Sim Facility Boom #7: xGolf Joins the War

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I wrote Update #6 earlier today. Fifteen-plus openings, four states with 24-hour concepts, the first tracked closure. That felt comprehensive.

Then I looked at the latest sweep.

There’s a new pattern forming that I didn’t fully see until I stepped back from the individual data points. It’s not just that more facilities are opening. It’s that the type of facility is diversifying in a way that tells me sim golf is becoming infrastructure — not just a niche.

Here’s what I found.

xGolf Enters the Franchise Race

We’ve been tracking two franchise models: Back Nine (premium suburban) and Another Nine (accessible small-market). Now there’s a third.

xGolf Alliance opened in north Fort Worth, Texas. Source: Community Impact.

xGolf is a different franchise model from the other two. Where Back Nine builds a golf bar experience and Another Nine builds a lean simulator hub, xGolf Alliance positions itself as an indoor golf club — memberships, leagues, instruction, and events. It’s a more traditional golf-club-adjacent model, just indoor and simulator-based.

Three franchise models competing in the same space means the market is mature enough to support different approaches. Back Nine for night-out groups. Another Nine for the budget-conscious practice golfer. xGolf Alliance for the “I want a club but without the $5K initiation fee” crowd.

Worth watching which model scales faster.

For the full picture of Back Nine’s expansion, see our facility boom update #6. For Another Nine’s milestone, see our 50-franchise coverage.

The F&B Convergence: A New Pattern

Three data points in this sweep share a common thread that I haven’t seen before in our tracking:

Virginia Beach restaurant pairs family recipes with golf simulators. Source: 13newsnow.com. A restaurant — not a golf facility, not a bar trying to be a golf place, but an actual restaurant — added a golf simulator alongside its family recipes. This is F&B-first, sim-as-entertainment. The opposite of a sim lounge that serves food.

Indian Creek’s clubhouse makeover brings dining, entertainment beyond fairways. Source: Omaha World-Herald. A traditional golf course renovated its clubhouse to include simulator-based entertainment. Not a stand-alone sim facility — a clubhouse amenity. This is a traditional course adding indoor sim capability to extend its revenue beyond the outdoor season.

Putter Up expands with arcade and sports simulator in Pelham, Alabama. Source: Shelby County Reporter. Putter Up started as a putt-putt/arcade place. Now they’re adding a sports simulator. The full phrase is “Putter Up expands with arcade and sports simulator” — sim golf as a feature alongside putt-putt, arcade games, and food.

These three are different from the Back Nine or Another Nine model. They’re not sim-first businesses. They’re existing entertainment venues adding sim golf as an additional draw. Think of it less as “a sim facility opened” and more as “a restaurant bought a simulator for its back room.”

This is where the boom starts looking like infrastructure rather than a category. When sims are something a restaurant adds to its menu, not something a dedicated operator builds a business around — that’s the kind of mainstream adoption that doesn’t reverse.

Back Nine Keeps Adding Locations

Back Nine will offer indoor golf simulation in Allen, Texas. Source: Community Impact. Allen is a DFW suburb, about 20 minutes north of Dallas. Back Nine already has Richardson confirmed from the previous sweep. Now Allen. That’s two North Texas locations in the same update cycle.

Back Nine is building density in the DFW metro. Multiple locations in the same region means they can cross-promote, share marketing, and build local brand awareness faster than a single-location operator. It’s the same strategy we see from Five Iron Golf in major metros — cluster locations, own the city. Five Iron is also betting that real-money tournaments will drive repeat visits, making their locations destinations rather than occasional stops.

Back Nine also confirmed Midlothian, Virginia (from Update #6’s sweep) and their Richardson, Texas location. The franchise is building a coast-to-coast footprint.

Update (July 4): Back Nine also signed a Bridgestone Golf partnership the day after their Full Swing OEM deal — adding ball fittings, equipment integration, and tournament infrastructure to their franchise model. Two partnerships in two days.

The Pipestone Pattern: Independent Operators Going Multi-Location

Pipestone Golf breaks ground on its SECOND simulator facility in Stevensville, Michigan. Source: WNDU.

We tracked the original Pipestone facility in an earlier update (their $2 million expansion in Lincoln Township). Now they’re building a second location in Stevensville — a separate town, about 10 miles away.

This is the independent operator multi-location trend. Most sim coverage focuses on franchises (Back Nine, Another Nine, Five Iron, xGolf). But independent operators expanding to second locations is a different signal. It means the first location is profitable enough to justify a second. The business model works at the mom-and-pop level, not just the franchise level.

Pipestone in southwestern Michigan is proving that a locally owned sim facility can generate enough demand to open a second location. That’s a bigger deal than it sounds like. Franchises have corporate backing, brand recognition, and shared marketing. Independent operators have none of that — they succeed or fail on the local market alone. A second location means the local market is real.

The Slow-Build Markets: League City, Walker, Meridian

Three smaller-market openings in this sweep that continue the middle-America pattern:

Indoor golf simulator now open in League City, Texas. Source: Community Impact. League City is a Houston suburb. The Houston metro is slowly filling in with sim facilities — not a sudden explosion, but steady additions.

New golf simulator coming to Walker, Michigan. Source: WZZM13.com. Walker is a Grand Rapids suburb in western Michigan. Another cold-weather market where the winter value proposition is undeniable.

New indoor golf training facility opening in Meridian, Idaho. Source: BoiseDev. Meridian is a Boise suburb. Idaho isn’t a state that comes up in sim facility conversations, but here it is — a dedicated training facility, not a sim bar. The training-center model (instruction-focused, not entertainment-focused) is a distinct category from the sim lounge or the sim bar.

Each of these is a single data point. But together, they show that sim facilities are filling in mid-market gaps between major metros. Not explosive growth in any one city, but steady expansion across the map.

For the full national picture, see our golf simulator near me guide and our state-specific guides for Texas, Ohio, and Florida.

What This Sweep Tells Us

Nine data points in one sweep, but the story isn’t the count. It’s the composition:

Three franchise models now competing. Back Nine, Another Nine, and xGolf Alliance. Each targets a different customer (night-out social, budget practice, club-adjacent membership). The fact that all three are expanding simultaneously means the market has multiple viable business models.

The F&B convergence is real. When a Virginia Beach restaurant, an Omaha country club, and an Alabama arcade all add simulators in the same week, it’s not coincidence. Existing entertainment venues are treating sim golf as the same kind of amenity as pool tables, dart boards, or arcade cabinets. That’s the kind of mainstream adoption that’s hard to reverse.

Independent operators are going multi-location. Pipestone’s second facility is the clearest evidence yet that the business model works for small operators. You don’t build a second location if the first one isn’t making money.

The slow build continues in mid-markets. League City, Walker, Meridian — these aren’t headlines. They’re the steady infrastructure buildout that doesn’t make splashy news but changes the map over time.

Previous updates in this series: Update #1, Update #2, Update #3, Update #4, Update #5, Update #6, Update #7. Latest: Update #8: Regional Media Wave →