By Lorin Anderson, President
As has been the case for many years in our annual Operations and Compensation Survey and again in the 2025 results, about half of all coaches’ revenues come from one-on-one private golf lessons. This year’s survey found that 46 percent of member revenues ($83,171 out of $183,085 total average revenues) come from one-on-one private golf lessons as programming offerings continue to broaden and some of our coaches tap into around a dozen revenue streams. This private lesson percentage year was the lowest we’ve recorded in the history of our survey, down 2 percentage points from a year ago. Private lessons made up 46 percent of Employees’ revenue. For Independent Contractors it was 45 percent of their revenues.
As for overall revenues by position type, employees averaged $180,936 while coaches who are independent contractors averaged 7 percent more at $193,718. Academy Owners with multiple instructors averaged 67 percent more than employees coming in at $302,649 – the first time any position type cracked the $300K barrier.
It was one of the strongest growth years we’ve seen in our 17 years conducting this survey. Overall average revenue increased 11 percent from a year ago. Employee revenues were up 3 percent. Academy Owners were up 19 percent and Independent Contractors were up 29 percent.
These increases occurred despite the fact that the typical Proponent Group coach actually was in front of students teaching about an hour less on average over the past year than in 2023, logging an average of 28.0 hours per week actual teaching time. This average has gradually decreased each year since 2021 when the average number of hours of teaching time with students peaked at 32.1 hours per week. In 2022 the average dropped to 30.4 hours per week on average and in 2023 the average hours of teaching time dropped to 29.1 hours weekly. At 28 hours weekly this is approximately 1,400 hours of billable teaching annually spread over 50 weeks. This is down from a little over 1,600 hours in 2021.
The largest additional revenue contributors, after private lessons and salary ($32,861) were long-term coaching programs averaging $19,534, basic group lessons and clinics at $17,252 and golf schools at $10,743.
After many years in decline, golf schools shot up in the survey from an average per coach of $4,253 to $10,743 last year – an increase of 152 percent. Interestingly, the percentage of coaches who offered golf schools was virtually unchanged (31 percent vs. 30 percent a year ago), but those who are in the schools business saw a huge increase in bookings.
While coaches often talk about passive income (revenues produced for the coach when they are not personally teaching) they have remained relatively small. Only $7,080 on average out of $183,085, or just 4 percent. (This included revenues from staff coach payments, endorsements, coaching a school team, tournament winnings, membership sales, media and sales commissions.)
Online and remote teaching also gets a lot of attention these days but, so far, the average revenue from internet lessons only averages $3,733 per coach over the past year, just 2 percent of total revenues. A few coaches are beginning to build a significant online business, but only 28 percent of our coaches reported online lesson revenue (down from 30 percent a year ago and 32 percent two years ago). For those who reported online lesson revenue the average earned was $13,185 but the median amount was $2,000 which shows that only a tiny percentage of coaches have figured out how to generate significant online lesson revenues while the rest continue to just dabble in this space.
