Six placements over six weeks. Enough to get a real CTR and CPP read on four different audience shapes.
In-newsletter sponsor blocks in golf price around $18 to $20 CPM. Dedicated sends run 2x to 4x that.
No buys until the MLG source ID persists from signup through to the upgrade billing event. Newsletter signups will upgrade weeks later. If the tag drops, every upgrade reports as organic and the whole test is worthless.
CPP over 2x MLG's current blended CPP after four placements, or click to signup under 8% across the board. Stop and rethink the lander, not the list.
It is a link in an email. Same sub ID structure as every other paid source. Nothing new for Mihailo to build, no pixel, no MMP, no view-through guesswork.
Open rates of 45% to 65% are normal here, which is roughly double a typical consumer list. The audience is older, has money, and still reads email.
The advertisers in these newsletters are golf courses, equipment brands and travel. A dating offer is new inventory competition, which usually means a better rate.
Ranked by how fast you can transact and how well the audience fits. The top two are where I would put the first dollars.
| # | Property | List | Audience fit | Price | How to buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Golf News Net "The Break" Best fit | 40k+ 35% open 2x/wk | 54% aged 55+, 75% male, 36% over $100k HHI, 54% no kids at home. Sole sponsor per issue, so no clutter. | Not published ask | ryan@thegolfnewsnet.com 443-889-5000 |
| 2 | MyGolfSpy Buy today | 184k 45% open 5x/wk | Gear reviews, so likely younger and male. Weak fit, but it is the only known price in the market. | $3,500 block $8,000 dedicated | Passionfroot storefront self-serve checkout |
| 3 | SCGA (So. Cal Golf Assn) | 133k to 164k 13% to 28% open | Only property that segments. Region, handicap index and club affiliation. Higher handicap plus older regions is a sharp proxy. | $2,500 custom block | info@scga.org |
| 4 | LINKS Magazine | 110k Insider 50% open | Most affluent list found. Print base is median age 55, 86% male. Email base skews younger at 44. | $2,000 Featured Partner | jswain@linksmagazine.com |
| 5 | Colorado AvidGolfer | 40k+ 49% open weekly | Median age 49, 88% male, HHI $146k. Sponsored feature format is 300 to 500 words, genuinely native. | Not published | allen@coloradoavidgolfer.com |
| 6 | Louisiana Golf Assn Template test | 20k+ 62% to 65% open | Best engagement found anywhere. Members avg age 47, 90% male, 68% married, which is a real negative. | Not published sold by week | loganr@lgagolf.org |
| 7 | GolfWRX | 205k+ | Largest independent golf list, but 51% aged 18 to 34 and 92% male. Worth one email for the reach, not for the fit. | Not published | management@golfwrx.com |
Indicative $12k split. GNN and LGA prices are estimates until they quote. Hold back roughly $2k so you can repeat a winner inside the test window instead of waiting for a new budget cycle.
There are roughly 50 state and regional golf associations in the US. Each one runs a GHIN-based member email list, publishes open rates in the 50% to 65% range, and sells ad space to pay for operations.
Almost none of them have ever been pitched by a direct response advertiser. Their current advertisers are courses, resorts and insurance.
This is why LGA at 20k subscribers is on the buy list despite being tiny. It is not the buy, it is the template. If it works there it works in 49 other states.
Fast to access, but golf inventory on them is thin. Useful for one specific buy and one specific risk.
| Platform | Golf inventory | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Passionfroot | MyGolfSpy storefront with live prices | Use it. This is the one place you can check out today at a known price and get a real CTR number to negotiate everywhere else with. |
| beehiiv Ad Network | MyGolfSpy, Bogey Bois (~220k, 3x/wk), Perfect Putt | Worth a look. Bogey Bois monetizes through the network, so 220k golfers may be reachable without a direct deal. Audience is young and humor driven. |
| LiveIntent / Zeta | PGA Tour "Fan Connect" email is a LiveIntent unit | This is the one way into PGA Tour email. But see the policy note below before planning around it. |
| Paved | Exactly one golf title (GolfWRX) | Free account, worth opening to see gated inventory. Do not expect a catalog. |
| Swapstack | One golf title (Perfect Putt, 3.4k, B2B) | Skip. Too small and wrong audience. |
| Substack | Sponsorship program launched June 2026 | Skip for now. Writer-initiated, no advertiser-side buying path, too immature to transact inside six weeks. |
| InboxReads / Reletter | Directories listing ~20 golf titles | Prospect lists only. Subscriber counts and contacts are paywalled. Use them to build round two. |
LiveIntent and Zeta treat dating as restricted, not banned. It needs pre-approval from their compliance team. Explicitly prohibited: adult or sexual content, suggestive copy or imagery, nudity, implied prostitution. Significant skin exposure is restricted.
Practical read: a clean golf dating creative should clear. Anything that looks like the typical dating banner will not. This gate controls the PGA Tour inventory, so it is worth clearing early if you want that later.
beehiiv's policy does not mention dating at all. Adult content and services are prohibited. A mainstream offer is not obviously captured.
Derived from the four properties that publish both a price and a list size, which is a more reliable number than any industry benchmark report.
| MyGolfSpy block | $3,500 ÷ 184k | $19 CPM |
| LINKS Featured | $2,000 ÷ 110k | $18 CPM |
| SCGA custom | $2,500 ÷ 142k | $18 CPM |
| MyGolfSpy dedicated | $8,000 ÷ segment | $43+ CPM |
So: sponsor blocks cluster at $18 to $20 CPM, dedicated sends at 2x to 4x. Anyone quoting you materially above that is anchoring high. Use these four numbers in the negotiation.
Plan on 1.5% to 2.5% of delivered clicking a sponsor block. That is roughly 600 to 1,000 clicks on a 40k send and 2,700 to 4,600 on a 184k send.
That is the good case. At 0.5% of delivered and a 12% lander conversion, the same buy lands near $19 CPP. The spread between those two outcomes is the entire test.
Golf is a slower upgrade cycle than social. Someone who joins from a Sunday newsletter may not pay for weeks. Your Facebook reporting never has to survive that gap.
Before any spend, confirm with Mihailo that the source ID is written to the user record at registration and read back at the billing event, not held in a session or a cookie.
If it is cookie based, this test will produce a pile of signups attributed to nlgolf and a pile of upgrades attributed to nothing, and you will conclude the channel does not convert when it actually did.
Judge the test on a 90 day window minimum. A 30 day read will make every one of these look worse than it is.
Independents will answer in a day or two. Associations may need to take it to someone. Chase once after five business days, then let it go.
| Signal | Do |
|---|---|
| Click to signup over 20%, CPP at or under target | Rebook the same vendor, same unit, and open the association long tail |
| Good clicks, poor signup rate (under 10%) | Lander problem, not list problem. Fix the lander before buying anything else. |
| Poor clicks (under 0.5% of delivered) | Unit prominence problem. Ask for a better placement or walk. |
| Good signups, no upgrades after 60 days | Check the tag survived first. If it did, this audience browses and does not pay. |
| Association buys beat media buys | Drop the media list entirely and run the 50 state template |
| Everything is 2x over target | Stop. It is the golf offer or the lander, and more placements will not fix either. |
| One variable at a time. Six buys with six different landers is six anecdotes, not a test. | |
Needed to set the actual target. Everything here is framed as a multiple of it because I do not have the current number.
The one thing that has to be answered before any money goes out. Mihailo.
Six vendor relationships is real back and forth. This is not an Aleksandar or Goran task, it is closer to affiliate account management.
MLG app upgrades better than web. Worth deciding whether the lander pushes app install or web signup before the creative gets built.
This channel delivers men. How far out of balance can MLG go before it hurts the product?
All enterprise sales cycles, none will transact in six weeks. Park until the small tests prove the channel.