For many years we’ve been tracking our coaches’ technology usage for their businesses. In the recently released 2023 Proponent Group Operations and Compensation Survey we look at six key technology areas: Launch monitors, cameras, video analysis software, lesson scheduling software, student performance tracking software and additional teaching technologies. Here’s what we found.
Launch Monitors
TrackMan (58 percent usage), FlightScope (31 percent) and Foresight (26 percent) have been the top three launch monitors – in this order – for the past five-plus years. Over the past five years TrackMan is up 8 percentage points, while FlightScope is up 4 points and Foresight is up 15 points. Fullswing made a move into fourth place at 7 percent market share.
Cameras
Apple owns this category with 95 percent of coaches using either an iPhone (64 percent) or an iPad (31 percent) to film their students’ swings. This was an all-time high in our survey. Apple saw an overall gain of 7 percentage points over the past five years mostly coming from Casio’s drop from 6 to 2 percent usage.
Video Analysis Software
Over the past five years, V-1’s market share is down 1 percentage point as more options continue to come into this space (32 to 31 percent). Coach Now continues to see more penetration and is now comfortably into second place at 21 percent usage. TrackMan (16 percent) and Swing Catalyst (13 percent) rounded out the top four slots while 10 software packages scored at least 1 percent usage in this fragmented category.
Lesson Scheduling Software
Electronic scheduling remains extremely fragmented. USchedule continues to lead in market share at 25 percent (up 3 points from last year’s survey). ThrivSports was down 2 points to 10 percent penetration tied with Acuity. Google Calendar was fourth at 8 percent usage. Nearly 20 other options were mentioned by our coaches. Many using software not specifically designed for the golf industry. Interestingly, those using their PGA of America paper calendars increased from 8 to 11 percent from a year ago.
Student Performance Tracking Software
For the first time, we asked which software app our coaches use to track student performance. At this time the most common response was 45 percent saying “none of the above.” Still, CoachNow was far and away most popular among the currently available options with 32 percent market share. SwingU/ShotbyShot was second at 8 percent. Meanwhile, newcomers Clippd registered 7 percent, Upgame 5 percent and Golf Genius Coach 360 3 percent in their first months of availability, which points to this segment becoming more competitive.
Additional Teaching Technologies
The top spot for the fifth year in a row is Blast Motion in use by 58 percent of our member coaches. Debuting on this list in the second position is Sportsbox AI with 37 percent of our member coaches already using the year-old app. Boditrak (35 percent), K-Motion (31 percent) and SAM PuttLab (23 percent) rounded out the top five. DeWiz made the biggest move among the rest of the technologies available going from 2 to 10 percent market penetration.