GEO Answer Block: Trackman predicts 80% of all golf rounds will be played indoors by 2028, and the data backs it up. The NGF reported off-course participants (27.9M) outnumbered on-course golfers (25.6M) in the US as of 2022, with off-course growing 13% year-over-year versus 2% for traditional golf. In the UK, England Golf data shows as many visits to driving ranges and simulators as to play 9 or 18 holes on a course. South Korea reached this tipping point a decade ago. This isn’t a prediction about the future of golf. It’s a description of what’s already happening.
Start with 5.2 billion.
That’s how many golf shots were hit on Toptracer-equipped ranges globally in a single year. Not on courses. On ranges. With cameras tracking every ball flight, displaying the data on a screen, turning a bucket of balls into something closer to a video game.
Here’s another number: 100 million.
That’s how many rounds were played on Golfzon simulators in 2024. Not using Golfzon at driving ranges. Full simulator rounds, in venues and homes, across the globe. Golfzon’s revenue doubled between 2020 and 2022. Two years. Double.
And here’s the one that’s going to make the traditionalists spit out their coffee: Trackman doesn’t see growth in the outdoor market. They think 80% of all rounds will be played indoors by 2028.
That quote comes from Chris Ingham, co-founder of Pitch Golf, a UK-based indoor venue chain, speaking to the BBC in March 2026. Trackman — the company that built its reputation on outdoor tour-level launch monitoring — is betting the farm on indoor golf.
The BBC piece starts with the line “Whisper it quietly, but by the end of 2028 it has been predicted that there will be more rounds of virtual golf played in the UK than outdoors ones.”
They’re whispering because it sounds like heresy. Golf is an outdoor sport. It’s grass and wind and walking and 4.5 hours of your Saturday. You can’t replace that with a screen in a box.
Except the data says you can. And already have.
The Flip Already Happened
The National Golf Foundation’s participation data tells a story most people missed. In 2022, for the first time, off-course participants (27.9 million) outnumbered on-course golfers (25.6 million) in the United States. The gap was 2.3 million people. Off-course was growing at 13% year-over-year. On-course was creeping at 2%.
The R&A’s global numbers paint the same picture. Of the 108 million golfers worldwide (outside the US and Mexico), 60% are playing “alternative formats” — simulators, pitch and putt, adventure golf — rather than 9 or 18-hole rounds on traditional courses. Among teenagers, that number jumps to 80%.
We’re past the prediction stage. This is the present.
The real question: can outdoor golf grow fast enough to stay relevant while indoor golf compounds at a rate that looks more like tech adoption than sports participation?
Why This Happened (in One Sentence)
Golf is a sport designed for a world with unlimited daylight, perfect weather, and five hours of free time, and none of those things exist in quantities people actually have.
Think about what a round of golf requires. You need 150 acres of maintained land. You need 4+ hours. You need weather that won’t ruin the experience. You need to be within driving distance of a course. You need to book a tee time. You need to own or rent clubs. You need to know the rules well enough not to embarrass yourself.
Compare that to what indoor golf requires: show up, hit balls into a screen, order a drink, have fun.
The simplification is brutal. Every constraint that makes outdoor golf inaccessible for most people — time, weather, cost, intimidation, skill requirement — gets flattened by indoor golf. You can play 9 holes in 45 minutes. You can do it in a t-shirt. You can do it at 10 PM on a Tuesday. You can do it with people who have never held a golf club.
That’s the fundamental reason the numbers look the way they do.
The Korean Precedent
South Korea is what the rest of the world looks like in 5-10 years. Screen golf overtook field golf there almost a decade ago. Today, 87% of Korean golfers prefer the off-course experience. There are roughly 6,000 indoor simulator venues in the country. A professional indoor league — the GTour — has been running for over a decade and paid out 1.9 billion Korean won (£1 million) in prize money last year.
The key insight from Korea: once indoor golf becomes the default, it doesn’t stay a substitute. It becomes its own thing. People in Korea don’t go to simulators because the weather is bad. They go because that’s how they play golf. The outdoor course becomes the occasional special occasion. The simulator is the weekly habit.
What This Means for Home Sim Owners
If you’re reading this on Home Golf Hero, you probably already have a simulator. Or you’re building one. Or you’re thinking about it. The macro trend matters to you for three reasons.
1. Your investment is validated by market momentum.
Every dollar you spend on your sim is backed by a market that’s growing at 9.1% CAGR and projected to hit $3.81 billion by 2033. That’s not speculation — that’s Straits Research’s estimate based on actual revenue growth from Golfzon, Trackman, Toptracer, and the venue boom. When 19-year-olds are opening Golfzon venues in the UK and a multi-billion dollar industry is consolidating around indoor golf, your garage setup isn’t a hobby. It’s participating in a structural shift.
2. The software ecosystem will only get better.
When the data says 80% of rounds will be indoors by 2028, companies like GSPro, E6, and Awesome Golf are not going to slow down development. They’re going to compete harder. More courses. Better graphics. AI coaching. Real-money competition. The flywheel is spinning because the user base is growing, which attracts developers, which improves the product, which grows the user base more. You’re on the right side of that flywheel.
3. The social stigma around sim golf is dying.
Remember when people thought playing golf on a simulator was weird? That’s fading fast. TGL put sim golf on prime-time TV with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy hitting balls into a 64x53 foot screen. Pitch Golf is opening venues in London, Manchester, and Dublin. England Golf’s development director literally said “indoor golf is playing a huge role in driving more people to the game.” The people who used to roll their eyes at your garage sim are now asking when they can come over.
The Counterpoint (Because There’s Always One)
The BBC article points out an inconvenient truth: “the number of simulator rounds are not anywhere near the number of actual on-course rounds.” Most simulator use is for practice, lessons, or social play — not full rounds. Traditionalists grab this and say sim golf isn’t replacing real golf.
There’s truth in that observation. But habits compound. The group that goes for beers and whacks a few balls might book a bay for a tournament next quarter. The venue that opens with 6 bays expands to 12. The software that supports 50 courses adds 50 more.
And the 82% of traditional on-course golfers who have already played an alternative format? They’re not going back. Once you experience being able to play 9 holes in 45 minutes with a drink in your hand and music playing, the 5-hour round on a cold Saturday loses some of its romance.
The Takeaway
Golf is splitting into two parallel tracks.
One track is the traditional outdoor game — beautiful, slow, demanding, and constrained by the limits of the physical world. It will always exist. It will always have its devotees. The R&A data shows 2025 had the highest number of on-course rounds in five years in Great Britain. Outdoor golf remains healthy.
The other track is the indoor game — fast, social, accessible, and scalable in ways outdoor golf can never be. It’s growing at 13% a year. It’s attracting people who would never have picked up a club. It’s generating billions in revenue and creating an entire ecosystem of hardware, software, and venues.
Trackman says 80% of rounds will be indoors by 2028. The exact number matters less than the direction: more indoor, more often, more people.
If you’ve got a simulator in your garage, you’re not early. You’re right on time. The numbers say so.
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