San Diego's Morley Field in its springtime splendor. Photo added to UDisc by @aohara
It's a Wednesday morning in February, and the world's most popular disc golf course – Morley Field in San Diego, California – is, as usual, busy.
The sound of metal singing as it meets plastic greets you the moment you set foot in the dirt parking lot, while players nonchalantly await their turn on a well-worn bench behind the first tee. Out on the course, jacaranda trees dot the fairways dressed in their yellow-green winter coats, still a few months away from bursting into the purple blooms that perfectly match the essence of this vibrant scene.
In the pro shop, players shuffle through stacks of discs and load up on snacks, both providing fuel for the adventures ahead. A disc golfer from Minnesota, in town for a reprieve from the cold, buys enough new plastic to get him through the course, since he didn't pack anything for the trip. Out on hole 4, he basks in the sun and waits behind a group of six players, unbothered by the traffic. "Yeah, it's way busier here than up there," he remarks.
According to Josh Weekley, the assistant manager at the Morley Field Pro Shop, it's a pretty typical Wednesday. And while he knows the course's proximity to America's Finest City helps make it more popular than anywhere in the world – "Except for in the summertime, when Norway takes some top spots," he notes – participation hasn't shown any signs of slowing down.
"It's still gaining popularity – we see a lot of new people every week," Weekley said. "...Even compared to last year, it just seems to be a lot heavier traffic and more consistent, even on weekdays."
The thing is, it's not just here that's bustling with energy. Drive 25 minutes east to Mast Park or 35 minutes north to Kit Carson Park and you'll encounter two more courses that rank in the top 25 for popularity worldwide, as regular leagues and weekend throngs of players both novice and experienced provide all the evidence you need that disc golf is alive and well.
Sure, San Diego County certainly has a few elements in its favor that make it an ideal disc golf environment – a year-round temperate climate and more than 3 million people, to start – but there's more than weather and density that make these courses paragons of disc golf success. Just look at what they have in common, and you'll begin to see a through-line that connects the sport's continued growth:
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🤝 Approachability – All have navigable layouts that are welcoming to new players yet challenging enough for veterans.
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💰 Affordability – Mast asks for a $4 fee, while Morley charges $5 for a weekday round. It's tough to find anything that will entertain you for two hours these days for that cheap. Kit Carson, meanwhile, is free (just like 89% of courses worldwide).
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🛒 Local retailers – Each course has a nearby pro shop, perfect for new players who don't have equipment yet or those who want to dive deeper once they get hooked on disc golf.
This isn't just a Southern California phenomenon, though. Whether it's Minneapolis or Medellín; Auckland or Oslo; Warsaw or Worcester; or anywhere in between, disc golf continues to thrive in new towns, cities, states, and countries each year.
More precisely, UDisc's comprehensive disc golf course directory includes 16,267 places to play.
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🚧 1,165 new courses were built and added in 2024, coming in at a healthy 3.2 courses per day.
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5️⃣ That marks five years in a row where more than 1,000 courses have been installed.
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🗺️ There are disc golf courses in 91 countries around the globe.
Notably, the courses contributing to this count are open to the public and regularly available for play. If you include the cottage industry of temporary event courses, private tracks, and backyard layouts that also use the UDisc app for mapping and course support tools, the number swells to almost 28,000.
That's according to a study conducted by three environmental economists – Kevin Meyer of Saginaw Valley State University, Jimena González-Ramírez of Manhattan University, and Kenneth Liao of Farmingdale State College – in the New York City area during fall 2022 and summer 2023. Their research was presented at different academic conferences and will be shared at the Eastern Economic Association Annual Meeting in Manhattan on February 23, 2025. By combining a series of in-person surveys with participation records from UDisc, they determined that disc golfers who played FDR State Park and Heckscher Forest Championship incurred travel costs but derived even greater value from their visits. The study found that, on average, the recreational benefit a disc golfer at these courses receives is approximately $70 per player per trip.
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➕ That recreational benefit is known as a "consumer surplus." Essentially, it's the amount of extra value someone receives from an activity on top of how much they paid for it.
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☝️ This doesn't indicate that players are willing to pay a $70 greens fee. It means that, as an example, if they pay a $5 greens fee they are getting another $65 of bonus enjoyment out of their time on the course. (Most courses don't require fees.)
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🤑 All told, disc golfers at FDR State Park and Heckscher realized a combined annual recreational value of $6.4 million.
"Our project was motivated by the absence of disc golf courses in New York City prior to 2024, leaving over 8 million residents without access to this affordable and inclusive outdoor activity," González-Ramírez said. "At that time, the nearest courses were primarily accessible by car, restricting the sport to those with vehicles. Our study reveals that disc golfers travel significant distances and derive substantial recreational benefits, highlighting the need for courses within NYC’s five boroughs."
When you see numbers like these, it’s clear that disc golf courses deliver a return on investment that few other public amenities can match.
Zooming out to a bigger picture perspective, let's think about how this can relate to a course's community payoff:
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Using the study's findings, it would take 429 rounds for disc golfers to realize $30,000 in recreational value – a figure that also serves as a reasonable starting estimate for the cost of installing a new 18-hole course.
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In 2024, an average of 150 rounds were played per week at Heckscher. (Remember, this is just rounds that were recorded on UDisc. The actual number is likely higher.)
Heckscher, then, recoups the installation cost estimate (and some change) every three weeks. And if you're investing in disc golf in your local area, it's likely you can pay off those costs in terms of recreational value in the first few months a course exists.
To be clear, these figures might differ based on where you live – the study accounts for local income levels and travel costs, which are higher in New York due to its above-average cost of living. Still, the result represents a valuable perspective for people pitching disc golf to local stakeholders.
"To our knowledge, this is the first estimate of a disc golf course’s value," Meyer said. "While future estimates will likely vary by region, our results suggest that most disc golf courses are a relatively low-cost, high-benefit use of public land."
- 🛹 It's also in line with a University of Wisconsin study on Lauridsen Skatepark in Des Moines, Iowa, the largest in the U.S., that found users gained roughly $60 in recreational value per visit.
Most players would have already attested to it, but these findings make it pretty definitive: Disc golf delivers tremendous bang for your buck.
"Disc golf is more than just a casual pastime; it’s a high-value recreational resource," Liao said. "When you see numbers like these, it’s clear that disc golf courses deliver a return on investment that few other public amenities can match."
Promote disc golf's value in your area:
More than 20 million rounds of disc golf were played with UDisc in 2024 – 20.1 million, to be more precise. That represented a 1.5 million-round increase over 2023 and is the capstone to a half-decade trend during which disc golf has cemented itself as a legitimate form of outdoor recreation.
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☝️ Interestingly enough, the average number of rounds per player on UDisc decreased by one, from 21 to 20.
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🥏 However, nearly 100,000 more players logged a round in 2024 than in 2023.
So, even if an individual disc golfer is recording a round on UDisc a little less often, there are more individual disc golfers coming in every year. That's a tradeoff we'll gladly make for the long-term sustainability of the sport.
And this year, we can happily report that this number isn't just based on their outposts in the United States. It's a worldwide trend.
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🍩 According to Dunkin', the beloved donut and coffee chain has "more than 13,200 restaurants in 40 global markets."
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🧮 Doing some quick math, that puts disc golf ahead by about 3,000 locations and 50 countries. Scoreboard.
That's no knock on the pastry purveyors. Instead, it's a helpful, delicious way to communicate disc golf's scale to people who may not be as familiar with it. After all, who doesn't love donuts? They're round, like discs, and they have holes, too.
Note: The sum of all courses listed does not represent all disc golf courses available, as not all are categorized, and some may appear in multiple categories. New courses may have been categorized, but not necessarily built, in 2024.
| Property type | New in 2024 | Total on UDisc |
| 🌳 Public park | 516 | 7,203 |
| 🎒 School or university | 186 | 2,122 |
| ⛺ Camp | 121 | 1,041 |
| ⛷️ Ski area | 60 | 557 |
| ⛪ Church | 52 | 525 |
| ⛳ Golf course | 51 | 514 |
| 🛌 Hotel | 51 | 456 |
| 🪖 Military facility | 14 | 194 |
| 🍺 Brewery or winery | 26 | 156 |
In 2024, the number of 9-hole courses installed was double that of 18-hole venues, continuing a trend of these shorter courses infusing new life into the sport.
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🤓 It makes sense: If land is at a premium, start small and you'll still be providing a place to play. Getting hung up on 18 being the magic number may hold you back from getting any baskets in the ground at all.
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👣 The majority of 9-hole courses in UDisc's directory have a footprint under 10 acres/4 hectares. You don't need much space to get started!
Need more inspiration? Mast Park, the San Diego-area course from the introduction, is a 9-hole course with multiple tees on each hole. That's helped it fit in a smaller footprint and cater to players who want a "full round" experience. Win-win.
DiscGolfPark Bad Sobernheim in Germany, a 9-hole course that is ideal for beginners. Photo added to UDisc by @flickapproach
According to an in-app survey conducted in October 2024, 86% of players on UDisc introduced one or more new disc golfers to the sport in the last year.
That's an incredible number, but how do you keep them coming back to join you for the next one?
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1️⃣ It may sound obvious, but it's also data-driven: Players on UDisc who scored their first round at a 9-hole course average more lifetime rounds than those who start on an 18-hole track.
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2️⃣ New disc golfers who played their first round on an easy course were 10% more likely to play a second round than those who hit every tree got their start on a very challenging one.
To put that into perspective, that's how long it would take you to watch the top-grossing film of 2024, Pixar's Inside Out 2, 20.6 million times.
Imagine turning on Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" and letting it spin for almost 3,800 years. That would get you close to how many hours were spent playing disc golf!
- ☝️Remember: These numbers come from the more than 875,000 players who logged a round with UDisc in 2024. The number from all disc golfers worldwide is likely much, much higher.
Why does time spent on the course matter? It's how parks and recreation departments frame the value they bring to their localities. UDisc provides numbers like these to more than 10,000 course ambassadors around the globe to help measure disc golf's impact so they can continue to lobby for amenities and enhancements, and even more courses.
"As a former parks and rec professional and current course designer, I know that data on usage is incredibly important and can drive decisions," Climo Disc Golf Sales and Brand Manager Dana Vicich said. "The standard growth stats are great, but when you can say how many hours were spent on a course or how many steps were taken, those are metrics that can make new course projects happen."
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❓Does your local course need new tee pads? Track your rounds with UDisc and contribute to its usage numbers.
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🆕 Looking for more courses to be installed? It's the same thing.
When you record your plays with the app, you are directly impacting how disc golf is measured in your community, and organizers use that information to help get more courses in the ground. Something to keep in mind next time you are thinking you might not want to take out your phone during a round.
That's about 35 million miles/56 million kilometers! Some quick conversions show us that's about as long as:
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🌙 74 trips to the moon and back
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🧱 1,342 round-trip walks on the Great Wall of China
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🥏 166.7 million world record distance disc golf throws
A 2023 study in The European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that participants who upped their step counts by 1,000 per day (over a baseline median step count of 3,867) experienced a 15% decrease in all-cause mortality. So not only is disc golf fun, but it's literally life-giving. Get to steppin'!
Kippermoen Frisbeegolfbane in Mosjøen, Norway. Photo added to UDisc by @puttn88
That's the fourth year in a row the Nordic nation has increased its course count by triple digits, and its 106 in 2024 bested the 101 that took root in 2023.
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🚗 Its most played new course, Kippermoen Frisbeegolfbane in Mosjøen, is far from the country's population centers yet racked up more than 12,000 rounds from 1,100 unique disc golfers in 2024. It's a true testament to how disc golf has taken hold there.
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🏙️ While Ekeberg Frisbeegolfbane still reigns supreme for overall popularity and Krokhol Disc Golf Course ranks as the world's best, it isn't just a two-course show in Oslo: Holmenkollen DiscGolfPark experienced a 5,000-round jump over the previous year, while Muselunden and Stovner still managed to bring in nearly 30,000 rounds combined for the capital city.
What's made disc golf explode in Norway? If you ask Jørn Idar Kvig, who founded the company Nordisc to promote "Frisbee for all" in the country, it's because it's started to capture the attention of a wider variety of players.
"From my observation, disc golf in Norway has become more of a household sport in the last few years, an activity for the whole family," Kvig said. "People using the courses have become more diverse, and disc golf has become a sport more utilized by teachers at schools.
Disc golf in Norway has become more of a household sport in the last few years, an activity for the whole family.”
"It is inspiring to see how clubs, organizers and TDs are pushing the professional scene with events like Krokhol Open, European Disc Golf Championship and PCS Open, getting the world's best players to Norway and creating attention for the sport in the mainstream," he continued. "We still have a long way to go to have a professional setup for new players and youth, but disc golf in Norway is on its way from being a novelty activity to a professional sport."
The 100 European Disc Golf Courses People Most Want to Play
Highland Park has provided a home for New York City disc golfers, but it's also faced some pushback from local residents. Photo added to UDisc by @contraflo
After working for years to cultivate partnerships and secure property, 2024 saw the New York City Disc Golf Association successfully deliver the first disc golf course to the Five Boroughs. A collaboration with the Paul McBeth Foundation, the charity started by the six-time disc golf world champion to help bring the sport to underserved communities, Highland Park Disc Golf Course provided 10 holes in a bucolic, accessible park space on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, perfect for introducing new players to disc golf.
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☝️ That means access to the sport for 5 million residents of just those two boroughs.
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📆 Since its opening at the beginning of last summer, the course has been enjoyed over 4,000 times by over 900 players based on UDisc records, with disc golfers from 48 states and 14 countries stopping by for a visit.
The NYCDGA has been diligent about engaging the surrounding communities from the beginning, hosting nearly 20 events that have helped beautify the park and educate new players. It also teamed up with the NYC Parks Department to market the course, a unique, high-profile partnership meant to ensure Highland Park was viewed as an asset to the neighborhood. There have been positive signs for the local economy as well, with a bar beginning to sell discs, an NYC-centric disc golf company popping up, and several local businesses engaging with the club to offer discounts and other incentives for players.
Unfortunately, not everyone has seen the course as a positive: A small, yet vocal group of residents organized to lobby the city for the course's removal, citing anything from potential dangers (to be clear, no one has been injured at the course) and misinformation about its funding sources to disc golfers being impolite.
But in true NYCDGA fashion, organizing has been key. Club co-founder and executive director Alex Bender said he and other players have been collecting positive sentiments to share with the city, and one local neighborhood association has started its own petition in support of the course. They continue to host clean-ups and educational programming for nearby schools, as well.
- 👐 "We still invite the opponents to our events, too," Bender said. "We want them to learn about disc golf. We're trying to make inroads. It's not always landing, but it's better than the alternative of it always feeling hostile from all directions."
There are signs of progress. Instead of completely pulling the course, it is being redesigned, with many holes moving to the perimeter of Highland Park as part of a revitalization effort that will also remove invasive species – something disc golf courses excel at – and debris. The end result is a win for disc golfers both current and prospective in the Big Apple, and Bender attributed much of the effort to the club's partnership with the parks department.
"The personal rapport and relationship has made them want to invest in our mission," Bender said, "and the benefits the course has brought the park far outweigh any disadvantages."
The 2024 PDGA Women's Global Event in Medellín, Colombia, drew 34 participants. That's just one indicator of many that the South American country is on the ascent. Photo courtesy Ken Loukinen
When Ken Loukinen moved to Colombia in 2019, disc golf was virtually nowhere to be found.
A retired firefighter, Loukinen picked up the sport in Florida 15 years ago. While recovering from a motorcycle accident, he caught wind of physical therapists encouraging patients to use the Playstation Move, a controller for Sony's flagship video game system intended to get people up and, well, moving. He bought one that was bundled with Sports Champions, a game that included several mini-games like table tennis, bocce, and archery.
And disc golf.
Loukinen was hooked from the jump and soon found there were real live courses in his area. Well on the road to recovery, he purchased two starter packs and set out for his first round at Markham Park in Sunrise. He lost two discs that day, but gained a lifelong passion.
When it came time to hang up his helmet, he had Medellín, Colombia, on his radar thanks to its reputation as the City of Eternal Spring. He relocated and was indeed greeted with perfect year-round conditions – and only one disc golf basket for its 2.6 million people.
Undeterred, he brought five portable targets and several hundred donated discs with him, intent on planting the seeds of the sport he had fallen in love with so long ago. And he had a hunch he could do just that – with a little help from like-minded folks, that is.
"I figured once I met Ultimate players, I could get this going," Loukinen said.
Around the same time, Neeno Melo and his partner Andrea Trujillo Rendón were exploring disc golf. The pair of Ultimate players found temporary courses on UDisc with the note, "I have baskets and discs. Contact Ken…" And they did, finally matching Loukinen with the fellow disc sports enthusiast he was looking for.
More Ultimate players came out of the woodwork in early 2020 when their preferred sport was shuttered as collateral damage during the early days of COVID. Disc golf, then, provided Frisbee fans in the region with an athletic outlet, and after connecting with local authorities to gain approval to play, word spread and a community grew.
"I gave everybody a putter, a midrange, and a driver and spent the first day showing them the technique to throw a golf disc," Loukinen recalled of his first organized meetup. "After a couple hours of improving a little bit of technique, we met the following weekend, and I heard the stories of, 'We tried this in the past, but just didn't find this fun.' They were exposed to weird discs and didn't have baskets. Nobody knew the rules, nobody knew you broke up into groups of four.
"Once we started playing in groups of four, they really saw the potential," Loukinen said. "We've been meeting every weekend since then."
The scene has only grown more organized. Loukinen hooked up with the Paul McBeth Foundation, who donated funds and helped locals install AeroParque Juan Pablo II DGC and Disc Golf GTA in 2021. Colombian players have taken to producing baskets locally for around $350 each to save on import fees – shipping and customs would roughly double their costs – and Loukinen went a step further by convincing the PDGA to trade its in-hand basket approval process that required applicants to ship a copy to the organization for instead vetting the target via a Zoom call.
Fast forward to the present. Leagues have formed, tournaments are sprouting up, and the sport is thriving.
- Rounds scored on UDisc in Colombia grew 80% from 2023 to 2024.
- The number of unique disc golfers jumped 45%.
- Melo is prepping a new course in Cali, a city of 2.2 million about 275 miles/440 kilometers south of Medellín.
Disc golf has also attracted the attention of INDER, the country's parks and recreation authority. Loukinen said it is planning to build two courses on farmland areas where they have interests in protecting the water supply; the organization observed that players took care of the natural environment at the existing courses and was more than game to offer the land.
The most exciting sign of Colombia's potential, though, is not the where, but the who. Unlike some developing countries where American expats have imported disc golf and rely largely on tourism for their growth, Colombian players have bought in and are organizing to move it forward.
- 96% of rounds played in 2024 came from Colombian players, one of the highest rates of local play in any country.
As much as he could take credit, Loukinen chalked up the success not just to his efforts, but to the Ultimate players like Melo and Rendón who have adopted disc golf as their own.
"After the first year I realized I could've moved," Loukinen said, "but disc golf was going to stay."
Scenes from the 2024 Polish Disc Golf Championship in Strzelce Opolskie, Poland. Photo courtesy Just Photo Studio
For Bartosz Wiśniewski, data is how disc golf grows.
A high-level tournament director and owner of Discpoint.pl, Poland's biggest retailer, Wiśniewski encourages his fellow players to record their rounds on UDisc so they can use that information to supercharge the organic growth that's already underway.
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🇵🇱 The Central European country of 37 million people gained seven new courses in 2024, bringing its total to 28.
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🚀 The number of rounds played increased by 167% while the average number of rounds per player jumped from 6 to 10.
There's a little piece of information that appeals to everyone, as Wiśniewski tells it.
Local club and league members push each other to see who can log the most rounds each month; Wiśniewski said he played about 1,000 rounds of disc golf in 2024, for example, but only tracked about 30% of them – a habit he plans to change this year.
"It's caused big competition in my group," he said. "Players are trying to catch up to each other. 'Oh, I got 25 rounds in January. How many did you get?'"
Local governments, meanwhile, love knowing where players are coming from to visit their town's courses, or to see how disc golf measures up to other forms of recreation they are investing in.
"I showed [the course stats] PDF to our mayor, and he was surprised when comparing it to other sports in the town like archery or martial arts that are growing in popularity," Wiśniewski said. "'Oh my gosh, 300 individual players on one simple course? That's great.'"
These insights have even gained the attention of Lasy Państwowe, Poland's organization that oversees regional forest districts. Wiśniewski said that the entity is interested in activities that will draw people to parklands and encourage them to be outdoors and active, and that the low cost of a disc golf course makes the sport even more appealing.
"We're trying to cooperate with them to make sure they love disc golf," Wiśniewski said. "Build a local course in every neighborhood forest."
A breakthrough like that would put Poland on a fast track to catching up to neighboring Czechia and its 196 courses or, someday, meeting the lofty standards of a country like Finland. And while Wiśniewski indeed sees those places as aspirational, he hopes that, with time and care, Poland's dramatically larger population can help it exceed both.
- ☝️ To make his point, he noted that the number of people in Finland – roughly 5.6 million – is the same as the number of people who live within 100 kilometers of his home course in Gliwice.
"There's 1,000 courses in Finland," he said. "So I can imagine in my 100-kilometer radius also having 1,000 courses."
Stunning views from the tee on hole 4 at DiscGolfPark Mijas in Mijas, Spain. Photo: Alex Williamson
When winter strikes and the avid disc golfers of Northern Europe are faced with the reality of snow-covered fairways, they make like the birdies they aim to chase on the course and migrate south.
Spain has emerged as the world's top disc golf tourist destination, fueled primarily by an influx of winter warriors from Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
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Nearly 60% of the rounds played in Spain during 2024 were logged by non-Spanish residents.
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With pristine views of the Alboran Sea, DiscGolfPark Mijas is the favored course among those world travelers, racking up more than 5,000 rounds to account for 40% of the country's total participation.
That said, the bones are there for the nation of 48.4 million to become a hotbed for locals.
- 🧑🎓 Roughly 80% of the rounds played at Madrid's Universidad Complutense DGC – another Paul McBeth Foundation course – were logged by players who traveled less than 10 miles to get there, and there's a casual league that runs every week.
Extraordinary Disc Golf Courses: DiscGolfPark Mijas
That's from a representative survey of more than 800 active UDisc members conducted at the beginning of January 2025.
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🥏 70% said they spent the same, or more, on discs.
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🎒 74% said they spent the same, or more, on other equipment, like bags, carts, and accessories.
While those are solid numbers, they do represent a downward trend, with both falling by about 10% compared to our 2024 reporting. Similarly, PDGA membership numbers were lower in the past year, and responses to an October 2024 in-app survey indicated that interest in professional disc golf had waned by 15%.
Our take: Manufacturers and retailers may need to adjust to shifts in the market; some of this has already occurred, with reports of reductions in force at various companies in the sport. Amateur and professional-level competitions are still vital components of the disc golf ecosystem, but continuing to invest in grassroots efforts will be crucial for governing bodies to rebound. With courses and players still on the rise, though, they should be in good shape to get back on track.
- 💬 "I've always been incredibly optimistic about the market," Levi Wizzingham, founder of disc golf bag manufacturer Pound Disc Golf, said on a recent episode of Ultiworld Disc Golf's The Upshot. "It's growing, and I think we're just returning to a sustainable, normal – maybe even better, in terms of overall business – rate of growth, and I think it's a healthy thing. I think people are re-evaluating like, 'Oh, maybe I got out a little bit over my skis and got too optimistic during the pandemic,' and are sort of just reining it back in."
Some more insights from UDisc's surveys point to business as usual:
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🚙 87% of players were willing to travel more than 20 miles/32 kilometers from their home to play a round of disc golf, a positive trend for those looking for disc golf to boost local economies by bringing in players from out of the area.
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🧳 53% have plans to take a trip specifically for disc golf this year.
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🥏 71% of players said they played the same amount of disc golf, or more, in 2024 compared to the prior year.
It's one thing to have local organizers and players spreading the good word of disc golf – and boy, do they do that well.
- 📢 80% of respondents in an October 2024 survey said they were introduced to disc golf by a friend or family member. The next most common way? Driving by a course.
But in order for the sport to remain healthy and reach new audiences, there need to be other avenues for players – especially kids – to get started. And that's where Uplay and EDGE come in.
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Uplay, run by touring pros Zoe Andyke and Dustin Keegan, reported teaching disc golf to more than 2,500 students and 60 educators last season. Each school or community organization they worked with was furnished with 30 discs and a pair of baskets.
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In partnership with UDisc, they have also donated more than 6,500 discs to new players over the last three years.
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Disc Golf Hall of Famers Des and Jay Reading's Educational Disc Golf Experience (EDGE) reported installing its 300th permanent campus course and introducing more than 55,000 kids to the sport.
Back in San Diego, the conversation turned to disc golf's overall outlook. Josh Weekley, the assistant manager at the Morley Field Pro Shop, at one point did mention that disc purchases are slightly down compared to the previous season. But as someone who has played in the area since 2003 and has worked at the course for a year and a half, he thinks any concept of disc golf experiencing a significant downturn is greatly exaggerated.
"I think the growth just slowed from [where it was during] COVID, and people were expecting it to keep growing," Weekley said. "It's like a tech boom – it's not gonna go forever. I don't think it's decreasing, it's just not increasing as fast as it was."
So, does Weekley think disc golf is in a healthy position?
"Oh, yeah," he said, without hesitation. "I think it's still very healthy. It's just not a boom like people thought it was."
The numbers in this report back up that assertion. Disc golf is in a period of stability, with a more predictable number of courses going in the ground and a regular flow of players adopting it as a form of recreation. It's recognized in more countries, and more municipalities and local decision-makers are keying in on the value it can provide to people of varying ages and abilities. And they can do it on a pretty reasonable budget.
Combined with the continued passion of players and organizers, all those reasons make it easier than ever before to find a course or get a new one installed. And that's all disc golf needs to keep up a healthy, sustainable rate of growth now and into the future.
If it wasn't already clear from reading this report, one of the best ways to ensure disc golf's progress is to share statistics and data about the sport with local decision-makers. With that in mind, we encourage you to download this year's Disc Golf Growth Report fact sheet.
- Disc Golf Health Index
- How To Get A Disc Golf Course In Your Area
- Why Disc Golf Is Right For Your Community
- How To Build A Disc Golf Course: First Steps
- Release Point – The UDisc Blog
For inquiries about disc golf in your specific locality or region, drop us a line: [email protected]
UDisc's mission is to empower the world to play more disc golf by:
- Providing players with the tools they need to find and navigate courses, keep score, track their improvement, and connect with fellow disc golf enthusiasts
- Supporting organizers with a free platform to run the leagues and events that grow local communities
- Supplying course designers, clubs, and ambassadors with the data they need to legitimize their efforts and quantify their impact as they build new courses or improve and maintain existing ones
Now the industry standard for measuring disc golf participation, infrastructure, and reach, UDisc has grown from a two-person hobby project born of the desire to find courses into a team of 23 passionate disc golfers. The company also releases annual rankings of the world's best disc golf courses, and its Disc Golf Health Index focuses on the places where adding the sport can be most impactful. With millions of downloads on the App Store and Google Play, it is the #1 app for disc golfers.