Ranking the Top 10 Best UK Counties for FootGolf

In case you didn’t know already, FootGolf, as the name suggests, is a combination of football and golf. 

It is played on a golf course using a size five football and the aim of the game is to get the ball into a football sized hole using only your feet in the fewest number of shots possible. 

The sport has rapidly grown in popularity across the world since its reported inception in the Netherlands in 2008 and the momentum doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. 

In the UK, FootGolf has been one of the fastest growing and most talked about sports in recent years and has even produced its very own FootGolf champion, Ben Clarke, winner of four FootGolf World Tour titles. 

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There are now over 250 certified golf courses offering FootGolf across the UK so the research team at Gambling.com decided to work out the top 10 best UK counties for FootGolf. 

Weanalysed four different data points to measure this: Number of courses in each county per capita (100,000 people), bar/restaurant, free car parking, and changing rooms (available at each FootGolf course). 

A percentrank scoring system was then applied to all data points to create a universal scoring system which produced an overall score for each county.

What Is The Best UK County For FootGolf?

Our findings discovered Hertfordshire to be the best UK county for FootGolf with a final score of 91.8, narrowly beating second place Kent.  

Hertfordshire had the highest number of courses score and performed well across the board, which contributed to taking the No.1 top spot in our list. 

Kent was second on the list, falling just short with a final score of 91.7 but had the highest bar/restaurant, free car parking and changing rooms scores. 

Devon is No.3 with a final score of 58.4 while Essex and Merseyside are in No.4 and No.5 with final scores of 47.2 and 44.5 respectively. 

UK FootGolf Champion, Ben Clarke, who has won a catalogue of trophies in his professional career, is in no doubt as to how far FootGolf has come in recent times. 

“The sport is still in its early years and is still gaining momentum in growth. However, we have played tournaments at iconic golf courses such as Celtic Manor and The Belfry which in itself is a sign of the journey the sport is taking. 

“We have also had ex-professional footballers such as Francesco Totti, Clarence Seedorf, and Paolo Di Canio to name a few that have played the sport which is also helping our development. 

“My first casual game of FootGolf would have been around May 2014 at a course in Luton which has now unfortunately closed down. My first impressions were that it was great fun with friends but I’d never have imagined playing it competitively!

“The best course for me in the UK is Gatwick FootGolf, in Surrey. It’s my home course so of course I’m going to be a little biased towards it but there are very few, if any, leisure courses that are maintained to the same standards as Gatwick in my opinion,” said Clarke.

Methodology

Four different data points per county were measured in an index. They were:

• Number of courses
• Bar/Restaurant
• Changing Rooms
• Free Car Parking

All four index points were then added for each county to give a final score out of 100 by using the PERCENTRANK formula. All UK counties (which has at least one FootGolf course) were then ranked from highest to lowest. All data was collected on Apr.21, 2023.

Data sources: Footgolf Finder, and ONS.