24/7 Golf Sim Facilities: The Model That Works
What is a 24/7 golf simulator facility? A 24/7 golf simulator facility is an unstaffed, automated indoor golf venue that operates around the clock. Customers book bays through an app, receive a digital access code, and let themselves in — no front desk, no staff, no hours of operation. The model is spreading across the US and Canada, with chains like Another Nine (75+ franchise territories sold) and Golf Envy leading the charge.
You know that feeling at 11 PM on a Tuesday when you want to hit golf balls but every facility within 20 miles is locked up?
You’re not alone. And a new breed of sim facility is built specifically for you.
I’ve been tracking the facility boom for months. The franchise wars — Five Iron vs. X-Golf vs. Back Nine — dominate the headlines. They’re building 8-bay bars with food and beverage and leagues and events. They’re hospitality businesses that happen to have sims.
But there’s a quieter revolution happening underneath those headlines. A different model entirely. For a full breakdown of the business model, see our 24/7 golf simulator facilities guide and franchise cost guide.
Private TrackMan rooms with app-based access. No staff, no bar, no set hours — just a door that unlocks with your phone.
What This Actually Looks Like
Picture this: You open an app. You pick a time slot — 11 PM tonight, 6 AM tomorrow, whatever. You pay. The app sends you a door code. You show up at the building, punch in the code, walk to your private bay, and hit balls. When you’re done, you leave. The door locks behind you.
No one checked you in. No one asked if you wanted a beer. No one told you the last booking was at 9 PM. You just played golf.
It’s happening right now in multiple cities:
Another Nine — based in Cincinnati, this is the biggest player. They’ve sold 75+ franchise territories in their first year of franchising, with 12 locations planned for Charlotte alone. The model is private suites, TrackMan, no membership required, book by the hour. Their first franchise location opened in Cornelius, North Carolina in June. The founder’s quote tells you everything: “Another Nine makes it easy for people to play on their own schedule, whether they want to practice after the kids go to bed, get in a round before work, or step into a private suite between calls.”
Golf Envy — California-based, premium positioning, GOLFZON powered (including the moving floor plates). They’re expanding to the UK. No food and beverage, minimal staffing, 24-hour membership model. Their CEO calls it “engineered for franchisee performance.”
Tempo Golf — opened in Mississauga, Ontario in March. GOLFJOY’s first fully unattended North American venue. Four bays, two VIP rooms, auto tee-up system, intelligent putting platform. Self-service around the clock.
Scratx — Miami, Brickell Key. 24/7 golf studio with app-based access. Peak pricing weekdays 5-11 PM and weekends 10 AM-11 PM. Off-peak is cheaper. The pricing model is tuned to behavior — late-night is premium because there’s no competition.
Birdie’s Athletic Club — Fargo, North Dakota. Hybrid gym and sim, $99/month unlimited membership. The founder capped membership intentionally so it never felt crowded. He built most of the space himself. One video got 150,000 views and people from outside the metro started asking about franchising.
Launch Labs — Garland, Texas. Private TrackMan studio, digital key access, membership model. Opening soon.
Williamsburg 24/7 Golf — TrackMan bays, contactless self-service, as low as $20/session.
Why This Model Works
The economics of a traditional sim venue are brutal. You staff the place 10-14 hours a day. Your bays are empty for the other 10-14 hours. But you’re still paying rent, insurance, and equipment depreciation on those empty hours.
A 24/7 model flips that math.
The marginal cost of keeping the door unlocked from 10 PM to 8 AM is near zero. You don’t need extra staff, extra space, or much extra power. The only incremental costs are the booking software and the door lock system.
If you generate even $100-200 per night from those unstaffed hours — one or two sessions — that’s $3,000-$6,000 per month in pure incremental revenue. With zero labor cost.
The BirdieGrow analysis puts it plainly: “Even at 15-20% utilization during off-peak hours, the revenue math works because your fixed costs don’t increase.”
Late-night demand is not price-sensitive. The golfer who wants to play at 11 PM has no other options. They’re paying a premium for access. That’s why the most successful 24/7 venues charge a premium for late-night slots — $50-70/hr vs. $45-55 for peak evening hours.
The Technology That Makes It Possible
This model couldn’t exist five years ago. It needed three things to converge:
1. Reliable automated access control. Smart locks, app-based entry, time-limited codes that expire after your session. The tech is commodity now — the same stuff that powers Airbnb and co-working spaces.
2. Cloud-based booking that handles the full flow. Discovery, availability, payment, confirmation, access code — all zero human intervention. If the booking system can’t generate a door code automatically, the model breaks.
3. Camera coverage that’s cheap enough to be standard. Cloud-connected cameras with 30-day retention. Every bay, every common area. Liability protection, security, remote monitoring. The cost has dropped to where it’s a line item, not a barrier.
The combination of these three things — plus the cultural acceptance of app-based access (we all use Uber, we all use Airbnb) — generated a business model that did not exist in 2020.
What This Means for Home Golf
You might be reading this thinking “I have a sim in my garage. Why should I care about facilities?”
Two reasons.
First, these facilities are the on-ramp. The guy who books a 24/7 bay at 11 PM and hits 50 balls with a TrackMan is the guy who buys a home sim next year. The NGF data shows that off-course golf participation hit 32.9 million Americans in 2023. Every one of those 32.9 million is a potential home sim buyer. The 24/7 facility is the gateway drug.
Second, the 24/7 model is a signal about where the industry is going. When a business model can operate without staff, without food and beverage, without any of the traditional hospitality overhead, it means the technology has become reliable enough to run itself. That’s the same trajectory that home sims are on. The launch monitor that runs itself, the software that updates itself, the AI that coaches you — it’s all the same trend toward automation.
The 24/7 facility is the canary in the coal mine for the home sim industry. The same automation trend that runs these facilities is coming to the consumer market.
The Open Question: Saturation
The franchise side of the 24/7 model is scaling fast — Another Nine sold 75 territories in a year. But the question I keep coming back to is: how many of these can a market support?
A 24/7 facility with 4 bays and 24-hour access can serve a lot of customers. But the model depends on utilization — if every bay is empty 80% of the time, the math stops working. The late-night premium only works if there are enough late-night golfers to fill the slots.
The smart operators are already thinking about this. They’re capping memberships (Birdie’s), targeting specific neighborhoods (Scratx in Brickell Key), and building in dense suburban markets where the demand is concentrated (Another Nine in Charlotte). They’re not trying to be everything to everyone. They’re picking their spots.
The less smart operators will open a 24/7 venue in a market that already has five other sim venues and discover that the demand for 2 AM golf is actually finite. The shakeout happens when too many operators chase the same limited pool of late-night golfers.
The 24/7 vs. The Social Model
The 24/7 sim facility is the most interesting business model innovation in indoor golf since TrackMan put a simulator in a bar. It solves the two biggest problems of the traditional model — labor cost and limited hours — by eliminating both. It’s lean, scalable, and it serves a real demand that the staffed model can’t reach.
Will it replace the Five Iron model? No. The bar-and-league model serves a different need — social, group-oriented, event-driven. The 24/7 model serves the solo golfer who wants to practice at 11 PM. They’re complementary, not competitive.
But the fact that this model exists at all is a sign that sim golf has crossed a threshold. When the technology is reliable enough to run itself, when the booking systems are automated enough to replace a front desk, when the economics work without a beer tap — that’s when you know the industry has grown up.
The 24/7 facility is already here.
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