Private club membership videos: what prospective members want to see

Private Clubs

Sep 27

Line of golf carts rolling down the cart path past a private clubhouse

Too many private club membership videos open the same way: a drone sweeping over the eighteenth green, a swell of music, the logo. It looks gorgeous and tells a prospective member almost nothing about what it feels like to belong. Here’s what prospects actually weigh, and how to build a membership film that shows it.

What prospective members actually weigh

Golf Life Navigators’ 2025 consumer trends report is worth taping to the wall of the membership office. The top motivators it found: a friendly culture (82–85%), golf amenities (71–75%) and landscaping quality (70–73%) (Golf Life Navigators, 2025).

Read the order again. Culture comes first. Golf amenities and the look of the grounds follow close behind, and those are the easy part to film, because fairways photograph themselves. A friendly culture is the hard part. It can’t be staged; it has to be caught. A handshake at the bag drop. A server who already knows the order. Two families who met at the pool and now spend the Fourth of July together.

The grill room and the pool matter too, especially to families deciding where their summer weekends will go. A prospect isn’t shopping for a tee time. They’re picturing a life.

Golfers and carts gather on a fairway, a scene for a private club membership video — An outing shows the social side of a club without anyone trying.

The waitlist reality

For a few years, plenty of clubs didn’t need to sell. They had a line. That line has gotten shorter. Club Benchmarking’s Jim Butler, as recapped by StoryTeller, put the share of clubs with a waitlist at about 55–56% at the pandemic peak and about 45–48% now (StoryTeller, 2025). Those figures come secondhand, so treat them as a direction rather than a decimal point. The direction is clear enough.

Demand hasn’t gone anywhere. The National Golf Foundation reports that the number of golfers who are private-club members is up almost 50% since 2019 (NGF, 2025). The members are out there. But when fewer clubs have a line out the door, prospects have options, and they compare. Your membership film can be the first tour they take, on their couch, before they ever call the membership director.

That’s the job of membership marketing for private clubs now: show prospects what it feels like to belong before they set foot on the property.

What a private club membership video should show

Drone footage has its place. It shows scale, the routing of the course and how the club sits in its town. But a film that’s all aerials looks like a real estate listing, and it’s a problem I see in a lot of golf club promotional videos: all property, no people. Drone footage shows prospects the property. People show them the club.

Build the film around one real day at the club. Here’s the shot list I’d start from:

Arrival: the gate, the bag drop, the staff member who greets a member by name before the car door closes.
The first tee: handshakes, the starter, a foursome that has clearly played together for years.
The grill room: the regular table, the bartender who knows the order, a laugh you can hear across the room.
The pool: kids in the water, parents in the shade, the lifeguard who knows every family.
Family moments: a junior clinic, a parent and kid on the practice green, a holiday dinner.
Staff who know your name: the pro, the locker room attendant, the server. They’re a big part of the culture prospects are weighing.
The superintendent at dawn: mowers on the greens before anyone else is up. Nothing says “this place is cared for” faster.

Greenskeeper mowing a golf green at dawn at a private club, soft early light — The part of the club members never see, and the part prospects should.

Spread the shoot across different kinds of time if you can: a quiet weekday morning for the course, a busy Saturday for the social side, a club event for the energy. We plan the moments, then get out of the way and let members be members.

Drone footage shows prospects the property. People show them the club.

Who should speak on camera

The fastest way to lose a prospect is the GM at a desk reading the mission statement. Nothing against GMs; you run the place. But prospects want to hear from people like them, and a script read to camera sounds exactly like a script.

Put members of different tenures in front of the camera:

A member who joined decades ago and can tell you why they never left.
A member who joined recently and still remembers what the first month felt like.
A young family, so parents can picture their own weekends.
A member who uses the pool and the dining room more than the course, if that’s part of your membership.
Staff: the pro, the superintendent, the server who has everyone’s order memorized.

No scripts. We write questions for each person and coach every interview, so nobody needs to be comfortable on camera going in. A few questions I like for a membership film:

What made you pick this club?
Who was the first person here who made you feel at home?
What does a normal Saturday look like for your family?
What would you tell a friend who’s thinking about joining?

The GM’s role matters just as much; it’s just off camera. Choose who’s on camera, reach out to members and staff personally and lock the shoot dates. An invitation from someone members know carries more weight than one from a crew they’ve never met. Our Prestige Film for Upper Montclair Country Club shows how members and staff come across telling it themselves: watch “A Legacy on the Green” on our work page.

Length and cuts

Our Membership Film for golf and country clubs runs 2–3 minutes, plus four 30-second reels. Each piece has a different job.

The full film does the persuading. Two to three minutes is enough to move through a day at the club and hear from several voices, and short enough that a busy prospect finishes it.

The reels do the reaching. Each one pulls a single idea from the full film: the family side, the golf, the dining, the staff. Wistia’s 2026 State of Video, drawn from more than 13 million videos, found that shorter videos earn higher engagement, and vertical 1080x1920 uploads were up 24% (Wistia, 2026). Plan the vertical framing on shoot day, not in the edit, so the reels feel native instead of cropped.

Top-down drone shot of golfers on a green at a private golf club — A top-down aerial makes a strong first frame for a reel, as long as people show up in the next one.

If a milestone is coming, you may not need a separate shoot: a Membership Film cut of up to three minutes can be added to The Prestige Film. I’ve laid out the bigger project in our guide to planning a country club anniversary film.

Where your membership film should live

A membership film sitting in a shared drive does nothing. Put it everywhere a prospect might be deciding:

Your website: the membership page, right above the inquiry form, plus the home page if the board agrees.
Prospective member emails: in the first reply to every inquiry and in the follow-up after a tour.
Realtor partners: the agents selling homes near your club (more below).
Open house events: looping in the lobby, or playing at the start of a prospective member reception.
Social: the 30-second reels, released one at a time over the season.

8 in 10prospective golf members combine their club search with their home search. Golf Life Navigators, 2025

That realtor line deserves more attention than it gets. If most prospects are house hunting and club hunting at the same time, the agents showing homes near your club are already talking to your future members. Give the brokers you trust the film and the reels to send along with listings. A country club marketing video that lands in a buyer’s inbox next to a listing works harder than one waiting on your website to be found.

Respect the members you film

A private club is private for a reason. Members didn’t join to end up in an ad, and nothing sours a membership film faster than a member who finds themselves in it without being asked. A few ground rules I’d set:

Announce the shoot dates in advance, so members can plan around the cameras.
Feature only members who’ve agreed, and get that agreement in writing.
Give parents a clear choice before their children appear.
Take care with background faces too. Adobe Stock’s contributor guidelines call for a model release when a person “can be recognized in any way, by their face, voice, tattoos, clothing, or even specific surroundings” (Adobe Stock). That’s a stock-footage standard, not a law, but it’s a sensible gut check.
Keep aerials courteous. Part 107 only allows flights over people who are directly participating in the operation, under cover or inside a stationary vehicle, unless the flight qualifies under the FAA’s operations over people categories. Confirm the club’s airspace on the FAA’s UAS Facility Maps and LAANC before anyone flies.

The club decides how its film is shared, and we only share it publicly with the club’s permission. None of this is legal advice, so run your release forms past the club’s counsel. For the full playbook, read our guide to filming at a private club: privacy, consent and discretion.

Private club membership video FAQs

What should a private club membership video include?

Show one real day at the club: arrival, the first tee, the grill room, the pool, families and the staff who know members by name. Let members of different tenures speak in their own words. Use aerials for scale, but let people carry the film, because a friendly culture is what prospects weigh first.

How long should a country club membership video be?

Plan on two to three minutes for the main film, with short reels cut from it for social. Our Membership Film runs 2–3 minutes plus four 30-second reels. The full film persuades, and the reels get it seen.

Should a golf club promotional video use drone footage?

Yes, in moderation. Aerials show the layout and setting of the club in a way ground shots can’t, but a film made only of aerials feels like a real estate listing. Use them to set the scene, then cut to people.

Do members have to appear in a club’s marketing video?

No. Feature only members who’ve agreed in writing, announce shoot dates ahead of time and give parents a clear choice before children appear. The club decides how the film is shared. This isn’t legal advice, so have the club’s counsel review your release forms.

How can a club use its membership video to recruit new members?

Put it on the membership page, in the first reply to every inquiry and at prospective member events, then post the reels through the season. Share it with trusted local realtors too: 8 in 10 prospective golf members combine their club search with their home search (Golf Life Navigators, 2025).

Sources

Private clubsMembership marketingMembership filmGolf clubsClub video

Sean Bell