Driving Ranges Are Replacing Bowling Alleys (Here's Why) | Episode 454
Release Date: 07/20/2026
Why Points and Leaderboards Don't Fix Retention | Episode 457
Professor Game Podcast
Recently funded and aiming for sustainable retention? Intro chat (no sales pitch): Episode Summary Travis Clapp, co-founder and CEO of Coursebox AI, joins Rob to explain how AI is reshaping course creation and delivery for a platform used in 180 countries with over 300,000 courses built on it. He walks through Coursebox's "Break My Brain" feature, an AI mode built for personalized, adversarial learning rather than points and leaderboards, and explains why the platform now generates in 10 minutes what used to take him days to compile by hand. Travis also shares two gamification experiments...
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Your Engagement Program Is a Loan You're Still Paying | Episode 456
Professor Game Podcast
Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real engagement programs: Episode Summary Rob breaks down behavioral debt: the borrowed motivation hiding inside every legacy points, discount, or bonus program, showing why cutting an engagement program off cold is the fastest way to blow it up. He walks through JCPenney's collapse under Ron Johnson, a Fortune 500 rewards program employees now budget around like income, and how LATAM Airlines and Caixa Econômica Federal restructured their own behavioral debt using Octalysis Core Drives instead of switching it off....
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The Same Bonus Can Motivate Your Team, or Wreck It | Episode 455
Professor Game Podcast
Real cases pulled apart through the Octalysis Core Drives, sent to your inbox over a few days. Get the free guide: Episode Summary Rob breaks down why the same reward can pull a team forward or quietly wreck it, using three cases where the design decided the outcome. He walks through a school in Caracas where escalating fines for late pickups made lateness worse, the sales bonus patterns that produce burnout and sandbagging, and The Octalysis Group's project with Procter & Gamble's distributor Navo Orbico, where a gamified ship upgrade tightened the feedback loop instead of paying for the...
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Driving Ranges Are Replacing Bowling Alleys (Here's Why) | Episode 454
Professor Game Podcast
Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: Episode Summary Frédéric Guitton, who leads sales and marketing at iTargetGolf after a career across banking, startups, financial services, and investment firms, explains how driving ranges are turning dead space into an interactive, gamified experience. He walks through the company's product line, including the iTarget Night Saber target that connects to Toptracer, Inrange, and Trackman through an API, the in-bay lights that fire when a player hits their target, and the new Cash Cup Golf hole-in-one...
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The Reason Your Users Agree But Never Start | Episode 453
Professor Game Podcast
Want a sharper read on motivation design? Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, real cases decoded through this exact framework, one short email a day: Episode Summary Rob argues that Black Hat motivation, the urgency and scarcity most designers treat as the villain, is the on-ramp that gets people to act at all. He breaks down the Octalysis Group's award-winning project with Procter & Gamble's distributor Navo Orbico, which reached 99.5% voluntary participation on a non-compulsory rollout and a 28.6% revenue increase by starting with pressure and handing off to meaning. Drawing on...
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Why "More Effort" is Ruining Your Team (And How to Fix It) | Episode 452
Professor Game Podcast
Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: Episode Summary Michael Lukich, a marketing analytics leader with more than 20 years across consulting, data, and strategy, explains why the fix for a struggling team is almost never more effort. He walks through the closed-loop trap he built early in his management career, the systems thinking tools he now uses to find leverage points, and why over-measuring single marketing channels quietly starves the top of the funnel. Drawing on the Cabreras' DSRP model, Donella Meadows, and nearly 25 years at the...
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Why Driven People Can't Take a Real Vacation | Episode 451
Professor Game Podcast
Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products, with one real-world example in your inbox each day: Episode Summary Rob breaks down why disconnecting on vacation is so hard for driven people, and why it is a motivation problem rather than a willpower one. He maps the specific Octalysis Core Drives that keep high achievers tied to work during a break, including Core Drive 2 (progress addiction), Core Drive 8 (FOMO and Black Hat urgency), and Core Drive 1 (the mission needs me trap). Drawing on his own routine of leaving the phone at the apartment near...
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Spent $200 Billion, Then Said: Use AI Less | Episode 450
Professor Game Podcast
These engagement failures, and how to fix them, map directly onto the Octalysis Core Drives. Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide: Episode Summary Rob breaks down why Amazon shut down KiroRank, the internal leaderboard that scored staff on raw AI usage on its Kiro developer platform. He shows how stacking Core Drive 2 (Development & Accomplishment) and Core Drive 5 (Social Influence & Relatedness) produced flawless compliance toward the wrong target, a textbook case of Goodhart's law: once a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Drawing on the Octalysis...
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Stop Dumping Textbooks Into Your Games, with Alan Yeats | Episode 449
Professor Game Podcast
Struggling with retention, churn, or adoption in your product, service, or program? Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide and see how to apply real behavioral design to your engagement: Episode Summary Alan Yeats, CEO of Pocket Sized Hands, a co-development game studio in Dundee, Scotland, explains why the best learning games start with play and add the curriculum second. He walks through real projects, a knife-crime prevention game stopped cold by school firewalls and a stem cell science game built with Cambridge University, to show how co-design keeps everyone pointed at the same goal....
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Same AI, Opposite Outcome (It's Not the Tool) | Episode 448
Professor Game Podcast
Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real corporate cases: Episode Summary Rob breaks down why enterprise AI adoption stalls even with paid licenses and training, while a group of students beat a locked, proctored exam with ChatGPT and no support at all. Reading both cases through the Octalysis Framework, he shows how the exam accidentally stacked Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance), Core Drive 6 (Scarcity & Impatience), and Core Drive 2 (Development & Accomplishment) into a ferocious, if mispointed, motivation engine. The enterprise bought the most...
info_outlineGet the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD
Episode Summary
Frédéric Guitton, who leads sales and marketing at iTargetGolf after a career across banking, startups, financial services, and investment firms, explains how driving ranges are turning dead space into an interactive, gamified experience. He walks through the company's product line, including the iTarget Night Saber target that connects to Toptracer, Inrange, and Trackman through an API, the in-bay lights that fire when a player hits their target, and the new Cash Cup Golf hole-in-one contest played with RFID balls. Guitton lays out the three levers a driving range has for revenue, why post-COVID golf growth came from entertainment rather than traditional rounds, and how instant feedback keeps a player buying one more bucket. Listeners come away with a working model of physical gamification and a reminder that designing around real human behavior beats asking people to behave better.
About the Host
Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
Key Takeaways
- A driving range has only three levers for revenue, according to Frédéric Guitton: sell more balls, sell more food and beverage, or sell the balls for more money. Every engagement decision at iTargetGolf traces back to one of those three.
- iTargetGolf's first targets were powder-coated metal and looked great, but ball picker staff bumped them and metal does not give, so it bent or broke permanently. The replacement is cut from utility sewer pipe and survives 400 to 500 pounds driving over it.
- Post-COVID golf growth came from entertainment, not from more rounds on traditional courses. Guitton describes the driving range starting to replace the bowling alley as the family night out, which brings in an audience that never came to practice.
- The iTarget Night Saber target connects through an API to Toptracer, Inrange, and Trackman ball tracking, so a landed ball triggers an animation within seconds. That instant feedback is Core Drive 2 (Development and Accomplishment) delivered in the physical world.
- Choosing low voltage over high voltage took permitting out of the install path. A California range that signed in mid-June started its install roughly four weeks later, which turned an infrastructure decision into a sales advantage.
- Guitton frames the B2B2C tension plainly: the range's success drives iTargetGolf's success, so the company treats itself as a consequence of its customers' results rather than a driver of them.
Topics Covered
- 0:00 — Opening and introduction
- 2:17 — Inside a week at iTargetGolf
- 3:25 — Favorite fail: metal targets that bend
- 6:34 — Sewer pipes and the strike point redesign
- 9:01 — The four products iTargetGolf builds
- 11:31 — How a general contractor started the company
- 14:58 — Golf as entertainment after COVID
- 15:57 — Three ways a driving range makes money
- 17:46 — Making it fun and creating new golfers
- 19:35 — Best practices: listen and stay locked in
- 22:45 — Football intelligence and instant feedback
- 27:47 — Outliers, favorite games, and goodbyes
Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD
About Frédéric Guitton
Frédéric Guitton leads the sales and marketing strategy at iTargetGolf, where he is helping redefine the driving range experience through interactive down-range technology. He relocated from France to Central Florida in 1996 and built a career in banking before expanding into startups, financial services, and investment firms, developing experience across business strategy, operations, sales, marketing, and executive leadership. At iTargetGolf he works on a product line that combines interactive illuminated targets, skill-based cash prize games, and integrated ball-tracking technology to increase player engagement and open new revenue for golf facilities. His current focus is building scalable systems, strengthening customer relationships, expanding strategic partnerships, and positioning the company in the evolution of golf entertainment technology.
Find the Guest Online
- Website: itargetgolf.com
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fguitton
- Instagram: @itarget_golf
- TikTok: @itarget_golf
- Facebook: iTargetGolf on Facebook
Mentioned in This Episode
Some links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
- Recommended book: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
- Proposed guest: Scott Armstrong, involved with TGL, the indoor golf competition on ESPN
- Ball tracking platforms iTargetGolf integrates with: Toptracer, Inrange, Trackman
- Topgolf, referenced as the far end of the golf entertainment spectrum
- iTargetGolf products discussed: iTarget Night Saber, iTarget Strike Point, in-bay lights, and Cash Cup Golf
- Favorite game to watch: volleyball. Favorite sport to play: cycling.