The 24/7 Golf Sim Facility Is the New 24-Hour Gym
What is a 24/7 golf simulator facility? It’s a keyless, staff-free indoor golf center that you access with a PIN code tied to your booking. Memberships run $79-$399/month for unlimited access. You book online, get a code, and show up whenever you want — 3 PM or 3 AM. The model is growing fast because the economics work: zero marginal cost for off-peak hours, and the customer journey is fully self-serve.
There’s a guy in New Hampshire named Chuck who opened a golf sim facility in 2024. He figured he’d get maybe 100 members. He’s at 325. He has no staff. No bar. No front desk. He doesn’t unlock doors for anyone. The whole thing runs itself.
Chuck’s setup is called The Tee Box NH, and it’s part of a wave of 24/7 golf simulator facilities that are popping up faster than anyone can track. I’ve been tracking them. The HGH facility boom series has logged 40+ openings in the last few months, and the 24/7 model is the fastest-growing format within that. The indoor golf franchises explosion — Back Nine, X-Golf, and Golf VX building 200+ locations combined — is the infrastructure engine powering this growth.
This article is about what that model actually is, why it’s working, and what it means for you — whether you’re building a home sim or just trying to figure out where to practice.
The Business Model, Explained From First Principles
Indoor golf simulators have a structural advantage as a business: the product is a self-contained booth. A customer books a bay, enters a PIN, plays for an hour, and leaves. There’s no equipment to hand off, no food to serve, no staff briefing needed. The entire customer journey is self-directed.
That’s a structural advantage that most leisure businesses don’t have. A gym needs staff to clean equipment, manage locker rooms, and handle check-ins. A bowling alley needs staff to reset pins and manage shoe rentals. A sim facility? It needs a booking system, a smart lock, and someone to take out the trash once a day.
The 24/7 model takes this to its logical conclusion. You automate the booking, payment, and access control. Customers book online, pay online, and get a PIN code that unlocks the door for their reserved time slot. The PIN expires when their session ends. If they want to stay longer, they pay for overage through the same system.
The economics are compelling. A traditional staffed sim venue operates 10-14 hours a day. Those bays sit empty for 10-14 hours every night, generating zero revenue while you still pay rent, insurance, and equipment depreciation. The 24/7 model recaptures those hours at near-zero marginal cost. No additional staff. No additional rent. Minimal additional utilities. The only incremental costs are the access control hardware and the booking software subscription.
What the Pricing Actually Looks Like
I pulled pricing from a dozen 24/7 facilities across the US. The range is wide, but the pattern is clear:
| Facility | Membership | Hours | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| TARGET Indoor Golf (Windsor) | Starter | 10/mo | $79/mo |
| TARGET Indoor Golf | Pro | 20/mo | $139/mo |
| TARGET Indoor Golf | Elite | 30/mo | $189/mo |
| The 24 Golf (Michigan) | Early Bird | 4/mo (off-peak) | $79/mo |
| The 24 Golf | Standard | 4/mo | $125/mo |
| The 24 Golf | Unlimited | Unlimited | $399/mo |
| Teeton Golf (Iowa) | Par | 4/mo | $89-$149/mo |
| Teeton Golf | Eagle | Unlimited | $199-$299/mo |
| Blades Golf Lounge (Phoenix) | Unlimited | Unlimited | $280/mo |
| PARennial Golf (Chicago) | Unlimited | Unlimited | $199/mo |
| Indoor Golf of Utah | Unlimited | Unlimited | $199/mo |
The sweet spot is $199/month for unlimited access. That’s the price that keeps coming up across different markets. Some facilities go lower ($79 for limited hours), some go higher ($399 for true unlimited with premium hardware), but $199 is the anchor.
Let me put that in perspective. A GC3 costs $5,999. A budget home sim setup (Garmin R10, net, mat, iPad) runs about $1,500. At $199/month, you can play unlimited golf at a 24/7 facility for 30 months before you hit the cost of a mid-range personal launch monitor. And you don’t have to build anything, maintain anything, or explain to your spouse why there’s a 10-foot impact screen in the living room. For those ready to compare, our home sim vs facility cost calculator breaks down the breakeven by usage frequency.
What Makes This Work (and What Doesn’t)
The 24/7 model works because of three things that have converged in the last 2-3 years:
Booking software. Platforms like Birrdi, Birdie, Golf O’Clock, and AllBooked handle the entire flow — discovery, availability check, bay selection, payment, confirmation, and access code delivery — without human intervention. A customer books at 2 AM, pays, and gets a door code in under 30 seconds. The booking system talks to the smart lock. No manual steps. For a breakdown of how this compares to the home sim experience, see our garage setup guide.
Smart locks. Kisi, Seam, and other access control systems integrate with the booking software. The lock knows who booked, when, and which bay. The PIN code expires when the session ends. Some systems even tie into HVAC and lighting, so the bay is climate-controlled and lit only when someone is playing.
The self-serve customer. The indoor golf audience is self-selecting for this model. People who want to hit balls at midnight are not the same people who want a full-service bar experience. They want to practice. They want to play. They want to be left alone. The 24/7 model serves them perfectly.
The model falls apart when you overcomplicate it. Facilities that try to add food and beverage, event hosting, and pro shop operations alongside 24/7 access end up with a hybrid that doesn’t work well. The most successful 24/7 facilities are the simple ones. Members-only. No frills. Just golf.
The Home Sim Question: Join or Build?
This is the question I keep seeing in forums. The 24/7 facility at $199/month makes a compelling case against building your own sim.
The math works both ways. Here’s the breakdown.
Building your own (entry-level):
- Garmin R10: $499
- Hitting net: $200
- Hitting mat: $150
- iPad (if you don’t have one): $350
- GSPro subscription: $250/year
- Total upfront: $1,200-$1,500
- Time to build: 2-4 hours
- Ongoing cost: $250/year
Joining a 24/7 facility:
- Membership: $199/month
- No upfront cost
- No setup time
- No maintenance
- You can stop anytime
At $199/month, the facility costs you $2,388/year. The home sim costs you $1,450 in year one and $250/year after that. The home sim is cheaper in year two and beyond.
But that’s not the whole story. The $199/month facility gives you a permanent setup with a high-end launch monitor (often GC3, TrackMan, or Uneekor), a proper enclosure, a short-throw projector, and a hitting bay that’s already dialed in. Your $1,200 home setup with an R10 and a net is not the same experience. It’s not close.
The comparison that makes sense is: facility vs. a mid-range home sim. A SkyTrak+ setup with a Carl’s Place enclosure, a good mat, a projector, and a PC runs about $5,000-$6,000 upfront. At $199/month for a facility, you’d need 25-30 months of membership to hit that number. After that, the home sim is cheaper.
The facility is always available. You don’t have to maintain it. You don’t have to upgrade it. You don’t have to explain to your spouse why there’s a golf net in the garage. You just show up, punch in your code, and play.
The home sim is a better deal if you’re going to use it for 5+ years. The facility is a better deal if you want zero commitment, zero maintenance, and zero friction.
What This Means for the Industry
The 24/7 model is going to accelerate the sim facility boom for one simple reason: it lowers the barrier to entry for operators.
Opening a traditional sim facility requires staff, a manager, a point-of-sale system, a food and beverage license, and a lease that supports all of that. Opening a 24/7 facility requires a lease, some sims, and a booking software subscription. The startup costs are lower. The operational complexity is lower. The risk is lower.
That means more facilities. More competition. Better pricing. And eventually, the 24/7 sim facility becomes what the 24-hour gym became in the 2000s — a commodity that’s available in every mid-sized city, priced aggressively, and accessible to anyone who wants it.
For the home golf industry, this is a mixed signal. More facilities mean more people get exposed to sim golf, which grows the overall market. But it also means some people who would have built a home sim will choose a membership instead. The home sim market shifts from “everyone who wants to play indoors” to “people who want a dedicated, always-available, never-waiting setup.”
That’s a smaller market, but it’s a more committed one. The people who still build home sims after trying a 24/7 facility are the people who really want this. And those are the best customers.
The Bottom Line
The 24/7 golf sim facility is real, it’s growing fast, and it’s going to change how most people access indoor golf. If you’re thinking about building a home sim, you should at least try a 24/7 facility first. It might save you thousands of dollars and a lot of weekend projects.
If you already have a home sim, the 24/7 facility is not your competitor. It’s the thing that gets more people into sim golf, which means more software development, more hardware innovation, and more content about the thing you already love.
The 24-hour gym didn’t kill home gyms. It made more people care about fitness. The 24/7 sim facility is going to do the same thing for home golf.
This article is part of our ongoing coverage of the sim facility boom. Read the full series: Facility Boom #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5.