And which brands were represented in the most bags?
December 31, 2024 by Josiah Zoodsma and Jesse Weisz in Analysis
The PDGA Technical Standards Working Group approved their 2000th mold earlier this year. Incredibly, one quarter of all PDGA-approved molds were approved in just the last two years, despite the organization existing since 1976. With so much variety available, what discs do we decide to purchase, use, and eventually love? What affects our decision to buy specific discs? This article, the fifth of the 2024 FAR/Ultiworld Fandom Survey, dives into these topics. If you would like to learn more about the survey and the demographics of the respondents, please read this accompanying article.
In our previous article, we discussed fandom and favoritism of disc manufacturers. Which of these manufacturers’ discs are actually making it into our bags and/or carts? We asked our respondents which manufacturers of discs they currently bag at least one of.
- Innova, which has been manufacturing disc golf discs for almost 40 years now, had over 80% of respondents identify that they have at least one Innova disc in their bag!
- The combined group of “MVP or Axiom” was at 64.3%, still behind Discraft, which remains in a commanding second place.
- Despite their low Manufacturer Fandom Score, nearly 25% of respondents bag at least one Prodigy disc.
- Quantity of molds isn’t everything. Trash Panda (5 PDGA approved molds) had the same percentage of respondents bagging their discs as Lone Star Discs (48 PDGA approved molds).
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How does when a respondent started playing disc golf affect what disc brands are in their bag? We divided the respondents into: post-pandemic boom (2022-2024), discovered during the pandemic (2019-2021), early-DGPT (2015-2018), pre-DGPT (2000-2014), and pre-2000.
Brands in bag vs When you started playing
- Innova retained the highest placement and Discraft remained in second regardless of when a respondent started disc golfing.
- MVP/Axiom, Latitude 64, Kastaplast, Prodigy, Clash, and Trash Panda all saw increases in the percentage of respondents bagging their disc among individuals who most recently discovered disc golf.
- Alternatively, Millennium and DGA seem to be trending in the opposite direction.
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Many of us know an incredibly brand-loyal player who only bags discs from a single manufacturer. How common is this? We calculated how many different disc golf brands each respondent has in their bag.
How many different brands of discs do you currently bag?
- Over 50% of respondents had between four and seven different brands of disc in their bag.
- Roughly 5% of respondents only carried one brand of disc. The most common “brand-loyal” player was bagging only Innova.
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“What is your favorite disc mold?” was a question added to the 2024 Fandom Survey that we were excited to analyze. In total, over 4000 respondents answered this question. Here are the Top 10 most favorited disc molds:
- Discraft claimed the top two spots! Nearly 5% of all respondents identified the Buzzz as their favorite disc. It was followed closely by the Zone.
- Axiom (3 molds) and Innova (5 molds) were the only other two manufacturers in the Top 10 most favorited discs.
- There were over 500 different disc molds that were identified as favorites among respondents. Only 16 molds had greater than 1% of the votes, while over 200 different molds were only selected by a single respondent.
- In total, 61% of respondents’ favorite discs were from the same company that was identified as their favorite manufacturer.
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For a respondent’s favorite disc, which speed of disc is most common? We rounded down for discs that were half-speeds. For example, the Axiom Crave is listed as a 6.5-speed but is represented in following graphics as a 6-speed.
What speed is your favorite disc?
- 5-speed discs were most likely to be a respondents favorite, with 18% of the total responses.
- Based on disc type, respondents favorite discs were:
- Putters (1 to 3 speed): 14.0%
- Mid-ranges (4 to 6 speed): 33.7%
- Control Drivers (7 to 10 speed): 30.9%
- Distance Drivers (11 speed and faster): 21.4%
- What was the most favorited molds for each disc-speed?
Now let’s dive into disc purchasing. Do you think you buy too many discs? Below are the results of how many discs respondents had purchased in the past year. You may be surprised to see your disc purchasing habits are more normal than you expect!
Which manufacturers did respondents purchase their discs from? The graph below shows the percent of respondents who purchased at least one disc from each brand within the last year.
Manufacturer Purchases Percentage
- Innova, Discraft, and MVP separated themselves from the pack, leading in disc sales. This is likely what you expected if you checked out our latest article that showed that they were the most favored manufacturers among survey respondents.
- The combined “MVP or Axiom” group was purchased by 62.5% of respondents, which still falls short of Innova.
Manufacturers sell tour, signature, and commemorative discs for touring professionals that they sponsor. We asked respondents which players they had purchased these types of discs for in the past year.
Shortened Tour Series Percentage
- For the second straight year, Simon Lizotte led the field with nearly 40% of respondents having purchased at least one of his discs.
- Kristin Lätt (formerly Tattar) surpassed both Paul McBeth and Calvin Heimburg to claim the second highest spot. Coming off her Major grand slam, and in a calendar year where she eclipsed the 1000-rating barrier, Kristin saw the largest year-over-year increase in this metric with a jump of over 10%! The next highest year-over-year increases were:
- Paige Pierce (+7.9%)
- James Conrad (+5.1%)
- Missy Gannon (+5.1%)
- Ricky Wysocki (+4.3%)
- Brodie Smith saw the largest year-over-year decrease in this metric among respondents, falling from 12.5% in 2023 to 8.5% in 2024. Other players that saw a greater than 1% drop were:
- Nate Sexton (-2.7%)
- Simon Lizotte (-1.8%) [A decrease from 2023 but still handily leading the pack]
- Maria Oliva (-1.1%)
- As stated in previous articles, changes between 2023 and 2024 likely reflect a combination of (1) real year-over-year changes and (2) differences in the survey population between the two years.
- In future iterations of the survey, we are interested to see how these numbers compare to non-touring content creators or legends in the sport who have signature series discs, for example, the YouTuber Anthony Bodanza or 18-time Major winner Ken Climo.
We also investigated what drives people to purchase a specific players’ tour, signature, or commemorative disc. Respondents shared, for each player, how much each of the three options affected their decision to purchase their disc. The average response across all players is shown below:
Why respondents bought tour series discs
- “You like the player and wanted to support their touring efforts” and “The mold/plastic of the disc” were both significantly more influential than, “You want to throw similar discs to them.”
However, the above graphs and statistics are averaged across all players. We next looked at how these different reasons for purchasing a tour series disc varied across individual players. A few groups emerged when looking at the 60 players who sold the most discs.
- Group 1: Players who scored highly on “The mold/plastic of the disc” (in the top 10) but relatively low on “You like the player and wanted to support their touring efforts” (in the bottom 10). These players’ sales likely benefit from having a popular mold or special plastic type for their tour series discs. Unsurprisingly, we see some of the most popular molds in the list below.
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- Garret Gurthie (Innova Wraith)
- Adam Hammes (Discraft Zone)
- Kyle Klein (Discmania Vanguard)
- Silver Lätt (Latitude 64 Rive)
- Group 2: The reverse of Group 1 – Players who scored in the top 10 for “You like the player and wanted to support their touring efforts” but in the bottom 10 for the mold/plastic of the disc. Support and fandom for these players may drive sales even more than the specific molds that bear their name.
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- Silva Saarinen
- Madison Walker
- Sai Ananda
- Kat Mertsch
- Group 3: Players who score highly on “You want to throw similar discs to them.” Despite this, on average, being the least important factor, the players that score highly on this metric were most indicative of selling the most discs. All five of the top-selling professionals finished in the Top 5 in this metric (S. Lizotte, K. Lätt, P. McBeth, C. Heimburg, and E. McMahon).
What other questions about disc purchasing are you interested in? Let us know using the feedback links below! In the next article in the series we will dive into how disc golf fans consume disc golf media. How do we watch professional disc golf? What impacts which tournaments we choose to watch? Who are our favorite commentators? All of this and more, coming soon.
- If you are interested in learning more about the team and research goals at First Available Research, click here!
- If you want to be notified of the publication of future articles in this series and/or want to take future disc golf surveys from our group, click here!
- If you have any questions, comments or mailbag topics for future articles, submit them here!
Special thanks to Lauren Campbell, who was instrumental in developing our research plan and assisting with survey design. Also, thanks go out to the Fandom Survey’s editor, Karl Lamothe.
Please see the full series of 2024 articles by following these links:
- The Survey Itself & Who Took It
- Which Pros Do We Root For and Against
- What Drives Fans to Root for Certain Players?
- How Fans Feel about Disc Manufacturers
- Fan Relation to Discs
Links for the 2023 and 2022 Fandom Series articles can be found here.
