Tag: Demographics

State of Disc Golf: Demographics

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2022 State Of Disc Golf

 

We’re back for another look at the State of Disc Golf as we start the tournament season for 2022. Just like last year, our world and our sport is being affected by the global pandemic. While it appears society is looking more ‘pre-pandemic’ than last year, we are still dealing with its effects on the supply chain. Many molds and products are still not available. But, while we can’t control what is available to sell, we can still look at the world of disc golf and analyze the data to see how disc golf looks this year, and how it has changed over the years that Infinite has been running the survey.

 

Age, State, and Gender

 

This year we had over 7650 people take the survey. We’ll take a look at a variety of answers every week for the next couple of months to learn more about our sport and the people who play it. We’ll start with some basic demographics, looking at our age, where we live, and our gender. Let’s start with our ages.

 

Aging Divisions

 

One thing that I’m always curious to see when looking at the results of the survey is how the numbers compare to what I see in the disc golfers in our region. Our local club is small and it seems like the demographics are pretty close to how it looked when I started playing regularly about 10 years ago. But, we see other clubs at tournaments so it is still possible to get a large sample size.

What I see happening in the tournament scene is that the 40-plus divisions are getting bigger. That is encouraging to see because it means more people are continuing to play as they age. We are still getting young players take up the sport, which is great for the future of disc golf. But, the older divisions are growing. Let’s see how that compares to the survey results.

Below is a graph of the results of the question, ‘How old are you?’

 

 

We’ve seen the basic shape of the graph in previous surveys. The 30-35-year-old group is the largest, then a drop in the 36-40 group, followed by a spike in the 41-50 group. The 41-50 group is the first group that includes 10 years. In looking at previous years’ results, however, we see a sharper drop after the 30-35 group. We’ll look at a couple different years, and to compare them equally we will look at the percentage of respondents in each group, rather than the total number. Here are the graphs from previous surveys.

 

 

It’s good to see the growing size of the older groups. We’ll look at other survey questions to find out more about them and their disc golf world.

 

Where We Are From

 

The sport of disc golf is played in countries all around the world. We have seen non-US players battle it out with the top US pros on top-tier tournaments, and pick up wins. Recently, Estonian FPO player Kristin Tattar make headlines with her lucrative contract with Latitude 64. There is no doubt that disc golf is a global sport. There is also no doubt that the United States still has the largest number of disc golfers, and the survey showed that. Not surprisingly, the largest number of disc golfers are in the states with the biggest population. The states in the top ten will exchange positions from year to year. But it’s tough to find more disc golfers if your home state doesn’t boast the sheer number of people in other states. Here is the leader board for this year.

 

 

I was curious to see the ratio of disc golfers were in every state, so I got the population numbers from World Population Review website to find out. I divided the number of survey participants for each state into the population of that state. Here are the results:

State # Survey Participants 2022 population DG Density 1:x
Vermont 43 622,882 14,486
Utah 230 3,363,182 14,623
Oregon 209 4,325,290 20,695
Maine 62 1,359,677 21,930
Kansas 127 2,919,179 22,986
Colorado 256 5,961,083 23,285
Minnesota 228 5,739,781 25,174
Delaware 38 998,619 26,279
Idaho 71 1,896,652 26,713
Michigan 348 9,995,212 28,722
Missouri 206 6,184,843 30,024
Wisconsin 188 5,867,518 31,210
Indiana 204 6,842,385 33,541
Iowa 93 3,174,426 34,134
Washington 225 7,887,965 35,058
Ohio 331 11,727,377 35,430
North Carolina 291 10,807,491 37,139
Tennessee 182 7,001,803 38,471
Pennsylvania 331 12,805,190 38,686
South Dakota 23 902,542 39,241
Kentucky 113 4,487,233 39,710
Nebraska 48 1,960,790 40,850
Illinois 304 12,518,071 41,178
Alabama 117 4,949,697 42,305
New Hampshire 32 1,378,449 43,077
South Carolina 124 5,342,388 43,084
Montana 25 1,093,117 43,725
Connecticut 81 3,546,588 43,785
Virginia 194 8,638,218 44,527
North Dakota 17 774,008 45,530
Alaska 15 720,763 48,051
Oklahoma 83 4,007,179 48,279
Arkansas 63 3,042,017 48,286
West Virginia 35 1,755,715 50,163
Georgia 201 10,936,299 54,409
Texas 552 30,097,526 54,525
Maryland 107 6,075,314 56,779
Arizona 132 7,640,796 57,885
Massachusetts 118 6,922,107 58,662
Mississippi 49 2,961,536 60,440
New Mexico 31 2,109,093 68,035
California 529 39,664,128 74,979
Rhode Island 14 1,062,583 75,899
Hawaii 18 1,401,709 77,873
Florida 269 22,177,997 82,446
New York 214 19,223,191 89,828
Nevada 36 3,238,601 89,961
Louisiana 48 4,616,106 96,169
Wyoming 6 582,233 97,039
District of Columbia 6 718,355 119,726
New Jersey 68 8,870,685 130,451

 

The state of Vermont has one disc golfer who took the survey for every 14.4k people. Utah is in second place, but that likely has a lot to do with Infinite’s headquarters being in Utah. California, which routinely has among the highest number of people who take the survey, is near the bottom of this list.

Infinite has customers around the world and many of them participate in the survey every year. For Canada, we broke the numbers down by province. For the rest of the world, we had participants select the region of the world they live in. Here are the results:

 

Gender

 

When it comes to the part of the survey that asks about gender, there is never really a question of which gender will have the highest number. But I am always interested to see if there is growth in the number of women taking the survey. Presumably that would mean a growth in the number of women in our sport. With so many of the top women disc golfers signing contracts that they are excited about, and with so much exposure in terms of tournament coverage, we certainly seems poised to grow the women’s side of disc golf. Things like last year’s FPO World Championship, which was every bit as exciting as the MPO Championship, should add a little more fuel to the fire of growth.

We’ll look at the results from past surveys and compare those to the most recent survey.

 

 

Although the data shows a slight drop in the percentage of women vs men taking the survey, the raw numbers are slightly up. In 2014, 286 women took the survey. In 2020, there were 330 women who took the survey. I would hope that the percentages would at lease stay the same as the number of disc golfers rises.

The PDGA shows fairly steady ratios between men and women between 2014 and 2020. Considering the explosion of growth in disc golf, that means that at least the number of women disc golfers who take the sport seriously enough to join the PDGA is rising. As we explore the rest of the SoDG survey, we might find data that will shed more light on the subject of women in disc golf.

In the previous two surveys mentioned in the charts above, we only had two choices for gender. That is why in this year’s survey there is the third option. We wanted to have an option for those who don’t identify with the binary choices.

State of Disc Golf 2021

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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.

Who Took the State of Disc Golf 2020 Survey

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Infinite Discs and the State of Disc Golf 2020 sponsors would like to thank all of those disc golfers who took the survey this year. Your input really helps us to get a great overview of how the sport is evolving and growing. We look forward to sharing the information that we’ve gathered with the public and with the brand sponsors who are providing prizes for randomly selected survey participants.

Some of the 2020 Survey Sponsors:

  • Infinite Discs
  • ZUCA
  • Prodigy
  • MVP / Axiom
  • Dynamic Discs
  • Innova
  • Discraft
  • Discmania

WHO TOOK THE SURVEY THIS YEAR?

We had 6,541 disc golfers who took the survey this year. As usual, most of the survey participants are based in the USA, though the numbers are growing in other countries as well. Of course, we launched the survey primarily to the market in the USA and it is in English, which may limit the number of people in other countries who are able to participate. Here is a look at the breakdown by state. The map displays a darker shade of green in the states that had the most participants. The color is more faint in the states with fewer participants.

Map of Survey Participants in the USA

If we remove all of the survey participants from the United States of America, then this chart shows the percentage of remaining survey participants from other countries.

Survey Participants Outside of the USA

Originally, we had under 4% of survey participants who were female, so we put out a last call request for more ladies to participate. They heard the call and we received a good number of last-minute female participants to give us a better, more rounded collection of opinions and feedback. We finished with 7.4% of participants being female. Thanks ladies!

Gender of Survey Participants

How Old are Disc Golfers?

Disc golf is known as a sport that is playable by people of all ages. You don’t have to be in your prime to enjoy a round of disc golf. Nor do you need to be particularly athletic. The learning curve is fast and there are discs designed for players at any skill level. With all of that said, let’s take a look at the average ages of the people who took the time to answer the 2020 survey questions.

Age of Survey Participants

What Skill Level Do You Consider Yourself?

When a player needs to definite their own skill level, the results can be pretty mixed. Some of us have been playing for several years, yet always consider ourselves as recreational or intermediate at best. Some of us are involved with the sport for a very short time, yet our competitive nature drives us to claim advanced skill levels. When looking at how we rate ourselves, one person’s “beginner” can be another person’s “advanced” depending on the severity of levity of our self evaluation. But it’s still a fun question to ask.  We’re always surprised at how many participants call themselves “Professional.” Do they actually make money playing disc golf? We hope so!

How Do Participants Rate their Skill Level

 

Thanks again for participating and we look forward to parsing the data and sharing what we’ve learned! Feel free to leave any comments below.

 

 

State of Disc Golf 2017 Results – Who Took the Survey?

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The time has come to start taking a look at some of the data from the 2017 State of Disc Golf Survey. The data will be analyzed and shared over the course of the next few months. By way of introduction, let’s break down the demographics of who participated in the survey.

With nearly 10,000 disc golf players surveyed, this year provided, by far, the largest pool of individuals that we’ve surveyed since beginning the annual State of Disc Golf survey. That level of participation really helps us to gather some very pertinent information and helps give a realistic snapshot of the disc golf market. However, when looking at results, we do have to realize that people who participate in this kind of survey are people who are passionate enough about the sport to take a few minutes of their time to share their opinions. In our estimation, there are a good number of casual players who do not participate in such surveys. Those more casual players may not be entirely represented in the results.

Male vs Female Survey Participants

Of those surveyed, a whopping 91.8% were male, leaving only 8.2% as female. Does that truly reflect the balance of men vs. women in the game of disc golf? Though it might actually be a fairly accurate representation, we can surmise that simply less women are passionate enough about the game to take a survey (as mentioned above). But it would probably be an accurate statement to say that among passionate disc golfers, only 1 out of every 10 is a woman.

Age of Survey Participants

Looking at the age of those surveyed, we were happy to see a very wide spread. Though the age group that participated the most was the 30-35 demographic with 22.6%, other age groups ranging from 18 all the way through 60 were quite well represented. For those of us inside the disc golf industry, that is a very healthy statistic– to see that passionate players exist within all age groups. There is ground to be gained in the 17-and-lower age group, but that again could be an example of a group of people who are not interested in taking online surveys.

Disc Golfers Married vs Single

The majority of those who took the survey are married, with just more than half, at 56.2%. Single came in at 37.2%, and the widowed / divorced / separated group came in at 6.6%. By the way, as of 2015, roughly 55% of all Americans over the age of 18 were married, so the players surveyed fall pretty much within the national average.

The Employment Status of Those Surveyed

When looking at the employment status of those surveyed, the vast majority are employed for wages, with a few being self-employed. There is a sizable group of students that took the survey, but thankfully, not too many are unemployed or unable to work.

So, why do we ask these basic questions in a disc golf survey? Though things like gender, age, marriage status, and employment be only be marginally interesting statistics on their own, we use this data help determine other factors which are more pertinent to the growth of the disc golf scene. For example, it might be interesting to see how marital status factors into disc golf practice time. Do married players get less putting practice and field work? Do single players play in more tournaments? Does the job situation or marriage situation factor into the amount that players spend on disc golf? Does the age factor into tournament participation or willingness to travel for the game? Once we start looking at some of the more interesting survey data, and then break it into categories based on these introductory questions, it becomes even more revealing. That is the kind of data we’ll start looking at in future weekly State of Disc Golf 2017 blog posts, so stay tuned!

 

 

More Demographics – Who played the most courses?

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In this blog we will continue to look at who is the average disc golfer. Married? Educated? Club member? Travel to play? It’s fun to look at the statistical average numbers and see how many of the categories we and our buddies belong to. In future blogs we’ll build on these and other statistics to examine certain aspects of our sport (such as, tournaments, attitudes about DG, etc.)

 

Average Joe

 

According to the survey results we are married, Intermediate disc golfers, have a Bachelor’s Degree, belong to a club but not the PDGA, are employed for wages, and play a lot of disc golf! Here is a breakdown of the data:

I Do

According to several sources, the marriage rate among all adults in the U.S. hovers around 50%, so these numbers show that we are close to the national average.

 

Marital Status

We’ve got skills

With majority of us self-identifying as Intermediate golfers, it’s important to point out that the requirements for divisions are not uniform across the sport. Locally, most people who sign up for a tournament play in higher divisions than at major tournaments. For example, if someone’s PDGA rating approaches 900, they usually play in the Advanced division, and as their rating climbs past 900, there is a good chance they’ll play in the Open (Pro) division. I see that happen a lot. Using the PDGA standard for ratings, the same person could play in Intermediate all the way up to a 935 rating.

This isn’t a commentary about which division people should sign up for with certain PDGA rating, it is just a possible explanation for the survey results. One other statistic that may shed light on the number of Intermediate players is the fact that less than half of us indicated that our PDGA membership is either current, or will be for 2016. That means more than half of us simply believe that our skill level is in the Intermediate range, without the benefit of having an official rating.

Skill Level

Degree or Not Degree

Keeping in mind that approximately 8% of us aren’t old enough to have finished college, our degree achievement numbers are slightly higher than the national average. For example, nationally (in the U.S.) 32% of the population over 25 has a Bachelor’s Degree. In the disc golf community, 36% of us have a Bachelor’s. (I deducted the approximate number of respondents who are under 25).

 

Education

In Da Club

To me, one of the big benefits of playing disc golf is the social aspect of the sport. Being part of a club helps me realize those benefits. Apparently, most of us enjoy the camaraderie that comes with being part of a group, because well over half of us currently belong to a club. More of us belong to a club than belong to the PDGA. We’ll explore some of the reasons why people do, or do not, belong to the PDGA in another post.

 

Club

Off to Work We Go

Things are looking good for disc golfers on the employment front. Only a tiny percent of us are looking for work. The rest of us are employed, retired, and either can’t or don’t need to work. Shout out to our military brothers and sisters who share our sport! Infinite Discs has shipped product the people overseas in the service. We’re glad to help keep you huckin’!

Employment

Where Do You Play?

A fun part of this sport is playing a variety of courses. Over half of us have between 1-3 courses within a 10-mile radius of our house. A small group of us have to travel more than 10 miles to get to the closest one. An even smaller group (171), but much luckier, has 10+ courses within 10 miles! However, I think this number might be slightly off. When I first looked at that survey result, I wanted to find out where these places are that have so many courses. I figured there would be a couple of locations in Michigan, Texas, and a few other states that were flush with places to play. After cross referencing the question with the location of the participant, I found that there are 25 states and one other country that allegedly have that wonderful disc golf density. I’m skeptical as to that number, too, since one of the states is Utah. I live in Utah and I know for a fact there aren’t ANY points that have 10 or more permanent courses within 10 miles. Perhaps people’s distance estimating skills are to blame?

I’d like to see people comment about specific locations that really have 10+ courses in a 10-mile radius. You don’t have to list the courses, just the location. Let’s see how many there really are.

Also, a little more than a fourth of us saw at least one new course installed within 10 miles.

10 miles

 

new 10 miles

 

Hittin’ the Road

 

Since nearly all of us (95%) live in places that have 9 or fewer courses within a 10-mile radius, it is apparent by our responses that we like to travel to play other courses. Over half of us played 10 or more different courses last year. The largest group was the 10-15 range, with nearly a third of us falling into that category. Happily, everyone who responded to the survey played at least one course last year!

One adventurous soul indicated he played 200+ courses last year. Curious and insanely jealous, I had to investigate this number to learn more about his other responses. The follow-up questions asked about how often we played during certain times of the year and his responses to these questions led me to believe the 200+ answer was a mistake. Or maybe a fantasy. Still, eight people indicated they played between 100-200 courses. Even if they are all on the low end of that scale, it sure sounds awesome!

courses played

 

For the next blog we’ll look at our responses to questions about tournaments.

Disc Golfer Demographics: Location, Age, Gender and Brand Preference

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For this blog post we want to continue to look at who we are, and comparing that with our favorite brands. Our goal is to see if there are certain segments among us that favor certain brands. Then we can see how those opinions change over time.

Where Do We Live?

It’s nice to have disc golfers from all over the world respond to the survey. While most of us live in the U.S., the percentage of us that live outside the country increased a tiny bit to 9%. With Major tournaments, some of the top players, and a few manufacturers in other countries, ours is truly a world sport. That is great news to the 78% of us who want the sport to become mainstream, but not so good for the 4% who don’t (18% have no preference). As the sport grows, it will mean more courses, clubs, tournaments, and products. Toward that end, we are encouraged by survey participation around the world. With that in mind, we will begin by looking at graphs from survey results that show where in the world we are from.

Countries

countries regions

 

 

Gender Make Up

Past surveys have shown that a majority of us are male and around 30 years old. This year was no different. The percentage of female respondents fell slightly, with 4% of disc golfers filling out the survey being female, versus 6% last year.

gender

 

Age

In some areas of the country, such as college towns, the average age of disc golfers will vary slightly from the rest of the country. The club I belong to fits that description. However, when I look at the clubs outside of my immediate area, their member’s ages align better with survey results. According to the survey, the average age of all disc golfers falls in the 30-35 year range. Same with last year. Perhaps at that age people are more established in their careers and feel like they have more time to play disc golf. Most of the time families have been started by then and are either getting to an age where they can join a parent on the course, or are at least more independent, allowing the disc golfer more opportunity to play. Whatever the reason, that age group continues to lead the survey.

age

how long playing

It will be interesting to see how that group ages and if they keep playing in large numbers. With cries of ’60 is the new 40’, maybe we will see current members of that age group continue to play, and older groups have the largest number of members. I hope so. I also hope the younger age groups balloon. It is great to see such talent coming from young golfers. Think about Eagle McMahon, or last year’s Amateur World Championships. Not only is it impressive to watch such talented young people, it will help our sport continue to grow.

Summary?

As was mentioned in the opening paragraph, in addition to finding out more about who we are, another goal of this blog was to break down the demographics and find out what groups favored which brands. Our hope was that we could find some interesting data, such as finding certain groups (age, experience, geographic location) that favored certain brands. Let’s just say that the results were underwhelming. Not that I have a problem with nearly every state, region, age, gender, and experience level choosing Innova as their favorite brand. It just becomes so redundant to write about. So, let’s just look at the few locations that didn’t choose Innova as their favorite. (Or tied with them).

Location                                      Total Respondents             Favorite
Arkansas                                      28                                          Dynamic Discs
Asia                                               12                                           Discraft
Australia/New Zealand             10                                          Discmania
Hawaii                                           5                                            Discraft/Innova
New Mexico                                 20                                          Discraft/Innova/MVP
Vermont                                        7                                            Innova/Westside

And there you have it. With less than half of all respondents choosing Innova as their favorite brand, we hoped there would be more groups that would favor another brand. While that aspect of the blog didn’t turn out like we thought, at least we can learn about us as a group along the way.

For the next blog we will continue to find out more about us, such as education, occupation, etc., and about our disc golf habits.

State of Disc Golf 2015: Do Our Demographics Affect Our Choice of Brands?

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In a previous blog discussing the results of the 2015 State of Disc Golf survey, we focused on which disc golf brands we like the most and how that has changed from last year. (If you missed it, click HERE) This blog will look at who we are and whether that affects what brands we throw.

Who are we?

According to the survey, we are male (94%), live in California (7%), are 30-35 years old (23%), consider ourselves Intermediate disc golfers (45%), have been playing for 5-9 years (25%), played 10-15 different courses in 2014 (29%) and have a Bachelor’s Degree (35%). Half of us are currently married, while 43% have never been married.

We also belong to disc golf clubs (57%), own either 21-30 discs or 41-60 discs (tied at 14%), bought 10-14 new discs last year (18%), lost 1-3 discs (48%), chose disc golf as a favorite sport to play (85%), and football as a favorite sport to follow (35%. Disc golf was second at 27%).
After examining all the demographic statistics, we wanted to see if there were trends based on certain aspects of the demographics. For example, does the age of the respondent affect which brand they consider their favorite? Or the skill level? Or the education?

We considered most the attributes of the average survey respondent, listed above, and compared them to the overall list of favorite discs. And, spoiler alert, the results were kind of boring. Regardless of the demographic, nearly all of the results were within a point or two of the overall favorites. There were only a few exceptions, and even those were not extremely far from the overall numbers. They are worth mentioning, though, because of possible long-term ramifications.

Just to recap the previous blog, the top six favorite brands were: Innova (48%), Discraft (12%), Latitude 64 (10%), Dynamic Discs (6%), and MVP and Prodigy tied at 5%.

Disc golf experience

The first question we looked at was “When did you start playing disc golf?” We wanted to see if the length of time we have been playing had any effect on which brands we preferred. The biggest variation from the average results occurred among players who have only been playing a year or less. This was not a large sample size, representing only about 1.5% of the total respondents, so the overall significance of the results carry less weight. Still, this will be an interesting group to watch over the next couple of years. Players from this experience group still chose Innova as their favorite brand, but by a much smaller margin. Only 31% of respondents in this group picked Innova as their favorite, compared to 48% overall. Discraft and Latitude 64 results stayed close to the same as the total results. MVP, Dynamic Discs, Axiom, and Discmania all bumped up several percentage points (see chart for numbers).

Near the other end of the experience spectrum were those who have been playing between 35-44 years. This group made up 3.2% of the respondents. Among them, 42% listed Innova as their favorite, while 15% of them chose Discraft, 3% more than overall. MVP, Dynamic Discs, and Prodigy all held 8% of the vote in this group, which represented an increase for all three brands. Westside was consistent with their overall score.

FirstHeardofDiscGolf

Skill level

The survey asked respondents to list what division best represented their skill level. The four choices were: Beginner/Recreational, Intermediate, Advanced, and Professional. For the most part, this category also followed the Favorite Brand category nearly exactly. The Pro’s, representing 8% of the total respondents, had the biggest differences. For them, Innova sat at 46%, Discraft and Latitude were 10%, and Dynamic Discs, MVP, and Prodigy held 7% of the Pro vote.

DiscLevelSkillLevels
Gender

Since men represented 94% of the respondents, it’s pretty obvious their statistics would duplicate that of the overall results. For women, there were a few slight differences. Innova was the first choice with 46%, which was 2% lower than overall, Discraft took second with 11%, and Dynamic Discs rounded out the top three, finishing 9%, up from the overall 6%. Latitude 64 and Westside traded a couple percentage points, with Latitude 64 2% below the overall results and Westside 2% above.

Gender of Disc Golfers
Age

The final demographic we’ll look at in this blog is the choice of Favorite Brand by age group. While all of the age groups between 18-40 years were close to the overall percentage, there were other groups with a few different numbers. Again, the differences were never huge, but enough to mention.

We will start with the youngest age group, 12-17 years old, which represented 2% of the total respondents. Like the newer players that we mentioned at the beginning, it will be interesting to see how or if the numbers in this demographic changes over time. The youngest players chose Innova as their favorite by 5% more than the overall respondents. The increase came at the expense of Discraft and Latitude 64, which were both down a little. Westside was chosen 3% more frequently, while Dynamic Discs was the same percentage as overall, 6%.

The next group to look at is disc golfers 41-50 years old, representing 14% of respondents. This group chose Innova at a slightly lower 43%, compared to 48% of average. Discraft was up to 14%, Latitude 64 was up a tick at 11% and Prodigy was 7%, which was 2% higher than overall.
The 51-60 year olds were a little more favorable for Innova, with 53% of the group choosing the brand leader. Discraft and Latitude 64 were a little less popular, while Dynamic Discs and MVP matched their overall numbers.

The most senior group we will look at is the 61-70 year old disc golfers. They make up 2% of the total and only 39% of them favored Innova. The extra percentage points went to Discraft (16%), MVP and Westside (9% each), and Dynamic Discs (8%). The fact that Discraft is higher is not surprising. But, if we were going to bet on a demographic that would have the highest loyalty to Innova, we would have gone with this one. Innova and Discraft have been around longer than the other brands and people in this age group grew up throwing those discs.

AverageAgeofGolfer

Conclusion

When we were looking through all of the data, we were hoping to find a few statistical anomalies that could be analyzed and discussed. Although this particular set of data did not have the extremes we were hoping for, just knowing that we as disc golfers are consistent throughout a variety of demographics is good information to have. We will certainly keep an eye on those groups that did vary from the norm to see what changes take place in future surveys.

In an upcoming post, we will look specifically at which brands people are throwing. Remember from the first survey result blog that only 6% of us throw a single brand. The rest of us have two or more brands in our arsenal. We will look at which brands people throw and which new discs people know the most.

The Best State For Disc Golf

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We recently asked our fans “Which state is the best for disc golf?”

We received replies from several bias individuals bragging up their own state, or in less common cases, putting their vote to another state. Either way, the visual representation below does accurately reflect some of the best places for disc golf.

Best States for Disc Golf

The more responses for the state, the more vibrant the shade of green.
Why is Hawaii red? Because they received one negative vote where the respondent said “Not Hawaii!”

Question: If I am not in Michigan, California or Texas, then what am I doing?
1) I should be packing my bags and moving, because I live to disc golf.
2) I’m working to make disc golf better right in my backyard!

How can you improve the sport in your area?

There are many ways to make your area better! The first step is to become involved in organized disc golf. Most areas have a club with at least a few members, and those clubs organize and lobby efforts to improve the game locally. They organize fund-raising for courses, talk to city representatives, and bring better overall awareness to the sport. One of the best ways to find a club is to look on Disc Golf Scene, or on Facebook.

We want to know, what are you doing to help grow the sport?? Tell us below!

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Did You Know

We can get Innova DISCatcher baskets to your city for wholesale at only $325 each! For an 18 hole course that’s $5850, which is a drop in the bucket to many Parks & Rec departments budgets! Most of them are scratching their heads wondering how to get better use of their parks, and disc golf is the answer![/box]