The winners and losers of the golf ball industry
You can’t complain about beer prices when your $3 dollar swing is costing you $15+ dollars a round in golf balls.
You pay $65CDN for a shiny new box of Titleist ProV’s. You step up to the first tee. Quick stretch...cause that helps. And proceed to smash a $5.50 piss missile into the bush.
You’re at the golf ball industry’s mercy.
You can’t continue to play unless you have another ball. Golf balls, like tees, are 100% consumable...eventually. More so for some than others.
It’s been stated that roughly 300 million golf balls are lost per year.
In 2016, Titleist sold $543,000,000 in golf balls, as per their financial report.
- $323 million of which were premium golf balls...aka Pro V’s
- Golf balls accounted for 33% of net sales in 2016.
Three facilities collectively produce over 1,000,000 golf balls per day. PER DAY! Thank God, I lost 4 on the back nine yesterday.
If our information is correct (remember, we are not investigative journalists), it costs:
- Titleist roughly $10CDN to produce a dozen golf balls.
- They wholesale at roughly $45 per dozen
- You buy them at $65 a dozen
- You lose them at an alarming rate
We’ve effectively helped Titleist generate over $4.5 billion since 2000...just from the Pro V line.
The real winners here are the guys that seed the trees with Pinnacle Golds over 18 holes and then load a 60lb golf bag weighed down with premium golf balls into their ‘97 Datsun.
Actually, Titleist/Acushnet is still the real winner here. They also manufacture the Pinnacle golf ball line. From Pro to Joe they dominate the premium ball market share at 37.4%.
