Golf Genius has announced a new partnership with renowned UK golf resort Foxhills Club & Resort to provide live scoring functionality in its new fleet of E-Z-GO RXV golf cars. The agreement says live scoring will be available via E-Z-GO’s Textron Fleet Management (TFM) screens.
Basically, this supposes to be a positive news for the members and guests of Foxhills Club & Resort, but it is not totally. I understand the good intention of Foxhills Club & Resort to serve better their customers.
At the same time, when I think about mobile mindset and how our mobiles became our “butler,” or “lifeline”, I start to doubt the importance of this feature of a golf cart digital display. We don’t hear that either Club Car or E-Z-Go would invest too much in this feature of their golf information system.
If you still wish to have this feature then why not to buy Club Car golf carts with the Visage system? It could even save you some extra costs.
This kind of service/solution can be interesting for those (people aged 55+) who don’t know how to exploit their smartphones. Let’s stop for a second. Who is a typical Foxhills Club & Resort member/guest? It is not a minor issue!!
Golf clubs should prepare themselves for the future and it will be mobile and wearable-driven. For my and the younger generation it is already obvious to manage more and more aspects of our life via our mobile (e.g. Uber, ticket purchase, mobile payment, dating etc.).
In 2016, in its Mobile Benchmark Report (Adobe Digital Index, August 2015) Adobe, a software company found that mobile is the preferred way to explore and interact with brands.
We have to accept the fact that we are living in a mobile-first reality.
Should golf clubs cooperate rather with live scoring apps?
I would definitely say yes. My biggest problem with adding Golf Genius’ Tournament solution to E-Z-GO’s TFM is that it is just about tournaments. Hole19 would be also boring if it would not offer many other services (most recently they are rolling-out tee-time booking opportunity) e.g. golf course reviewing, connecting golfers within the app etc.
The Golf Genius’ Tournament solution is not built to enable golfers to collect their past performance data, share their results with others (Let’s not forget that human need to achieve status! This why we like for instance quizzes and for the same reason gamification is working.) and socialize with other golfers. For this, you don’t have to be a geek or a data-obsessed person.
Especially, when we accept that our mobile is almost like a lifeline for us. However, this requires from golf clubs’ side to invest in high-speed Wi-Fi service, not to force golfers to use their data roaming. For the same reason, Golf National (host of the 2018 Ryder Cup) is now building a Wi-Fi network that will be able managing the needs of a huge audience.
The big question is that when will live scoring application developers like Golf GameBook, 18 Birdies or Hole19 come up with a “white label” solution for golf clubs. Such solution could be an added value service of golf clubs. Golf clubs could brand and customize this “white label” live scoring mobile application.
Who will be the first “white label” live scoring mobile application solution provider??