We’re now several months into our experiment to validate golf live-streaming as a business, and the latest numbers are making it increasingly difficult to call this just an experiment.
Since going live at Lang Farm on April 17th, Fore.tv has continued to grow its audience, increase watch time, and—perhaps most importantly—see golfers come back to the streams.
Here’s where we stand today.
Compared to where we started, the growth has been significant:
The impressions number is particularly interesting. It shows that Fore.tv isn't simply attracting new viewers—people are returning to the streams and watching more than once.
Total watch time and unique viewers give us an estimated average viewing time of approximately:
4 minutes and 11 seconds per viewer.
That's up approximately 16% from our initial average of 3 minutes and 35 seconds.
While four minutes might not sound like a long time, it's meaningful in the context of what we're building. These aren't traditional sports broadcasts with hours-long programming. They're live views of golf courses that people are choosing to visit, check, and return to throughout the day.
The addition of our 9th green livestream has also played a role in making the streams more engaging by giving viewers a chance to actually watch golf unfold rather than simply viewing course conditions.
The biggest takeaway from these numbers isn't any single metric.
It's the consistency of the growth.
We're seeing more people discover Fore.tv, more people return to the streams, and more total time being spent watching.
That gives us increasing confidence in our original hypothesis:
Golfers want access to live views of their local golf courses.
And there are a lot of potential reasons why.
A golfer can check the weather and course conditions before heading out. They can see how busy a course is. They can watch friends or family play. A course can use the cameras to showcase its property and create a new digital touchpoint with its customers.
And eventually, there's an opportunity for sponsors to reach an audience that is highly targeted, local, and actively engaged with golf.
Another major factor in our growth has been our partnership with the Vermont Chapter of the New England PGA.
That relationship has given Fore.tv the opportunity to bring live streaming to a much larger audience through tournaments and events across the region. It has also allowed us to put the technology in front of golfers, professionals, courses, and industry leaders who otherwise may never have discovered Fore.tv.
The tournament broadcasts have been especially valuable. They give us the chance to showcase what Fore.tv can do in a real competitive environment, while introducing the platform to thousands of engaged golfers at exactly the moments when they're most interested in the game.
In many ways, the partnership has helped accelerate the experiment from “Can this work at one golf course?” to “What could this look like across the New England golf ecosystem?”
We're incredibly grateful to the Vermont Chapter of the New England PGA for giving us the opportunity to be part of that ecosystem and for helping Fore.tv reach the next stage of its growth.
We're still early.
There are plenty of things we need to test, improve, and figure out before we can say we've fully validated the business.
But the question we started with was simple:
Will golfers actually watch live golf from their local courses?
After more than 31,000 unique viewers, 42,000+ stream plays, and 2,182 hours watched, the answer increasingly looks like yes.
And we're just getting started.
A special thank you to Links at Lang Farm and General Manager Dan Lehman for believing in this idea from day one and giving Fore.tv the opportunity to prove it in the real world.
More courses. More cameras. More data.
The experiment continues. ⛳