Sim Facility Boom: 7 New Venues in One Week
and You're the Reason
The Short Answer
Seven new sim facilities in a single week. Indoor centers, bars, lounges exploding across America. Good news for your garage build, prices are dropping.
Seven new golf simulator facilities opened or got announced in a single week.
Seven. One week.
I found myself reading through the Google News RSS feed on a quiet morning and I kept seeing the same headline in different fonts. Pipestone, Michigan. Berlin, Connecticut. Five towns in New Jersey — in a single week. Meridian, Idaho. Fort Worth, Texas. Warrington, UK. Everywhere.
And then there was the guy in Milwaukee who didn’t just open a facility — he did it because traditional golf had priced him out of the game entirely. Sweet Spot Golf Club is maybe the most honest explanation of why this boom is happening: golf got too expensive, so people built their own alternative.
Not golf courses. Not Topgolf. Golf simulator facilities. Indoor sim centers with TrackMans and Full Swings and GSPro loaded on the screens. Places where you walk in, grab a beer, and hit virtual Augusta without ever seeing real grass.
This isn’t a trend anymore. It’s a movement.
What’s Actually Happening
There are three flavors of facility opening right now:
Sim lounges — small spaces, 2-4 bays, craft beer, book by the hour. Think a speakeasy with a TrackMan instead of a whiskey selection. Five Iron Golf just opened a 10-bay Trackman location in Norwalk, CT, and launched a real-money tournament platform across all 20+ locations. Westside Bunker in Cincinnati expanded from 1,500 to 7,000 square feet in under a year. Behind the scenes, the indoor golf franchise boom — Back Nine, X-Golf, and Golf VX — is scaling even faster than independent openings. These are opening in downtown districts and strip malls. Low rent, high margin.
Training centers — 6-12 bays, coach on staff, data-focused. These are replacing the old-school driving range. PGA Tour Superstore is rolling out simulator showrooms with Trackman and Full Swing bays — all 70+ stores confirmed by Forbes. Better data, better mats, no frozen buckets in January.
Sim bars — 10+ bays, full kitchen, leagues, tournaments. These are the new Topgolf. Topgolf Parsippany just opened a prototype sim lounge. Same social vibe, smaller footprint, works in any climate.
The common thread: they all use the same launch monitors and software you’d put in your garage. That GC3 you’ve been eyeing? It’s what the $40/hour sim lounge down the street runs. The GSPro course you play at home? They run leagues on it.
Why This Matters for Your Garage Build
Every new facility that opens validates the home sim market. More people try sim golf at a bar → more people want sim golf at home. It’s the pipeline. The guy who sinks a 20-footer at the local sim lounge on Friday night is the same guy Googling “how much does a golf simulator cost” on Saturday morning.
And there’s a secondary effect that’s even better: these facilities create local demand. Your wife says “why do you need a sim? You can just go to the one on Main Street.” Fair question. Your answer: that place closes at 10 PM. I want to hit balls at 11 PM. And I don’t want to wear shoes.
(Put another way: the driving range argument has never been “you can go to the range, why build one?” The answer is always convenience. Sim facilities are the same. They’re awesome. But your garage is your garage.)
The Other Thing Nobody’s Saying
Sim facilities are a hedge against your obsolescence fear.
The #1 objection from first-time buyers is “what if I don’t use it?” The dusty simulator. The $3,000 coat rack.
But if sim facilities are popping up everywhere, that means other people are using sims. The demand is real. The technology has crossed the chasm from niche toy to mainstream entertainment — when the Financial Times covers home sims as an asset class, the stigma is officially dead. You’re not buying a weird gadget — you’re joining an ecosystem that already has leagues, tournaments, and bars dedicated to it.
When you walk into a sim lounge in 2026 and see 15 people on a Tuesday night hitting balls and drinking IPAs, the question shifts from “will I use this?” to “why don’t I already have one?”
What I’d Do Right Now
If you’re on the fence about building a home sim, the facility boom is a sign, not a reason to wait.
More facilities mean more software development. More leagues. More used gear hitting the market when facilities upgrade. More content. More community. The sim golf ecosystem is growing in every direction.
Your garage build becomes more useful, not less, as the ecosystem expands. You get the convenience of home and the community of the local sim lounge. Two different experiences, same hobby.
Go play a round at the nearest sim facility. See if you like it. Then build the garage version.
And if you need more proof that simulator golf is here to stay, the Women’s TGL league (WTGL) launches this winter with 14 LPGA stars and ownership groups including Arthur Blank and Alexis Ohanian. The sim format isn’t just for men on ESPN — it’s going mainstream for everyone.
You’ll use both. I promise.
More facility coverage: Update #2: 14 More · Update #3: 5 More · Update #4: Openings + First Closure · Update #5: 15+ More · Update #10: The Boom Has Two Sides · How TGL Made Home Sims Mainstream · Indoor Golf Franchises Exploding · How Much Does a Sim Cost? · Home Sim vs Commercial Sim · Is a Sim Worth It? · PGA Tour Superstore Showrooms