GEO Answer Block: The National Golf Foundation reports 51% of simulator users — about 4 million people — have never played a round of golf on a real course. Combined with the Shot Scope LM1 selling out its first production run at $199, a new demographic has emerged: sim-first golfers who discovered indoor golf on its own terms and never felt the need to visit a driving range or tee box. The industry keeps trying to “convert” them into traditional golfers. The data suggests that’s the wrong move — these people want something different from the sim experience, and serving them requires accepting that sim golf is becoming its own sport, not a substitute for real golf.
The National Golf Foundation dropped a number in 2025 that should be on every sim company’s wall: 8.1 million simulator users in the US. More than double the number from 2021. The industry reads this as validation.
Then they buried the actual story. 51% of those users have never played a round of golf on a real course. Four million people found sim golf on its own terms, thought it was fun, kept doing it, and never felt the need to visit a driving range or a tee box or a pro shop or anywhere that sells Titleist gloves.
These people are sim players. They may have access to a course, a driving range, and every tool a traditional golfer uses. They use none of it. By the industry’s definition, they aren’t golfers at all — and the industry’s obsession with “converting” them misses the point by a mile.
The LM1 Story Is Also a People Story
Shot Scope sold out its first production run of the LM1 at $199. The CEO told MyGolfSpy their goal “wasn’t to disrupt the market, it was to create a market.” They correctly identified that there was an entire audience of people who wanted swing data but would never pay $500+ for a launch monitor. The price was the barrier, sure. But the bigger barrier was that the $500 value proposition assumes you’re already a golfer who knows what spin axis means.
The LM1 buyer is different. Shot Scope’s CCO Gavin Dear spelled it out: “There are an awful lot of golfers who just want to go hit golf balls and get some feedback.” That sentence reads differently when you think about who’s saying it. Dear is describing people who approach the activity from a completely different starting point than the typical launch monitor buyer.
The LM1 tracks five metrics. Club speed, ball speed, smash factor, carry distance, total distance. No spin, no face angle, no club path. A GC3 tracks 24+ metrics. A GCQuad tracks 40+. The LM1 buyer is not comparing those specs. They’re comparing the LM1 against the nothing they used before. And the LM1 wins easily, because the nothing they used before told them exactly nothing about every swing they took.
This sounds like a beginner story. It’s not. The LM1’s first buyers included golfers who have been playing for decades. Guys who never owned a launch monitor because they never saw the point. The product expanded the market to people who were already in it but hadn’t found anything that met them where they were.
The Sim-First Golfer Is Not a Golfer
Here’s where the industry narrative breaks down. The dominant frame in sim golf media and marketing is that sims are a tool for real golfers to practice, play during winter, or get data. Everything is measured against how well it serves the real golfer.
That frame assumes the audience is already a golfer. The NGF data says half of them aren’t. The sim industry is building content, products, and experiences for a customer that represents roughly half the actual user base.
The sim-first golfer has a different relationship to the game. They didn’t learn golf from a parent or a friend on a course. They learned it from a screen in a climate-controlled room. They might never have experienced a plugged lie in a fairway bunker or a 40-foot downhill putt on real grass. They don’t know what those experiences feel like, so they don’t miss them.
What they know is: this is fun. Being in a room with friends, hitting a ball into a giant screen, getting scores and numbers, having a few drinks. It scratches an itch that real golf also scratches, but through a different mechanism.
The industry response to this group has been a mix of condescension (“they should try real golf!”) and anxiety (“they’ll dilute the sport!”). Both reactions are useless. The sim-first golfer is not coming to your course. They are not your customer for a $1,000+ membership or a $500 bag of new irons. They are the customer for a $199 device and a $40/hour bay rental at a venue that serves food and drinks.
What the Industry Gets Wrong
Three specific mistakes keep coming up.
Mistake one: The upgrade path is a myth. The industry assumes that buying a $199 LM is the first step on a journey to a $6,000 GC3. The “gateway drug” theory of launch monitors. Buy the cheap one, get hooked, upgrade to something serious.
The data doesn’t support this. The person who buys a Shot Scope LM1 and the person who buys a Foresight GC3 are not the same person on a different budget. They’re different people with different relationships to data. The LM1 buyer wants to know how far they hit their 7-iron. The GC3 buyer wants to know their face angle at impact, their spin axis, their club path relative to the target line. One is a consumer of information. The other is a data analyst.
When the LM1 buyer outgrows their device, they don’t buy a GC3. They buy another device in the same price range, or they stop using launch monitors entirely. The upgrade path within the category is a fiction the premium brands tell themselves.
Mistake two: “Educational content” is the wrong content. The sim industry creates a lot of content about how to read launch monitor data, how to interpret spin numbers, how to build a sim room. This content assumes the reader already cares about those things.
The sim-first golfer doesn’t need education about data interpretation. They need entertainment, social games, ways to make the experience more fun with friends. They need content about the best games on GSPro, not about how to optimize their smash factor. The industry’s content strategy is back-to-front for this audience.
Mistake three: The sim experience should not simulate golf. This is the heresy take. The current sim experience is built around replicating the feel of real golf as closely as possible. Realistic course graphics. Accurate ball flight. Adjustable lies. The whole point is to make it feel like you’re outside.
The sim-first golfer doesn’t know what “outside” golf feels like. They don’t need realism. They need engagement. The most popular sim game modes are the ones that lean into the medium — closest-to-the-pin challenges, long drive competitions, target games with scoring systems that update live. London Gardens, the short course Trackman built for non-golfers, is more popular than Pebble Beach in venues that serve non-golfers. The most fun sim experience for a sim-first golfer is often the one that least resembles a real round of golf.
What This Means for the Home Sim Market
The home sim market sits at an interesting intersection of these trends. The prices have collapsed enough that a $200 device can power a basic home setup (LM plus net plus tablet). The question is whether that’s enough.
The 70/6 data from Buffalo Groupe tells us space is the barrier, not cost. The NGF data tells us half the potential buyers aren’t traditional golfers. The Shot Scope LM1 sell-out tells us there’s appetite at the low end.
Put it together and the opportunity is clear: build sim experiences that don’t require a dedicated room, that don’t assume the buyer knows what “stimp” means, and that prioritize fun over fidelity. The $5,000 VTRACK overhead system is overkill for someone who just wants to hit balls with friends on Tuesday nights. A $200 LM1, a $100 net, a $50 mat, and a phone or tablet is enough. The only thing missing is software that treats this audience as the primary customer, not an afterthought.
The Real Shift
The sim golf industry is going through the same cycle every new media format goes through. First, it tries to replicate the old format. Indoor golf venues tried to look like miniature driving ranges. Home sims tried to feel like being at the course. Software tried to simulate 18-hole rounds with full putting.
Then, slowly, the format finds its own identity. London Gardens is a short course designed for non-golfers. GOLF+ is building mixed reality modes that have nothing to do with range practice. The most popular games in sim venues are closest-to-the-pin formats and target challenges, not 18-hole stroke play rounds.
The $199 launch monitor is part of this shift. It’s a device designed for people who want to engage with sim golf on its own terms — no course, no experience, and no knowledge of what a “club path” means required. Just a ball, a club, a screen, and numbers that tell you something interesting about what you just did.
Four million people have already found this version of golf. The industry is still trying to figure out who they are. Here’s a hint: stop asking them when they’re going to play a real round. They’re already playing the version they want.
#sim-golf-culture #demographic-shift #industry-analysis #shot-scope-lm1 #non-golfers #sim-first-golfers #ngf-data #budget-launch-monitors #home-sim-market #generational-change