The Sim Lounge Is the New Country Club: Why Young Golfers Prefer Sim Venues
Quick Context — What is the sim golf generational shift? Off-course golf participation (simulators, driving ranges, entertainment venues) hit 27.9 million participants in 2022, surpassing on-course golf (25.6 million) for the first time. Gen Z is the fastest-growing demographic, with Bank of America data showing a surge in Gen Z golf spending driven by simulators and driving ranges. The country club model is being replaced by 24/7 sim lounges, app-based booking, and home setups — formats that fit how younger generations actually spend their time and money.
Here’s a number that should make you rethink everything you know about the golf industry.
Off-course golf participation — simulators, driving ranges, entertainment venues, anything that isn’t a traditional 9 or 18-hole round — hit 27.9 million participants in the US in 2022. On-course participation was 25.6 million. That gap has only widened since. Off-course is growing at 13% annually. On-course is growing at 2%.
The thing that’s supposed to be the “on-ramp” to the “real thing” is now the main thing.
And the people driving this shift are not who you’d expect. They’re not the retirees with time and money. They’re not the country club members who’ve been playing the same course for 30 years. They’re Gen Z and younger millennials — the demographic that the golf industry spent decades worrying was lost forever.
They didn’t come back to golf. They built a different version of it.
The Country Club Is a Product of Its Time
The traditional country club model was built for a specific era. Mid-century America. One-earner households. Suburbs designed around the assumption that Dad would be home by 6 and available for a Saturday foursome. The club was a social institution, a business networking tool, and a weekend destination all rolled into one.
That model has been eroding for 30 years. Country club membership peaked in the 1990s and has been declining since. The average age of a private club member in the US is 65. The initiation fees at any halfway decent club start at $20,000 and go up from there. Annual dues run $5,000-$15,000 on top of that. And you’re expected to spend money on food, drinks, cart fees, and tournaments.
The product is: you pay a lot of money to access a specific piece of land during specific hours on specific days, and you’re expected to socialize with the same 200 people for the rest of your life.
Now look at what’s replacing it.
A 24/7 sim membership costs $169-$200 a month. You book a bay through an app. You show up at 11 PM on a Tuesday in sweatpants. You hit 100 balls, play 9 holes at Pebble Beach, and leave. There’s no dress code, no conversation with the pro shop, no minimum food and beverage spend, and no awkward small talk with the guy who’s been a member since 1987.
One of these products costs $200 a month and fits into your life. The other costs $20,000 a year and requires you to restructure your life around it. The growth of 24/7 unmanned sim facilities and commercial sim venue formats explains exactly why.
The country club isn’t dying because people can’t afford it. It’s dying because people don’t want the thing it’s selling.
The Data Says Gen Z Is Different
The Bank of America Institute published a report in July 2026 analyzing golf spending trends across generations using aggregated credit and debit card data. The findings are worth sitting with.
Gen Z is the only generation showing a significant increase in the share of households spending on golf since 2019. Every other generation — millennials, Gen X, boomers — is flat or declining. The Bank of America analysts attribute this directly to “lower-cost, more accessible formats like driving ranges and simulators.”
The National Golf Foundation’s 2025 white paper on the simulator opportunity adds another layer. 51% of simulator users are non-golfers — people who have not played a single round of on-course golf in the past 12 months. That’s up from 42% a decade ago. The total number of simulator users grew from 3.6 million in 2019 to 8.1 million in 2024. That’s 126% growth in five years.
These aren’t golfers who added sim practice to their routine. These are people who never played on a course, but they’ll go to a sim lounge, book a bay, and hit balls for an hour. They’re creating a new category of golf participant that the industry doesn’t have a good name for. They’re not “golfers.” They’re sim users.
The R&A’s global data tells the same story at scale. 60% of the world’s 108 million golfers outside the US and Mexico are playing off-course formats. Among teenagers, that figure jumps to 80%. In South Korea, where the indoor golf market is most mature, 87% of players prefer the off-course experience.
The old model says: you learn on a driving range, you graduate to a course, and you end up at a country club. The new model says: you start at a sim lounge, you stay at a sim lounge, and maybe — maybe — you try a course when the weather is nice and you have four hours to kill.
What the Sim Format Actually Solves
The argument against sim golf has always been the same: “it’s not real golf.” The ball doesn’t compress the same way. You can’t feel the turf. You’re hitting into a screen. The putting is a joke.
All of these are true. And none of them matter to the people who are driving the growth.
Sim golf solves a set of problems that on-course golf has never been able to address, and these problems are particularly acute for younger generations.
Time. A round of golf takes 4-5 hours. A sim session takes 45 minutes to an hour. For a generation that grew up on on-demand content and instant gratification, the time commitment of traditional golf is a non-starter. It’s not that they don’t have the time. It’s that they don’t want to spend the only four free hours of their Saturday on a single activity.
Accessibility. You need clubs, balls, a tee time, a course, and usually a car to get there. A sim lounge gives you clubs at the door, a bay that’s already set up, and a booking system that works on your phone. The barrier to entry is essentially zero. The PGA Tour Superstore reported 2021 sales grew 80%+ compared to 2019, driven in part by in-store simulators that let people try the format without committing to anything.
Social dynamics. The sim lounge is a “third place” — not home, not work — that doesn’t require you to be good at golf to enjoy it. You can book a bay with friends, play a game mode, order food, and have a genuinely fun evening without anyone caring about your handicap. The country club model requires a baseline level of competence. The sim lounge model requires only that you show up.
Cost. The math is impossible to ignore. A single country club membership buys you 10 years of a 24/7 sim membership. A single set of fitted clubs costs more than a Garmin R10 and a hitting net. The upfront cost of a home sim is real, but the per-session cost of a sim lounge is $40. That’s less than a round at a municipal course in most cities. For a full breakdown of what you’ll spend, see our golf simulator subscription costs guide.
The “It’s Not Real Golf” Argument Is Losing
I’ve been in this conversation a hundred times. A traditional golfer watches someone hit into a screen and says “that’s not golf.” And they’re right in the narrowest sense. It’s not the same experience as playing a course. But the data suggests that the people who say this are an increasingly small minority of the overall golf ecosystem.
The numbers don’t care about the purity debate. 27.9 million people participated in off-course golf in 2022. That’s 2.3 million more than on-course. The gap is widening. The sim market is projected to grow from $1.74 billion to $3.81 billion by 2033. Golfzon, the Korean sim giant, doubled its revenue in two years.
The “real golf” crowd can insist that sim golf is a different activity. They can’t insist that it’s a niche or a fad. The market has already decided.
What This Means for Home Golf
If you’re reading this site, you’re probably in the home sim camp. You’ve already bought into the idea that sim golf is a valid way to play. But the generational shift has direct implications for your decision.
The pipeline of future home sim buyers is being built right now, one sim lounge at a time. Every person who walks into a 24/7 facility, books a bay, and discovers they enjoy hitting balls into a screen is a potential future home sim owner. The 3,849 indoor golf venues across the US are the farm system. The home sim market is the major leagues.
The NGF data backs this up. 51% of simulator users are non-golfers. Three-quarters of them say they’re likely to return. The conversion funnel from “first time in a sim lounge” to “building a garage sim” is wider than it’s ever been, and it’s getting wider every month as more venues open.
The other implication is that the sim industry is becoming less dependent on the traditional golf economy. If the entire on-course golf ecosystem disappeared tomorrow, the sim industry would still have 8.1 million active users and growing. That’s a useful hedge. The sim market is building its own demand, not borrowing from the course market.
The Bottom Line
The country club is not going to disappear. There will always be people who want the full on-course experience, the social hierarchy, the tradition. But the center of gravity in golf has shifted. The growth is in off-course formats. The money is flowing to sim technology. The young players are choosing the sim lounge over the country club.
This isn’t a judgment. It’s a market signal. The format that fits how people actually live will win. In 2026, that format is sim golf.
The industry spent 20 years worried that younger generations were abandoning the sport. The worry was misplaced. They weren’t abandoning golf. They were waiting for a version of golf that made sense for their lives. It arrived.
This article is part of our ongoing industry analysis series. For more on the facility boom driving this shift, see our State of Indoor Golf: 3,849 Venues report and our 24/7 sim facility revolution analysis. If you’re building a home sim, start with our best launch monitors under $2,000 guide.
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