Built-In Home Golf Simulators: For the Mansion Owner In All of Us

It’s one thing to have a home golf simulator. It’s another thing entirely to have a built-in home golf simulator.

What, you may be wondering, is the difference?

The first is a home golf simulator package that you set up in the garage, rec room or anywhere else in the house where you have the space.

The second is a space dedicated to and designed to house a home golf simulator.

There’s also a price difference. However, to be fair, those looking at a built-in home golf simulator generally aren’t worried about the budget.

They’re more worried about having the job done right.

Built-in home golf simulators

Having worked in the construction trades for most of my adult life, I can assure you that Fitzgerald was right: the rich truly are different. I’ve worked in 40,000-square-foot “homes” where you’re never more than 30 feet from a kitchenette. Another had a climate-controlled fur coat storage room; another featured a half-mile driveway equipped with an automatic snow-melting system. One home, owned by a world-renowned race-car driver, had an entire lower level serve as a museum for his winning vehicles.

If you’re in that tax bracket, you don’t worry about how much stuff costs. You worry that it works.

“We were noticing a certain segment of customers coming to us wanting a golf simulator setup that was a little more to their liking,” Indoor Golf Shop founder and CEO Rene Delgado tells MyGolfSpy. “They wanted something that wasn’t a boxed solution, but something custom-built for their environment. They wanted something built into their space as opposed to something assembled in their space.”

Delgado had a problem, however. While his company was very good at packaging golf simulator systems, The Indoor Golf Shop didn’t have custom design/build capabilities. What it did have was a growing customer base asking for that service and willing to pay for it.

“We explored the possibility of starting something ourselves,” he says. “But we found it would take us a while to get to the point where we could be subject matter experts in that space.”

So Delgado did what any good entrepreneur would do in that situation: he went shopping.

The Great White North beckons

“Time to market is everything and I wanted to seize the opportunity in front of us,” says Delgado. “We started looking for companies that were currently doing design/build installation.”

That search eventually led to Toronto and InHome Golf, Canada’s leading custom golf simulator design and installation company. What started as a strategic partnership in early 2023 evolved into a merging of the two companies.

“They were the best option and not just from a capability standpoint,” says Delgado. “(InHome Golf CEO) James Laidlaw has a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise in the field.”

That field includes high-end residential design/build simulator projects as well as a growing commercial indoor golf facility business. It’s a soup-to-nuts custom installation operation: you tell them what you want and they design it and install it.

“We have a team of designers who do 2D and 3D drawings,” says Delgado. “Everything is tailormade. We work with the customer’s home builder if it’s new construction. They sign off on everything and we manufacture everything in-house. Then we send out a team to do the installation.”

Home projects range in scope from your average McMansion to a winter ski chalet in Park City or Aspen. It’s the kind of business where the customer doesn’t ask, “How much?” They ask, “How soon?”

“It’s a much more involved process and usually much more expensive than what our core business does,” says Delgado.

So, how much?

That, literally, is the $64,000 question. The answer, however, is rarely an issue.

“These customers have a vision of what they want,” explains Delgado. “There are people who will pay for convenience, service and expertise and not have to lift a finger. They’re willing to pay a premium so that everything is taken care of.”

Delgado says typical built-in home simulators can run from $40,000 to $60,000 and beyond, depending on what the customer wants. Again, overall budgets generally aren’t the problem and a built-in golf simulator is considered part of overall home entertainment. These are the homes where granite countertops, home theaters, spas and driveway snow-melting systems are as commonplace as a dishwasher or garbage disposal.

“It’s an underserved demographic,” adds Delgado, “but it’s a lucrative one if you’re able to solve for it.”

Despite the fact InHome Golf is Canada-based, the U.S. is its biggest market for residential built-in golf simulators. In Canada, the business centers on commercial indoor golf facilities.

“Canada is different,” Delgado explains. “That’s because you can’t play golf for five or six months so these commercial facilities are much more prevalent.”

The joy of vertical integration

As we’ve mentioned, The Indoor Golf Shop is vertically integrated. The company manufactures its own screens, hitting mats, nets and enclosures at its Texas facility. It designs its own metal enclosures, which are outsourced, and it provides brand-name projectors and golf launch monitors. By adding InHome Golf and its design and installation capabilities, the overall company now is about as vertically integrated as it can get.

“We have our own showrooms in Chicago, Toronto and Dallas,” says Delgado. “We stage our showrooms to show what our systems would look like in a home so customers can envision it in their own homes. It’s a big part of the purchasing decision.”

Even with the addition of InHome Golf, nearly 85 percent of Delgado’s business is direct-to-consumer packaged systems designed for the do-it-yourself market. Those systems range from the ultra-simple intro-level launch monitor, a mat and a net to a full-fledged rec room or garage package ranging from $4,000 to $6,000, depending on the launch monitor you choose.

The custom design/build market, however, represents a big opportunity for The Indoor Golf Shop. Sales volume will obviously be considerably lower but the math agrees with Delgado. Done properly, it’s a lucrative market.

“We do have competitors within each of our business divisions, whether it’s design/build installations or DIY packages,” he explains. “But we really don’t have competitors that are vertically integrated. We control our own supply chain. We manufacture our own stuff and we put full packages together for residential or commercial design/build installations.”

Built-in home golf simulators: What business are you really in?

No matter the industry, companies thrive when they continually consider what business they’re really in. For companies such as The Indoor Golf Shop, it would seem logical that they’re in the indoor golf business.

That’s a solid start. However, it’s also a business that, despite impressive growth, is limited and could potentially run dry. In reality, companies in this space are really in the home entertainment business, with a focus on indoor golf.

“Things are always in flux and always evolving,” says Delgado. “We always pay attention to trends and to the voice of the customer. If we do that, we’re going to be around for a long time, servicing lots of different customer types, whether it’s direct-to-consumer, commercial clients or custom home projects.

“There are always decisions to be made. Once we make a decision, we usually don’t look back. It’s worked out so far.”

This article was written in partnership with Indoor Golf Shop