real’ discs and played a league round with our local club. In this blog post, we will check out when people say they started playing. Then we’ll focus on a couple years or year ranges that had the highest number of people start disc golf. And we’ll look at a couple other survey results.

When Did You Start Playing Disc Golf?

 

The question we asked in the survey was ‘When did you begin playing disc golf?’ The choices were individual years for 2011-2020, five-year blocks from 2001-2010, ten-year blocks from 1971-2000, and the final category was ‘Before 1970’. If you were lucky enough to be able to answer ‘Before 1970’, good on you! Also, congrats for playing so long, and presumably still playing! Also, what is your PDGA number?!

Here are the results for when people said they started playing:

 

 

As you can see, there are a few people among the respondents who started playing more than 50 years ago! Interestingly, the biggest group are the people who started just last year. If you look at the next biggest group, it may be surprising to see such a large number of people in the 2006-2010 range. But, that’s when the five-year span starts. Here is a chart with all of the years from 2001-2020 in five year increments. It’s more of what we should expect.

 

 

Even with the overall graph looking like what we would expect, the statistic that is the most impressive is how many people say they started last year. Factoring in the Covid19 shutdowns, leaving people with more time on their hands and fewer activities that could be done safely, the large increase is not surprising. The big increase in sales for Infinite for 2020 can be partially explained by the large number of disc golfers who already played the sport, but now wanted discs, putters, baskets, etc. for quarantine activities. Even so, the sport has been growing the last few years and while some organic growth is to be expected, such a large number of new players is partially because of Covid19. Let’s explore some of the reasons why people picked up disc golf last year.

 

What’s The Appeal With Disc Golf

 

According to the first graph above, 1205 people said they started playing last year. For that group of people, we asked a follow-up question to learn more about their motives. We asked, ‘Why Did You Start Playing In 2020?’ With nine responses to choose from, we know there would be multiple reasons why people started playing, so we gave them more than one choice. Of those 1205 people, 25% of them listed the pandemic as all or part of the reason they started playing. I was happy to see that over half of the people listed ‘Friend invited me’ as one of their reasons. I’ve seen many people get into the sport simply because someone invited them to play. Invite your friends! Here is a chart showing the percentage of reasons given by the newest members of our sport. It’s good to see ESPN, CBS, and Brodie Smith contributing to the growth!

Age/Starting Year

I wanted to see the ages of people who started playing last year, to see if there were something that might stand out in the data. To start, here is the chart from last week showing the age divisions among all of the survey participants. Below that is a graph of the ages of the 1205 people who started last year.

 

 

The new player demographic is pretty much spot on the average of all disc golfers in the survey. Out of curiosity, I checked out the ages of people who said they started in the 2006-2010, since that was the largest group of years in the survey outside of 2020. You would expect the ages to look different, since a group that started 10 years ago would statistically be older than a group that started last year. But, I would expect the graph to still have the same general highs and lows as the average. But, that is not the case. Here is a graph of the ages of people who started playing in 2006-2010:

 

 

30-Somethings

To be clear, those are the current age groups of the people who said they started in 2006-2010. The early-30’s group is still the largest, but the general shape of the graph doesn’t look like the overall graph. Most notably is the smaller ratio of the 41-50 group. Since I wasn’t playing then, I don’t have an idea why that age would look different. It might be worth breaking down all of the groups by when they started and the age group they belong to.

 

If you have any thoughts on these stats, be sure to comment below. Also, if you have any survey results that you would like to have explored, let me know if the comments. Check back next week for more results of the 2020 State of Disc Golf

Click here for last week’s blog.

 

 

State of Disc Golf 2021

2021 State of Disc Golf

Another year has rolled around and once again we are pouring over the results of our annual State of Disc Golf survey to see what disc golf looks like for the past year. What an interesting year! We are really curious to see how the pandemic affected the results of the survey. Our sport is one that can be played while maintaining social distancing, or even played/practiced solo. That caused a lot of growth for disc golf. We anticipate many of the survey results will reflect both the growth and the limitations put upon the sport because of Covid19. With that in mind, let’s get to the results!

2021 Disc Golf Demographics

We’ll start by looking at who took the survey. Where do you live? What is your gender? How old and how skilled are you? Basic demographics.

This year, 6,286 people took the survey. That is down a few hundred compared to the last couple of years. Here is a breakdown of the respondent’s genders.

Gender

 

Checking out the last few years of data, we see that the numbers are relatively consistent. Last year we did a last minute push to get more women to take the survey, so there was a small ‘spike’ in the numbers. But, the overall numbers for women in the sport remain a lot lower than most of us think it should be. In our local club, we only have a couple female players that will show up for leagues. There are quite a few wives/girlfriends of club members that play disc golf. They just don’t have a desire to play at leagues or competitively. Here are the last few years in a graph:

Where Do You Live?

Not surprisingly, an overwhelming number of people who took the survey live in the United States. Looking at the numbers for each state, we see Texas and California leading the country with the highest number of disc golfers that took the survey. Given their populations and their climates, it’s easy to see why they have so many. They don’t have the highest number per capita, but we’ll have to explore that information in another blog. Here are the numbers for each state.

Here are the top ten states, along with the top ten from two years ago:

 

 

 

Our sport is global, and so are our customers. Here is a chart that shows the numbers of respondents from each country/region outside of the USA. If without adding up all of the provinces in Canada, they lead the world in the number of people that responded to the survey.

 

 

How Old Are You?

 

Checking the survey results for the ages of people who took the survey, we find the largest number of people in the 30-35 age bracket are once the most popular age bracket. That has been the case in all of our survey results in the past. One thing you’ll see is the 36-40 age bracket dip down, only to shoot back up in the next age group. That is because the age brackets go from 5-year increments to 10-year increments at that point.

 

 

I checked out the 2015 survey results (here) to compare numbers and see if there are many differences in the age brackets between the two years. Here is a chart with both years’ data expressed in percentages of people who took the survey that year. I like that the older groups are trending upward for 2021, meaning people are playing later in life. I know that the younger age groups are the same or decreasing in percentage, but I don’t think that is a general trend in the sport. We’ll look at some other statistics that might help us understand those numbers better, and see why the older age groups are growing faster.

 

Are We Getting Better?

 

One of the questions we like to ask is how we rank our skills as a disc golfer. One way to come up with an answer is to look at what division we play in most of the time. That can vary, depending on how many tournaments we play. Often times playing in one division at a club league doesn’t mean we will play in the same division at a sanctioned tournament. From what I see, the level of competition is higher at a tournament, and it becomes necessary to play in a lower division. Not as a sandbagger, but as someone who couldn’t be competitive unless they play down. Once you move up to the pro ranks that is less of an issue. But for the rest of us, we might play a different division out of necessity. Even so, I feel like we have a good idea how we rank generally, and that is what we hope to find out with the survey. We asked people to rate their skills by choosing which of four divisions they consider themselves:

Beginner/Recreational, Intermediate, Advanced, or Professional

First, let’s look at this year’s results. Typical of past years, the majority of the respondents consider themselves Intermediate players. Here are the numbers:

 

 

We also took a look at a few previous years to see how we ranked ourselves. Interestingly, there is a declining number of people that thought they were Advanced and Professional players. I don’t know yet if there were more people new to the sport, people are judging themselves more accurately, or players are dropping divisions. Either way, here is a graph of survey results for 2015, 2016, 2020, 2021.

Check Back For More Survey Results

 

Check out our blog next week to find out more survey results. Also, let us know what you would like us to ask in next year’s blog.

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