Saturation
The “Unmanned Passive Income” Trap is Playing Out Again with Golf Simulators
The pitch is seductive: open a 24/7 unmanned golf simulator business, minimal staff, just collect bookings while you sleep. Early locations in my city were printing money at 30%+ utilization. Now the bay count has basically tripled in the last year with new places popping up everywhere.
The barrier to entry is ridiculously low. You don’t need to cook, manage inventory, or have any special skills. Just find industrial space, put up some drywall for private bays, drop in $XXX k worth of TrackMan setups (mostly debt), and market it. “Passive income” dreams do the rest everyone and their mom wants in.
We’ve seen this movie before with escape rooms, cannabis shops, ghost kitchens, boutique fitness, etc. Low barrier + attractive narrative = flood of copycats → oversupply → utilization drops → margins get squeezed until a bunch of owners are left grinding or underwater.
These golf sims are expensive to build and carry heavy debt. When the easy growth phase ends, a lot of these new locations are going to be stuck with high fixed costs and thinning returns. The “race to the bottom” is already underway.