I will be the first to admit that launching golf balls off of Beaver Stadium and down onto the field below is a very good time. It’s one of those things you imagine doing if you were the last person on Earth, roaming the world just aimlessly hitting tee shots. Or maybe that’s just me.
I will also be the first to admit this entire venture of bringing Topgolf Live to Beaver Stadium for a few days (June 2-5) is at its core, a business decision. In turn this is 90% about making money and 10% about Penn State Athletics saying “Hey how is everyone doing?” to fans and interested parties in the middle of the summer.
As such, there is no real incentive to make things dirt cheap because that isn’t the point in the first place. The point is to find the intersection between folks who like golf and folks who have money to burn. I’m sure there are economics books about this.
Because let’s be honest, no matter how you slice it (golf pun alert) $80-$90 to swing a club [per person] for an hour with five other people is a bit of a stretch. According to GolfNow I could have played two rounds at nearly any two courses in the State College area for the same amount of money on Wednesday and still have a few bucks to spare for a hot dog and some beverages. Is that the same thing as the novelty of “accidentally” trying to hit the press box with a golf ball? It isn’t, and in the end you’re paying for the novelty more than anything else.
To be sure, the execution of the idea is well done, it’s loads of fun and if you have the money and the interest you should check it out. It’s hard to deny the experience. It’s also hard to deny that plenty of people in State College have money to spare and if I want to take my hypothetical family to something cheap I should just go to the Blue White scrimmage/practice/thing and thank Penn State for not charging me too much for parking.
So on the one hand, this event will probably be a success because enough people will show up to justify doing more things like this in Beaver Stadium or the surrounding facilities. It’s commendable that Penn State is trying to figure out how to use its space for more than just games, and the initial concert event in 2017 and this Topgolf Live stadium tour stop are worthwhile experiments.
If I’m going to complain, I should also admit that complaining is a lot easier than planning. As someone who has covered Penn State men’s hockey for as long as it has been around, I understand saying “have the Winter Classic at Beaver Stadium” is something much easier said than done. In a similar vein I confess that having ideas and those ideas being feasible are two very different things, especially when you consider that turning on the lights ain’t cheap, and ripping up a grass field a few months before football season isn’t ideal either.
At the same time, why not spread the experience wealth to those who don’t have a couple hundred to spend on golf but could help generate similar revenue? Have a movie night at the stadium once a month during the summer, charge people $15 bucks to sit on the field or in the stands. For every six people at a movie you probably get one person at Topgolf. Turn the field into a concert venue for a weekend a few weeks after spring practice ends, sell food and beer, let people come and go over the course of a few days and charge them something reasonable. Turn Beaver Stadium’s middle concourse into a beer garden that is open on the weekends. There are plenty of inclusive events that could generate revenue and include more people than the country club members and high-brow spenders. Do I know what they would cost to run? No. Do I think you can find a middle ground between $100 club swings and losing money running an event? Yes.
Because to be honest, if I didn’t have this job I wouldn’t have gone (for free) — and I really like golf. But I can’t afford to drop 100 bucks on swinging a golf club that isn’t even mine, probably with at least a few people I don’t even know.
All told Penn State should get some credit for doing this because it is fun and creative and people will certainly go ahead and pony up the money to justify the entire enterprise. But if the athletic department wants to connect with State College in new ways, and new experiences, it should connect with everyone from time to time. You can see a lot of neighborhoods from Beaver Stadium, and not all of them are going to spend this kind of money. Maybe those people will never be the target audience, and that’s fine, but maybe in turn Penn State can stop pretending that they are.
