Chit Chat Stocks - An Inside Look At The Business of Golf

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Today, the guys are talking to Bryan, a caddy on the Korn Ferry Tour who also doubles as an investment professional. His team just got promoted to the PGA Tour next year. The golf industry is a multi-billion dollar market encompassing equipment, apparel, courses, and events, with an enduring global appeal that faces challenges from changing demographics and economic trends. Listen as Brett and Ryan ask questions to Bryan about the industry, its various business models, and market participants. Enjoy the show! ***************************** Want updates on future shows and projects? Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chitchatmoney  Subscribe to our Substack to receive free show notes and charts that go along with every episode: https://chitchatmoney.substack.com/ Contact us: [e-mail] Timestamps Money for Golf | (7:24) Driving Ranges | (18:00) Disclosure: Chit Chat Money hosts and guests are not financial advisors, and nothing they say on this show is formal advice or a recommendation. Brett Schafer and Ryan Henderson are general partners and portfolio managers at Arch Capital. Arch Capital and its partners may hold securities discussed on this show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Chit Chat Money. This is our Thursday deep dive episode where we interview an analyst to discuss either a single stock industry, or in this case, kind of a global business. This is going to be a unique episode. As you probably saw in the title, we're not talking about any specific stock today, but we have on a friend from Twitter, goes by Brian, and we're talking about the business of golf. So how do golfers make money? Where does that money come from. How is that split up? What are the significant costs and kind of what elements within the golfing industry or what sub-segments of the golfing industry are kind of good and bad businesses? It's a really wide range of conversation about the entire topic of golf.

So if you're interested, yeah, Brett, you got something? I would say as a fun teaser, he is a caddy that is on a team that's about to go to the PGA Tour. So he knows his industry better than anyone. He's living it. So it was a great perspective from him and we're happy to have him on. Yep. Without further ado, here's our interview. Welcome to Chit Chat Money. On this show, host Ryan Henderson and Brett Schaefer interview industry experts and riff on the world of investing. As a quick reminder, Chit Chat Money is a CCM Media Group podcast. Ryan and Brett are also general partners at Arch Capital, and Arch Capital may have positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

Anything discussed on Chit Chat Money by Ryan or Brett or any other podcast guest is not formal advice or recommendation. Now, please enjoy this episode. All right. Welcome in. Today, we are joined by our friend Brian from Twitter. I'm going to leave at that. And we have a very unique episode, I think, today. We've done a couple like this, but it's not catered to any one specific stock, but it's more about the business of golf. And I think Brian has a bit of a unique perspective. He kind of doubles as an investor and a caddy. So kind of a unique perspective there. But I guess before we get into some of the questions about the business of the golf, why don't you introduce yourself

a little bit? How'd you get into, I guess, both investing and caddying? Yeah. First off, thank everyone for listening. Thank you guys for having me. I'm very excited. Also very nervous to do something like this. So yeah, so I've kind of got a unique story in a way. I went to college at the end of school. I was just sort of figuring stuff out. I was working on a golf course caddying for a while and um i've always been enjoying investing and on the personal side you know nothing for anybody and i got approached by a caddy i was working with that was thinking i could do a really good job caddying for a professional golfer and i started working for him a couple years ago and we've this is now our third season it's been a pretty interesting

adventure so far all right yeah that's a i don't know good tease and i should say you're being humble you guys just made the pga tour next year so congratulations on that when did you get the official announcement and maybe you don't have to share the entire celebration but how was the celebration after that so like we got the official announcement maybe two weeks ago um i would say like the last two two and a half months we've we sort of knew we would we were making it um they were just waiting for a certain points threshold that we would hit. But we sort of celebrated along the way. You know, when we first won earlier in the year, we definitely celebrated. We were in the Bahamas, you know, at a private resort. And it was pretty cool to be able to celebrate right

there. But yeah, throughout the season, we just sort of just been celebrating any win or minor win second place third place any of those are good for us um but yeah it's just been we never surprisingly when we found out found out we just were like okay that's awesome uh interesting so you kind of already knew the points were lined up for getting to there yeah all right well that kind of i think it gives you a perfect perspective of you know you're kind of on the threshold from the second league and the corn fairy tour moving up to the pga tour you also have the investing background i think just to start out more broadly and then maybe we'll have some detailed questions i know we want to hit the netflix show i know we want to hit the casual stuff like top golf

the equipment brands all that good stuff but generally how does the business of golf work what can you give as someone who's been on the inside for a little while now yeah so i guess i can explain how like the business works for for the golfers. So every week we've got a purse that we play for. That's the total amount of money. So on the corn fairy tour, it's a million dollars every week on PGA tour. It's anywhere from 9 million up to the 20 or 25 million, I think.

And the winner gets 18% of that. And it's a pretty standard percentage across the board of what you get for what place um and obviously that gets you know it changes if some guy if there's a bunch of guys tied for third place then it kind of you average all those the third fourth fifth and sixth guy and that's how they make their money um and on my end the caddies we get paid every week that we work and then we get a percentage of what our player earns in a week so if the guy doesn't make the cut and you're just getting, you know, whatever your, your salary or your base, your basis. Um, so I guess it works a little bit like, you know, in the vesting business, you get maybe

a draw or you get, you know, a base salary, but a lot of your, a lot of your money is based on performance and, uh, and how you guys do. Okay. I have a bunch of questions cause I'm less familiar with the world of golf. Brett's kind of the, uh, between the two of us, much better golfer, but let's start with the, let's start with the, I guess the team who all is on a golf team. Like, so you've got the golfer, you've got the caddy. Is there anybody else that's taking the cut from that revenue that they're getting? So, yeah, everyone's got most of it. Everyone's got a coach of some sort. So your coach is getting paid either, you know, a certain amount of money per year and they're kind of on contract or, you know, on the PGA tour, it's a percentage.

so a lot of coaches and you know in ben's coach's situation he charges him a set number for the year and um once he gets the pga tour once there's a little bit more money to go around he'll he'll take a percentage so uh it's common to get you know anywhere from three to five percent as a coach of anything they make and then there's agents who are getting a percentage of all their endorsement deals and then also a lot of time a percentage of what they make which can go anywhere from 10 to 20 percent all right so you talked about the business of the individual team i think one well everyone has this question for all the sports leagues but where does the money come from i think with golf it's interesting because it's not just you know the nfl or the nba they're all

separate uh and we we may have time to talk about live but i know everyone's had an endless conversation on that if they're interested in this industry you know there's the separate tournaments the the the majors and all that stuff where does this money come from is it tv deals licensing deals what is it so yeah tv deals are big um that's probably the largest percentage of it so all those TV deals, you've got your title sponsor. So, you know, the, for example, the, the FedEx St. Jude classic is obviously not sponsored by St. Jude. Um, they don't put any money in, but FedEx does. Um, and then you've got all these different things. Like there's the official air conditioner, the PGA tour of the official, you know, you name it. So there's all

this money coming in and then you've got the ticket sales and, um, which is probably a small percentage if i'm thinking about it um but it's it's probably similar to most sports where you've got you know the tv deal is probably the biggest portion of it i don't know the numbers but i imagine it's it's pretty significant um to be able to to the operation is just so huge with all the the staff and camera people um it's got to be got to be some big money in it here's a quick fall do you know who owns the golf channel because i know that's just nbc oh nbc okay so it's so right and i guess maybe this is a good time to talk about this we've seen you know the netflix show come out we've seen you mentioned recently on the corn fairy tour you weren't there but

you've been playing on that all year the barstool i don't i think it was maybe on their website or maybe tv streaming they were doing a tournament what do you think about getting the expansion It seems like for a lot of these golf events away from traditional NBC, CBS broadcasting. I think it's, I think it's great. I'm not sure it's a replacement, but it's like an amazing compliment to what we have going just because, you know, I I'm a big golf fan. I watched the traditional coverage just like everybody else.

It can get a little boring. So just hearing guys that aren't the traditional old guy with an accent, making fun of the players and swearing and you know just saying whatever comes to mind that's that connects i think a little bit more with people and uh getting a lot more on the course interviews and hearing the guys stories during during the round it's uh i think it's going to be really good um i don't know what it will end up being but i think i think it's going be pretty awesome. Okay. So you mentioned the sponsors. Now you mentioned the tournament sponsors as for the player sponsors, I guess, how do those work? Is it kind of a similar thing

where it's like compensations dependent on tournament performance, or do they just get kind of a structured deal where it's like, you know, we're giving you a million dollars to wear our clothing for the year, give a percentage of this to your caddies and your coaches. Do they like share that part with the team as well so the that part does not necessarily get shared um there are many caddies who like you'll notice the player and the caddy are wearing the same hat the caddy is usually included in that deal somehow but it's not it's not a number i'm i'm sure of what it is um but as far as how the sponsorships work like you're you're getting a lot of just random businesses, typically financial companies or insurance companies that will sponsor these

guys. And they pay, you know, anywhere from $100,000 up to, you know, millions of dollars just for a logo on a hat or a shirt or collar. And on top of that, there are incentives. So I mean, if you if you win a major, or if you some guys have deals, if you're inside the top 30 on the money list or it's any of these different performance metrics. And it all adds up to how much time am I on television? Because that's really what they care about. Yeah. I always remember. And I guess this is a testament to the advertisement, although I'm not sure what I'm ever going to buy. One of their products is the Workday sponsorship for Phil Nicholson. That one always makes me laugh. Enterprise software, golf, I guess that's a

to get Gabo, but let's talk about, you mentioned the sponsorships and I think something very interesting happened in the golf industry or really hasn't happened in the golf industry. And that is the loyalty to equipment brands. Maybe if you disagree with this, tell me why you think so. But the first question is, do you, do you think golfers have any loyalty to equipment brands specifically for their clubs or their balls or whatever? and why do you believe there has been no dominant say nike x uh you know equipment player that has emerged in the industry where the brand has just separated itself from the competition yeah so i guess it's one of those yes and no answered questions um so everyone's got like a

favorite club manufacturer but at the end of the day all these guys have a club deal so they're getting paid on the corn fairy tour it's probably 35 000 bucks to play all titlist stuff so you got to wear the titlist hat you got to use titlist ball wear the foot joy shoe you got to use normally it's 12 of the clubs of your 14 and it usually is the driver and the putter which are kind of the most important ones and you don't really get a choice to play other things so that's you know And with four or five major brands in golf, you don't really get a dominant player to emerge. The only thing you can see is you've noticed that everyone's, not everybody, but most guys are playing a tight list ball, even if they're, you know, some guys don't have that, you know, negotiated into their deal. And especially like, you know, Ping, which is a big manufacturer, they don't make a golf ball.

So all those guys are using tight lists for the most part. well or outside of the professional realm because i'm trying to from an investing perspective you know there's a i think callaway may be the only one that's publicly traded but sure what why why do you think that hasn't emerged again you know for the casual golfer like myself why isn't it just seems strange that there's no brand loyalty uh i've seen all my friends switch around brands constantly you know there's i think people have their own their own loyalty to brands but as you know as a population it's just you know everyone goes to wherever like you see the commercial that says you can get 12 more yards when you use the new tailor-made driver so they

all buy the tailor-made driver the next year ping does the same thing so that's just it ends up being a silly competition because everybody wants to get the next thing that's going to help them get better when it's probably not the the golf club that's going to do it but um you know it would be interesting to see some consolidation in the golf industry like it really hasn't happened at all like i i want to say the last thing that happened was adams golf which was they made really good hybrids and they were bought by callaway maybe 10 years ago but that's the only thing i can think of um taylor made i think was public at one point and then was uh bought out and you know they're really they're not great businesses um unfortunately why uh maybe yeah let's get on that

for a little bit why do you think they're not great businesses i know men you know the brand there's no brand loyalty that's the key maybe they just need to hire away a nike advertising executive but from my perspective you look at golf clubs and the prices just continue to rise every year and you think you know generally for the avid golfer there is pricing power with especially something like a driver you know could cost 600 bucks one year and then 10 years later can cost a thousand bucks why do you think it's not why do you say it's not a good business um it's just the margins aren't great or as great as they should be for what they're selling um and the thing is they're not like there's pricing power in the sense that they could

you can move the price of the driver up, but that's basically all they've been able to do. If you look at the golf ball, I think it's been 45 or 50 bucks a dozen since I was five or six years old. And I'm 27. So you'd think that would be something they could, they raise the price of. And there's no brand that's like, Oh,

there's the Apple of golf clubs that they can charge 1200 for their driver. You know, maybe that's PXG, but they've brought their prices down to be in line with everybody else at this point. So I think they've realized that they can't, they can't do that. They don't have the pricing power that they thought they did. You know, I think on the golf club side, it's a better business than the golf course side, but I don't think either of them are great businesses. Other,

you'd probably be hearing a lot more about how awesome they were if that was the case. Yeah. I guess what is the, Do you know about the economics or the business of the golf courses themselves? I guess I probably have a general idea of how they make money, but are they usually profitable? The really high-end public ones can be, but your country clubs, your run-of-the-mill golf courses, they're not great. They're just kind of big pieces of land, and you hope that the weather is good and people come. And, um, I think in the last few years, obviously golf courses have been probably better businesses

than they have in the, in the past, but, um, I don't, I don't think, I mean, if you look at some of the public companies that have been involved with owning golf courses, it hasn't went so well. Um, so yeah. And okay. This is a selfish one. Cause we, me and Ryan have thought about this before. I'm sure, uh, my friends have group, uh, groups of friends have talked about this constantly

or maybe not constantly, but have come up from time to time. Do you think a driving range is a good business? I thought drive shack was a great business and I lost a little bit of money on that one. So, uh, um, it probably is if it's just one of those like cheap pieces of land and everyone comes to it, there's one by my house that's right next to drive shack that somehow I think makes tons more money than they do. And it's just, they're in the right location and they're charging the right price and they don't have many people on the staff. And I think you put a mini golf course in there and you get a bunch of kids to go. I think it's probably a pretty decent

business. If it's in an expensive area to own land, probably not. But if you've got a nice piece of land 20 minutes outside of the city, it's probably doing okay. Okay. And Brett, I will correct you from earlier. You mentioned that Callaway was the only public one. There's one, A. Kushnet Holdings, ticker golf. That's Titleist. Yeah, that's Titleist. Down Titleist. Okay. And then there's Vici Properties, which owns a bunch of golf courses along with casinos and things like that. But you don't really get a great look at... And they own a bunch of high-end properties in Vegas and California. Yeah. So it seems like the golf

course and the club and the drive range industry can be quite strange because the business itself doesn't seem to generate too much cash flow but the land it can sit on i'm sure a lot of people we've all seen the complaints uh the la country club was a classic one right where they said that each acre was worth like i don't know how much an absurd amount of money it's it's when you actually sell it eventually that the land is worth so much more yes and you see a lot of public golf courses in my area at least are just getting bulldozed and becoming houses interesting you know maybe just a microcosm of the housing industry i don't know yeah all right let's let's talk uh maybe i guess you could call it modern golf just because i think that's like the ticker

now for callaway but um i wanted to talk about this because from the estimates they have or the numbers they put out, golf was, I guess, in decline in terms of players or active players, active fans. And as kind of this new casual golf concept, well, Topgolf, Flat Stick Pub, things like this have kind of rolled out. It seems like it's re-engaged sort of the casual fan. Do you think that's happening? And then I guess, what do you think about the golf industry generally? Do you think it can grow? I think top golf has been great for getting a lot of people out. I think a lot of what has driven golf the last few years

has really just been COVID and everybody going outside and that being the one thing that you could do. But the people who are playing golf are playing golf so much more. My boss played golf like 220 times or something that year. And those people are buying more clubs, buying more balls. doing you know that's that's when these manufacturers were making their money um you know top golf has certainly helped you know you've got a lot of people who would never even go to a driving range are now going because they they got a corporate event or it's a birthday

party so i think that's that's going to help but i don't think those people are going to go play golf necessarily you might get a few of those people to convert um it's just it's more entertainment for them but i think there's some growth in golf the fact that there's barstool sports and there's these you know bob does sports and this guy bobby fairways who is all over instagram and youtube you know he's got millions of followers i would have never expected people to be into that so i think there's got to be more and more younger people getting into it um it's just going to take a little while to figure that out. Yeah. And this is, we've looked at top golf call top golf Callaway, uh, excuse me for a little while. And the way we like to think about it is they talk

about the industry as a whole with the casual golfers and stuff like that versus the core golfers. And it seems like the casual golfers are growing and they it's that's going to benefit the top golf business, right? Cause people go for birthday parties, like you said, and there's also things like flat stick pub a lot of different concepts you know where people can go for parties and they don't really they're probably pretty bad at golf but they can just hit the ball around it's a fun time to do every you know a couple months or something like that but the actual courses the actual industry isn't going to make as much money from these people because if they're playing once a month as you said compared to someone that's playing 200 times a year they're not going to

be spending maybe what five percent two percent of the money of these super fans um it seems to me like it's similar to the music industry where the artists always make money as we're seeing you know with like the taylor swift concert on these super fans who are willing to pay up and up and up for this type of product do you agree or disagree because it seems like the no they state that number that goes up you know as the casual fans but i always think well these are pretty low if we're going to talk like our poo of a yeah pretty low i guess to play devil's advocate and I wasn't even thinking about this. You know, if you start playing golf and you're really into it

and you buy clubs and you never play, that's awesome for Callaway. I mean, they're raking in money off people who really shouldn't be buying golf clubs. So maybe they'll get those people to convert into customers and they're not, you know, heavy volume customers, but they're going to, you know, they're going to buy a driver every five years and use it six times. And that's that.

You know, I, it would be interesting to see what, what some of these people start doing. You mentioned earlier that TV, uh, TV rights are probably the biggest revenue driver for a lot of the, well, ultimately a lot of the pro golfers. How do you think golf as a whole has transitioned to kind of this world of streaming? because I know there's a lot of leagues that have been kind of left behind as they were. And I'm guessing golf has a lot of older listeners or older viewers, but MLB has had a hard time, I think, converting a lot of people or growing their audience because they've been slow to transition to streaming. Do you think golf's been on kind of the cutting edge there? Are they on a

lot of the streaming properties? I guess, what are your thoughts there? Yeah, golf is pretty accessible on your phone on the computer like a lot of the times i'm watching golf that way these days live golf started that way all over youtube um and like you know for my someone like my dad like i don't know if they're ever going to watch on the computer but he's got the television to watch on but as far as like the people i see all the time and i'm hanging around with which is all young people that are very good at golf um they're they're very into watching on their phone and you know every all the the golf channel app's great the pga tour app is great you could follow all the players along you could almost watch you know you could look at basically a

caddy's yardage book and watch the player play each hole which is really cool if that's something you're even into um there's so much data in golf now um i think it's it's definitely on the cutting edge it's just whether you're willing to to be part of it as a as a fan right and it's it's really interesting where you know we talked again on how there's the casual golfers versus and they not may not be playing a bunch but they might buy clubs and possibly if they go to top golf they might watch you know the major tournaments or something like that and viewership might go up i think i saw this year that or at least the last few years there has been a tick up um i think that's kind of leading me to say do you think there's going to be a big sports right buyer

that really increases kind of this new pga tour well i guess it's pga tour slash live now i don't know what they're calling it but do you think there's going to be a big increase in the sports rights where someone's going to try to could be a netflix could be an amazon could be anyone try to get the international rights for the uh the golf league um i think it might be a big competition but it seems to only be between cbs and mbc those are the guys that broadcast it all the time um if i had to guess it would be comcast because they're and at the end they're mbc and also golf channel so i think they've got a little bit more of a stake in all of this and you know a reason to be the main people um but as far as how it's

going to shake out especially with what's going on with live i i certainly don't know who's going to own it all or who's gonna who's gonna be the big buyer um i've got some guesses but they're as good as yours what uh as someone from you know uh i guess in the corn fairy tour what were your thoughts on the whole shake-up that happened i think it was a couple months ago now or maybe two months ago and could you explain what happened yeah explain what happened and what your thoughts were yeah so it was kind of interesting so the guy i caddy for we were actually playing in a pga tournament we were playing the canadian open and we were on the driving range and it was like one of those like amber alerts that went off everyone started picking

up their phone and looking at it and everyone's just kind of murmuring and slowly but surely we're realizing what we got on our phones everyone's getting a you know wall street journal or it was espn or something was broadcasting hey the live tour and the pga tour just emerged and you know these are all guys who had stayed on the pga tour so the reaction that was happening was was kind of interesting um as far as what happened i don't think anyone really still knows um but it's it's gonna be it should be good for golf i don't i think that's kind of what all the guys are saying because that's what they're supposed to say but that's not that's my own opinion um you know having more money to go around is not necessarily a bad thing

um what whatever you want to say about where it comes from that's i guess that's everyone else's opinion yeah that's what talked about ad nauseum uh what so you mentioned that you think that's going to be either nbc or cbs yeah what keeps netflix from going i know they don't aren't don't have any sports rights right now but they had the documentary seems like it would work for them because there's a global audience in europe and japan and australia what keeps them out of this could you see a world where netflix is streaming a pga tour event like 20 years from now or maybe 10 like for sure but like not in the next like not while my dad's still alive like he's just gonna be like i'm

not going on netflix to watch golf so until you got those guys that aren't going to be watching I just think it's a huge risk to get a lot of people who are just sitting around watching golf four days a week they don't want to get rid of those guys so maybe there's a world where they also broadcast it or they they've got their own they start broadcasting live or I don't know but I just don't think it's happening in the next five years at least that's it okay and then on that netflix documentary you mentioned before that you're saving it uh that you haven't watched it yet but what i guess did you notice a difference uh after it went out because it seems like it was extremely popular yeah like i've had people who don't even like golf come and ask me about it and

tell me about different stories they they thought the thing with tony fina was really cool and um like oh that guy seems like a really cool guy now i want to root for him um and it's funny last week i was staying with a family and i the first time i met this guy i'm like he looks just like justin thomas and like the next day i told him that and he was laughing because he's like for the last few months like all these girls keep coming up to me and saying that i look like justin thomas and i think there was a long time where 25 year old girls weren't walking up to guys and saying that they look like a golfer um so that's got to be good for for the game in some way um and especially for the golfers because you know more exposure to them and making them

a personality means more money to them and more money to the game yeah yeah it seems like i don't know if you follow the f1 business closely but it seems like it's kind of similar except you can't really buy the whole league as a single entity it's way more complicated than formula one but seems very similar where they're trying to boost the viewership you increase the sponsorships you increase the you know how much a city wants to host them um i guess ryan do you have any follow-ups before we do any maybe a fun one to end it or something like that no i think that covers the basics it's i mean i guess maybe one thing we didn't hit on we talked about the revenue streams what are the costs just wages to the team yeah like costs yeah travel

um you know every week both the you know ben and me we i pay for my plane ticket i play pay for my rental car i pay for you know if i'm we're staying in the airbnb this week so um you know he's covering it this week sometimes i'm staying with caddies sometimes we're staying with a family who's nice to host us um but we pay for all our food um you know it's it's not like a normal sport where like you're on an nba team and you get to fly on the private jet you stay in the team hotel and you've got the physiotherapist on staff and you got all your food covered like it's a totally different ball game and um it makes a little bit more fun because you got to get creative and you're on your own and you can be independent but it's uh it's it's

yeah it's it's different on on the professional side for golfers for sure okay and maybe this is a fun one if you can't think of someone you don't have to answer but from a business perspective who do you think the most or maybe it can be skill because i guess relates who do you think the most undervalued team is in golf in golf yeah it could be like obviously you know tiger woods is probably not going to be the answer or maybe it is but because he's the most famous but what's like a sneaky undervalued maybe this is kind of a funny way to say who's then you know the most underrated golfer out there it's probably ben silverman but that's that's besides obviously him but maybe um you know there's a lot of like young kids on this tour like there's this kid pearson cootie

who's the grandson of a former masters winner and he's won three times in the last 23 starts he's won behind us on the points list and um like whether or not he's going to be a major champion in or whatever, he's going to be a superstar. Like he's got the Nike sponsorship already. He's kind of got that, like, you know, young, he swings hard and like, it's, it's, I think he's going to be a success in the business world, whether or not the golf world. So that's probably someone I would say that I, I see on a regular basis, that's going to be pretty big. Okay. Good answer. And maybe one more, what if you could separate, cause I know you can't really invest in a lot of this stuff. If you could separate one part of the industry as say the

highest quality business, if you could say like that, like, you know, you mentioned the drivers are probably the best part of the equipment. There's something like Topgolf, there's the golf courses, driving ranges, the balls. Although I think I know the ball isn't going to be the answer because you said that they haven't been able to raise prices in 20 years. What do you think is like the highest quality business in the industry? Trackman. Interesting. I don't know if you know what track man is but it's a track for the normal viewer so track man is what basically every golfer uses to aid in their performance like you know when you go to the driving range and you see there's a little sign that says red flags 180 yards and the blue flag is 150 and you're like

oh i'm hitting my club to this far like that's that's what you do but like the golfers they've got every single metric for ball speed club head speed launch angle attack angle spin rates and they can come up with all this data that's going to help them perform better. And those things cost like $25,000. And that's the only thing that golfers don't get for free. Every club, every ball, anything you want as a golfer is free, but they don't get a discount really. I mean, it's just, they know they've got a great business and they're, when you're watching television and you see the data that they give you, that's who's feeding it to you. They have a bigger version of that that's what's at top golf that gives you all the data um i don't know the numbers

on the enterprise side but i gotta imagine it's pretty damn good so right so if anything tracking software is the best spot of the industry no surprise they're kind of the sneaky one software of course yeah yeah software with pricing power that isn't consumer facing uh yeah i can tell ryan's already looking if it's public but it's not yeah i think it's like it's in some like weird country i think netherlands or um yeah i'm not seeing what about like top tracer is that similar technology or is it kind of inferior so the top tracer i think it uses trackman data okay okay that's the brand yeah gotcha yeah all right well ryan do you have any others i don't have any follow-ups i think that's it all right all right well i think that is going to do it

Brian, thank you for joining us. We're going to throw a disclosure on this, even though we talked very little bit about public equities, but we want to remind listeners that Brett and I are not financial advisors. Anything we say or discuss here on Chit Chat Money is not formal advice or recommendation. We are, however, general partners at Arch Capital. So clients may have positions in any securities that we discussed on this podcast, although we didn't discuss that many securities. But thank you all for listening.

Thank you, Brian, for joining the show. And we'll see you all next time. Thanks for watching!