ABSTRACT
Golf has seen significant growth in the number of golf courses and players since the turn of the twenty-first century. There are about 6,000 golf courses in Europe, about 17,000 in the USA and more than 35,000 worldwide. Golf’s rising status in the global sports community, especially regarding fans and sponsors, was reflected in golf’s (re-)introduction to the Summer Olympics at Rio 2016. The aspiration of this book is to understand the state of the game globally and to appreciate critical characteristics of the traditional, established and emerging golf markets. In this chapter, we first provide an overview of the golf industry, an outline of the global golf market as well as an introduction into current opportunities and threats. We emphasize the role of innovative, products, services, processes and technologies as a means for golf to stay ahead of the competition for participants, media interest, and corporate investment. Second, the chapter examines how growth of the sport business sector lead to the increased provision of sport management programmes at higher and further education institutions. Within this, we make the argument that there is increasing demand for sport-specific skillsets. Third and last, the chapter provides an overview over all following chapters.
