One cannot discuss the 1990s and the golf course industry without talking about Family Golf Centers, Inc. In the roaring 1990s, a company appeared out of nowhere and began to become the largest operator and owner of “family entertainment facilities” in North America. The company was known as Family Golf Centers, Inc. and traded under the symbol “FGCI.” At its peak, Family Golf owned or It operates more than one hundred and fifty facilities, its portfolio included golf courses, domed ranges, shops, food services, miniature golf and batting cages, in addition to owning or operating several golf courses and over thirty skating rinks.
Family Golf has built quite a few facilities from scratch but has acquired most of its properties by buying out the existing owners and operators. A typical deal was to offer the landlord a large sum of money, more stock in the FGCI and allow the landlord to recoup an outrageous lease on the property. Many domain owners have succumbed to these attractive offers. The effect on the industry was to raise prices for everyone else trying to get into the business. Publicly, Family Golf’s revenue forecasts have inflated the expectations of anyone entering the industry.
For us people in the field of golf course equipment, we all strived to grasp that brass ring to gain the exclusive supplier status of Family Golf. Many of us were able to do some business with the company and even get paid most of the time. Some of us have been able to grow our business to new levels with the help of Family Golf. Each of us did our best to get close to the decision makers in the company. What many of us saw very early on was a complete lack of focus on running utilities. There was this always positive, upbeat public image of the company, and then there was the totally disorganized, always hectic, never-achieving operational goals for the company. An example of this frantic process was the construction of an outdoor scale and dome facility in western New York state. The dome facility had an expected opening date, and the project manager promised a ridiculous reward for opening the facility on time and on budget. To save time and money, artificial turf installers were forced to lay the turf on a poorly prepared base without drainage. The result was that the dome opened on time, the FGCI got its press release and the manager got his reward. That spring, the artificial turf was swimming in the drain due to an ill-prepared base. Loss of revenue, expensive repairs, and no one held accountable.
At the end of the greatest golf decade in history, whatever was left of Family Golf Centers, Inc. was disbanded. Facilities, class action lawsuits, and bankruptcy sales are at proportions never before seen in the golf industry and thousands of people have lost money. Selling multi-million dollar facilities for less than fifty thousand dollars.
Family golf centers represent the greed and excesses of the 1990s. It benefited from the intensity of the golf business, the optimistic investors who wanted to own a golf lot, and the availability of cash in the 1990s. Let’s hope for the sake of the industry we don’t have a repeat of this disaster.
