Soccer is known as the world\u2019s most unifying sport, allowing anyone to play so long as you have a ball and a wall or people to pass to. Golf, on the other hand, was not normally seen this way: It\u2019s an expensive sport that requires clubs, balls, caddies, and lush greens and a dedicated space on the links. The sheer cost of lost balls alone could bar the common man from picking up golf, but now, five months into the job, that\u2019s something Topgolf CEO David McKillips is trying to change about the sport.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Topgolf<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n He points to a $5-a-day youth golf program, a pledge to create 10 million new golfers by 2030, and the company\u2019s scale as evidence Topgolf is becoming a real on-ramp into the sport. In fact, McKillips says he wouldn\u2019t be shocked if the sport\u2019s next breakout star first picked up a club at one of the company\u2019s driving ranges instead of a country club.<\/p>\n \u201cI would love to see if there are golfers that started at Topgolf that ultimately would end up on the tour,\u201d McKillips told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cI think that would be pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey very well could be,\u201d he said <\/em>about the next golf superstar. \u201cThat\u2019s part of our commitment of 10 million new golfers by 2030, and we\u2019re putting our money where our mouth is.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a concrete program behind that pledge: Topgolf recently partnered with Youth on Course, a nonprofit that provides golfers 18 and under with subsidized access to the sport, to offer its members and alumni network $5 bay access on Mondays through Thursdays, from 9 a.m. to noon, running from July 1 through Sept. 3. \u201cThis is an opportunity for them to come in, practice their game, to be on the road, and it welcomes everyone,\u201d McKillips said. \u201cPrice point is no longer a hurdle, and we provide the clubs, we provide the balls, we provide the technology, and it\u2019s a non-intimidating way to really learn the sport of golf.\u201d<\/p>\n McKillips took over as Topgolf\u2019s CEO in February, arriving from CEC Entertainment, the parent company of Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza, where he served as president and CEO for six years. During his tenure there, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2020, weighed down largely by pandemic-era shutdowns, and emerged about a year later with roughly $1 billion in debt erased and close to $400 million in fresh capital to reinvest in modernizing its locations. That turnaround\u2014rebuilding a legacy family-entertainment brand around updated venues, technology, and games\u2014is the experience McKillips has pointed to directly as his blueprint for Topgolf, a company he inherited fresh off its own ownership shake-up and a stretch of declining same-venue sales.<\/p>\n \u201cThis business is incredible,\u201d McKillips said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a really strong domestic business\u2026 winning back that golfer is super important, and we\u2019re going to be doing that with all this new news, and we\u2019ve got so much more to come.\u201d<\/p>\n He said golf\u2019s traditional barriers to entry, like cost, equipment, and intimidating country-club culture, are exactly what Topgolf is built to clear. Only about 35% of golfers currently visit Topgolf, he said, but the company is already tracking conversions from its own guest base: \u201cWe know already by our data we\u2019re generating between two-and-a-half and three million new golfers with all these new golf programs.\u201d<\/p>\n He said there are two groups that are the fastest-growing segments in golf overall: young women and kids. Topgolf\u2019s youth participation alone is up 40% over the past five years. \u201cWhat a great opportunity for us to have as a destination to serve those two audiences,\u201d McKillips said.<\/p>\n That shift shows up in the broader industry data, too. Representation for women and girls in golf is at an all-time high, with participants now 28% female, and 8.2 million women played off-course golf in 2024, according to National Golf Foundation figures. McKillips argues that someone who has hit a ball at an off-course venue like Topgolf is five times more likely to be interested in playing on a real course than someone who has never picked up a club at all. The sport\u2019s grasp is reaching into finance too: Blackstone recently signed golfer Tommy Fleetwood as its first brand ambassador, betting that the sport\u2019s expanding, younger following could help the firm reach wealthy clients in a more relaxed setting than a conference room.<\/p>\n McKillips said the price point and social format are central to that pitch. \u201cGolf can be an expensive sport. To come to Topgolf with four or six people, it\u2019s not that expensive on a per person basis,\u201d he said. \u201cWe provide the clubs, the balls. We have directors of instruction that can teach you how to golf for the first time, and it\u2019s social.\u201d<\/p>\n McKillips said Topgolf\u2019s scale\u2014more than 100 domestic venues, plus international locations and simulator partners\u2014as evidence the company is a legitimate entry point into golf, not a side attraction to it. \u201cGolf has never been more accessible,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you\u2019re looking at the 50 million green-grass golfers, then you look at the simulators, then you look at Topgolf, where we have 42 million guests and players every single year\u2014that ecosystem has nearly 100 million touch points for golf. It\u2019s incredibly exciting to combine the social golfer on-ramped all the way to an avid golfer.\u201d<\/p>\n Toptracer, Topgolf\u2019s sister ball-tracking technology company, is central to that on-ramping pitch. The technology\u2014which McKillips said \u201cfuels all the majors\u201d in professional golf broadcasting \u2014 is built into every Topgolf bay, letting first-timers see the same shot-tracing data used on tour. He said he\u2019s watched casual guests, people who showed up for something like a bachelorette party rather than a golf outing, get pulled into the sport through the data alone. \u201cWhat you are seeing is people coming in and interacting with the product and getting really excited, because it is something that you just can\u2019t see at an everyday driving range,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That social pitch fits a broader trend of people paying a premium for a \u201cthird space,\u201d or of a hangout that\u2019s neither home nor work. Think of traditional venues, like bars, movie theaters, and bowling alleys, which have thinned out over the years. It\u2019s the same instinct behind the growth of exclusive gym chains like Third Space, the London-based operator whose younger members pay a steep monthly fee in exchange for a place to socialize away from their phones. Topgolf\u2019s version of that pitch doesn\u2019t require golf at all: Guests can show up for the sports bar, the arcade, or a round of darts or pickleball, with the driving range as an option rather than the entry fee.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to play golf,\u201d McKillips said. \u201cYou can come, you can lounge in our sports bars or our lounges\u2026 You can come with your friends and play darts. You can play arcade games. You can play pickleball. And ultimately you can do golf as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The company\u2019s broader turnaround strategy, which includes new arcades, a membership program, and an expansion into pickleball and darts, is meant to widen the top of that funnel even further, McKillips said, by getting more people through the door in the first place. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be pivoting from just a Topgolf destination to the ultimate sports, entertainment, and golf destination,\u201d he said. \u201cOur bones are all about a driving range\u2014we bring entertainment to the driving range.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Topgolfs #CEO #thinks #sports #star #start #driving #ranges<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The world\u2019s eyes this month are glued on soccer pitches across the 16 host cities of the World Cup. Stories of a former electrician-turned-breakout goalkeeper; of a factory worker now… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[369,1285,473,3914,13572,2100,4851,191,3301,13571],"class_list":["post-12281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-ceo","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-driving","tag-golf","tag-ranges","tag-sports","tag-star","tag-start","tag-thinks","tag-topgolfs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Topgolf](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ICPM_Jacket-Smiling_Edited-1.jpg?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
<\/div>Removing golf\u2019s barriers to entry<\/h2>\n
Building community<\/h2>\n