Inside the LA City Golf Tee Times Controversy of 2024

In this episode of the Tech Caddie podcast, Mike Hendrix interviews Kevin Fitzgerald, the Assistant Director of Public Affairs for the Southern California Golf Association, about the intersection of golf and public policy. They discuss the LA City Golf Advisory Committee, the challenges of getting tee times in Los Angeles, and the existence of a gray market for tee time reservations. They also explore potential solutions, including policy changes and technological improvements. The conversation focused on the issue of reselling tee times in the LA city golf courses, which some people refer to as a black or gray market.
Included is the TikTok video from Dave Fink which helped expose the gray market on the KaKao app, used by hundreds of golfers to score the best tee times available at the LA City municipal golf courses.
We’ve also included the class action law suit filed against the City of Los Angeles. link: https://www.classaction.org/media/lee-et-al-v-city-of-los-angeles.pdf
Guest, Aaron Gleason from Golf Geek Software, discussed their solution called FairPlay Guardian, which uses machine learning to detect fraudulent activity in tee time bookings. They also discussed the importance of pricing golf inventory properly to prevent the emergence of a reseller market. The conversation also touched on the role of waitlists in reducing no-shows and increasing conversion rates. Guest, Matt Holder from Loop Golf emphasized the need for operators to understand the pricing pressure and revenue management opportunities in the golf industry. Matt also points out the current practices of tee time brokers is serving many golfers in the Los Angeles area and keeps them happy and on the golf courses.

The LA City Golf Advisory Committee serves as an advisory board for the community to vet ideas and make recommendations regarding golf courses in Los Angeles.
There is a high demand for golf in Los Angeles, but a limited supply of tee times, leading to difficulties in getting reservations.
A gray market has emerged, where entities buy tee times and resell them at a markup, causing frustration among golfers.
Anticipated policy changes, such as implementing non-refundable deposits, may help address the issue of tee time availability and the gray market. Reselling of tee times is a problem in the LA city golf courses, highlighting the need for solutions to detect and prevent fraudulent activity.
Golf Geek’s FairPlay Guardian uses machine learning to identify fraudulent tee time bookings and alerts operators to investigate further.
Proper pricing of golf inventory can help prevent the emergence of a reseller market.
Waitlists can reduce no-shows and increase conversion rates by making it easy for golfers to cancel and fill available tee times.
Operators should consider pricing pressure and revenue management opportunities to optimize their golf inventory.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
00:56 Role of the Advisory Board
03:20 Golfing Challenges in Los Angeles
05:15 Gray Market and Reselling Tee Times
06:14 Affordability of Golf in Los Angeles
07:41 Evidence of Secondary Market
08:13 Personal Experience with Tee Time Availability
10:15 Impact of Reselling Tee Times
11:11 Code of Conduct and Policy Enforcement
12:39 Player Card and Tee Time Availability
14:06 Potential Solutions: Pricing and Policy Changes
19:23 Different Golf Course Management Models
22:14 Demand for Golf in Los Angeles
24:08 Policy Changes and Pricing
26:03 Upcoming Meetings and Recommendations
26:57 Introduction of Aaron Gleason
27:23 Introduction and Background
28:19 Reselling Tee Times and Fraudulent Activity
29:17 FairPlay Guardian: Detecting Fraudulent Activity
30:44 Waitlist Functionality
34:02 Pricing and Revenue Management
40:37 Different Perspectives on the Reselling Issue
44:24 Opportunity for Pricing and Revenue Management
45:26 Improved Golfer Experience and Increased Demand
46:52 Policy Changes and Random Release of Tee Times
48:18 Fraudulent Bookings and Solutions
51:34 Advisory Board and Policy Making Process
53:01 Conclusion and Importance of Golf Courses

Okay so welcome to the tech caddy podcast that goes out to Kevin Fitzgerald and Kevin is in the public affairs team in the Southern California Golf Association and because of uh Kevin’s role there he serves as the chair of The Advisory board for Los Angeles city golf courses I think Kevin

You can probably explain it better than me but essentially that Advisory board has a a seat that’s always going to be filled someone from the Cal uh Southern California Golf Association but Kevin why don’t you explain exactly you know what your title is and your role and

Then we’ll we’ll kind of get into the topic of the day absolutely thank you so much for having me on and I’m the assistant director of public affairs for the Southern California Golf Association essentially the public affairs department works at the intersection of golf and public policy and and that is

Uh there are a lot of intersections so um this this is one comp component of it and I know we’ll be talking quite a bit about reservation systems and online Brokers and so forth and um you know you you you mentioned the LA City Golf advisory committee essentially it is an

An Advisory Board it’s a subsidiary body um the policymaking body is the recreation and Park Board of Commissioners and what that’s within the executive branch of government and the City city of Los Angeles so the the golf advisory committee is an opportunity for the community to um uh vet ideas and make

Recommendations really part of the public stakeholder input process so we work very closely with the golf division which is within the department of Recreation and Parks and um you know what we’ll talk I’m sure much more about is uh uh the way the process works and

And uh this big issue that’s that has been getting a lot of attention the last couple weeks no that yeah that’s great and and you know listen there’s a lot of municipalities I think that don’t even have a board like this so on some level it’s it’s actually great that the that

Los Angeles uh you know has John Q public essentially is able to participate and and have a voice you had shared with me previously um you know you certainly you guys certainly do not set policy but it’s nice they let you weigh in on

Things if an RFP is going to go out you all might have a say in some things that are included in the RFB before it goes out right or I know yesterday we talked about um the Strategic plan that that Global Golf advisors had had built for

The city of Los Angeles and and you all had access to that and I know everybody has access to it but I think you may be had a little bit deeper role um in pulling that together and like you said today we’re here to talk about a lot of

These reservation issues ues but I think one thing that’s really important to say really in defense of your technology provider who is uh I shouldn’t say your technology provider the technology provider for the city of of Los Angeles in defense of uh NBC Sports next or golf now or however you refer to

Them this problem is not new I mean there is not there are not enough holes of golf for the number of golfers that there are in Los Angeles so it’s always been very difficult to get a tea time maybe you could chime in on this but I

Really I say that in defense of golf now because this is not uh a problem at least in my opinion that they’ve created absolutely I mean I think to take a step back from this entire issue um La is considered to be the worst place in the United States to be a

Golfer there are more golfers chasing fewer holes here than anywhere else and um it’s by a fairly wide margin so and then to to paint a little picture of of what golf in Los Angeles looks like um within the city it’s over four million residents and essentially you have a few

You know very high-end private clubs and you have Municipal Golf and and so there there are uh the the daily fee Golf Course Market has has all but disappeared there’s one privately owned public golf course in the city of Los Angeles and it just so happens that it’s

In a flood plane a wash you can’t can’t develop the land so the game of golf is relying upon Parks departments waking up and wanting to continue to provide golf as part of its menu of recreational offerings we if we want the game to exist where and be available where the populations live

Then then then we need to do everything we can to support these Park systems because uh they they are golf in in in a place like Los Angeles right right and so uh for people that don’t know although I think a lot of people in Gulf do know for people that don’t know

Essentially what has happened is uh a gray market and I use that word because I’ve spoken with other people in the industry they say it’s really not a black market Mike because it’s not there’s nothing illegal happening you could call it a gray Market but a reseller Market has essentially been

Exposed by an Instagram influencer someone that plays a lot of golf in in uh the LA area and it it essentially it’s been confirmed right Kevin that yes there there are entities that are buying tea times and then reselling them at a large markup sometimes as much as40 or

$50 per head uh and and that has essentially uh validated a lot of public golfers opinions from over the years of why it’s so hard to get a tea time they there’s now a lot of people saying I told you there is something nefarious going on here and maybe you can expand

On that sure I I’ll clarify one point so um I I like your term the the gray Market secondary Market again I mean it it’s it’s fascinating that we’re in this situation where a secondary Market exists and I think it’s important to point out why that is possible the

Municipal system we’re discussing the LA City Golf system the the greens fees are set well below market and and that’s intentional it the the the mission of the parks department is to provide an affordable and accessible recreational opportunity and and so for the golf system to provide affordable and

Accessible golf so you know obviously if you had the if if green speed were at Market rates then um you know there wouldn’t be a a a great business opportunity in in a secondary you know gray Market um one can I just let me let

Me just jump in just to make this clear for The Listener when we say they’re not at Market rates that is another way of saying they are priced lower than than it is believed the market would pay for the tea time that’s really what we’re saying right is unlike a lot of other

Places in America these tea times are priced significantly lower one than what the market would be willing to bear so absolutely yeah thank you and and and I’ll say that you know I think that’s the mission of the parks department but it’s also political security for these

Golf courses because um you know we we we’ve discussed this what really changed in the last couple of weeks was that there seemed to be what I would say was the first you know real evidence that this broker or secondary Market existed we we’ve heard things like the following

Well I know someone who called this number and got this tea time they paid this I think it’s a broker and and I would say well give me the number like let I’d love to see this I I I I want to know more about this um I’ve

Never we never got past the point of hearsay and so a couple weeks ago um there was uh a post as you suggested I’m a mun golf type of guy I’ve in Harding in Los Angeles and all the other munis around town it’s affordable it’s local and the courses are actually [ __ ]

Great like Wilson and Harding both great setups Rancho Park awesome setup one of my favorites is Hansen damn there’s a bunch of other courses and they’re all Municipal public courses but it feels like it’s impossible sometimes to get a tea time on any of these courses especially on the weekends so this has

Been going on the last couple of years one of my friends got totally fed up and went to Wilson Harding on a Saturday and he posted up and he asked every person how’d you get this time how’d you get this time how’d you get this time finally somebody told him the truth hey

There’s this guy the only way you can get in touch with him is through this Korean message Me In app called caca so this is the app that you have to use to message this one guy who has Bots that scoop up all the tea times the second

They become available and he holds them and check this out this is what he’s charging per tea time per person okay $30 for like non peak hours $40 per te that’s not how much the time costs you have to pay the LA munity when you get

There and you check in but you’re going to check in under this guy’s name I just this is literally crazy and it’s time available is 4:30 in the afternoon now you know why this guy is literally taking tea times using Bots and reselling them and apparently everybody

Knows about it everybody knows about it and they use him what are we going to do about LA City LA City what are you going to do about this courses are for the people public Municipal courses are for the people if you steal all the tea

Times and you [ __ ] turn it into like a private sketchy Mafia type Country Club only for people in the know that know how to use this Kow app that’s just [ __ ] up and not fair so uh I’m not down let’s get rid of this [ __ ] sorry this is [ __ ] up to to go

Back to the your your point about the gray or secondary Market um right now and you brought up the legality you you one does not have to uh buy the tea time through the parks department so when you when you reserve a tea time you don’t uh

You haven’t paid anything toward it so you know what there are a lot of reasons why this is problematic but first and foremost you you know the parks department um does not permit that within their code of conduct so while it it may not be illegal it’s certainly

Against the code of conduct and they reserve the right to cancel your access your player card access if you’re if you’re taking a tea time reserving it and then and then selling it um as a broker okay the so the code of conduct is that something that we can find

Online do you know a absolutely sure okay so we’ll we’ll try to post that in the in the show notes uh the code of cons so people so so that’s interesting you’re saying if they really wanted to um stick to the you know letter of

The law so to speak they could pre hit these people from playing and I guess you had said to me in a previous conversation they have suspended lots of different golfer cards uh res explain the golfer card a little bit that’s the other thing I think that’s a little

Confusing uh out of out of La sure so in in the LA City system the tea times technically open nine days in advance at 6:00 a.m. if you have a player card so the player card is $25 it’s good for a year and that what that allows is for uh

Someone to get access two days in advance of the the general time that the tea times would become available so so really so people for $25 a year you can get uh premium access is essentially what you’re what what that is exactly now you know what what some of the

Frustration has become that you you can’t get a it’s very difficult to get a tea time that you’re looking for regard but it’s it really doesn’t matter if you in the in this in the sense that um you if you have a player card the the incredible amount of demand for each tea

Time uh it’s it’s really something to watch if you if you log in at 559 a.m. nine days in advance and at six o’clock you try to book a tea time you’ll see that every Golf Course is filled in a matter of seconds yeah well let me ask

You this I just because I know you’re going to come back on in another week because you guys have some meetings coming up and it and I thought it would be really excellent to have you back on and maybe you could update us on what’s happening but but let me just throw this

Out there do you think there would be an appetite for 14 days in advance for an annual fee of $500 so pay a one-time fee of $500 and I’ll give you 14 days in Advance access is that something that you all would ever consider um you know I I I think we’re

We’re on a bit of a collision course with these Municipal systems is that political security component so you know that there’s good reason for these facilities to be concerned about the greens fees um getting anywhere near Market um they that affordable and accessible model is what allows the

Policy makers to you know feel comfortable with the the use of space for golf if we were to go to a point where uh we see it become uh increasingly expensive to access the facilities you know at some point and I don’t know exactly where that Tipping Point is but

If too few can afford to access the park space then I think the the space will be used for another purpose understood let me just play devil Advocate uh for a second so for $10 a week that 500 bucks a year for $10 a week um you could get

Added access and and because that Revenue really doesn’t have any expense that comes with it or anything like that in theory uh the city could set it up that that Revenue goes to support schools and so now all of a sudden a group of 11% of our residents that play

Golf a portion of them actually are supporting something that even more of our residents care about that starts to maybe feel like a political win um but but again I I’m just some bald guy that lives in Columbus Ohio so what do I know about Los Angeles you know it’s a it’s

An excellent point there are a lot of different models you know I think the fear within the department I don’t want to speak for the department but I mean I think there’s always a fear that with each say five to10 dollars that the greens fee increases you just price some

Percentage of the population out so and at some point I think um while there’s there’s a great story to be told that that that there there is revenue from the golf uh amenity and some of those dollars are first and foremost the greens fee recovers the cost of providing the Service Plus Capital

Reinvestment now at at many times they in many systems they they do generate some some some net profit beyond that cost recovery model but that allows for more investment in into the infrastructure some of it gets pulled somewhat into um you know the the park

Budget and so you know the the money has to be used to provide amenities the parks departments offer and but but primarily those fees are are are for the golf component um each system is different but um essentially I I think you you have an interesting idea

It’s certainly a model that could work well it just becomes a a question a balance and ensuring that you know we we would like anyone who has interest in playing that that they have the opportunity to participate well let’s let’s talk about that for a second so

You I mean you’re a you were a college golfer you’re an accomplished golfer you seemingly you you still love to play and I’m guessing because you actually are on this La Advisory Board you really do live in or very close to Los Angeles is

That would that be fair to say yes so AB absolutely so our office in is in Studio City that’s in the city of Los Angeles we’re very close to Griffith Park and well so Kevin where do where do you play like how you know give the give the

Listener a feel how hard is it to get a tea time where do you play how often are you even able to play if it if the if the inventory is so scarce yeah well it’s extremely difficult when you’re someone like me looking for you know a Saturday um I

Don’t mind playing late in the day um um so I I I play when and wherever I can um and I I do like to still play in a few tournaments here and there so I would say you know half my rounds probably end up being in a city Championship or

Something um but I you know that and and so but yeah it’s it’s very difficult um you you can certainly get out as a single it’s very hard to reserve a a forsome um and and then I will say that uh if you ask a golfer here you know

They golfers also look for that cancellation window so when you get close to the 24 hours there are tea times that that might pop up 25 26 hours on occasion you can’t be particularly choosy about which golf course but um you know that there’s some way to um to

Get out from time to time especially if you don’t if you’re not looking for a forsome so I I don’t want to say it’s it would be strange to say it’s so busy you can’t play anymore I mean that doesn’t make any sense yeah that’s what Yogi

Bear Yogi Bear used to say nobody goes that restur anymore it’s too busy so exactly exactly I mean but um yeah and I and I think uh you know you you bring up again it’s an interesting concept it’s an interesting model and I think there you’ll see with throughout Southern

California that these systems are operated with with different priorities um in in general they’re they’re focused on accessibility but um there are various models uh in use and and and some of the municipal systems are you know City of La it’s it’s managed and and all the maintenance uh

Is is performed by um city employees and then in other systems you have um golf management companies either with lease agreements or management agreements various models but they’re all in generally in in in sync with the idea that you know that the policy makers would like to ensure that their

Constituents have access to these these Park spaces so so there is there’s LA county is that correct there’s LA County then there’s LA City and and those really are two separate entities completely separate completely and I think but I I listen I could be wrong I think LA county is managed by American

Golf if I’m correct does that sound right um so they they have uh quite a few of the golf courses that they manage but not the entire system there there are a number of different um management companies uh system system okay well what I’m getting at and let me just ask

You too you mentioned that there’s one privately owned public course in La is that Angeles National or what is that correct it is Angeles National okay um used to be a customer mind that’s why that’s why I know so so okay so what I’m interested in though is LA City runs

Their own golf courses I think that’s great and then you’ve got some management companies but there probably are different technology platforms being used I mean do you feel like or do the golfers in general in the area feel like oh well that course uses that Tech platform and it just works better or

Something or it’s just makes it it’s it’s a better golfer experience or is that not on the board at all what what’s the what’s the general notion there well and you know we we’ve seen a number of LA Times articles this this story about the the gray Market or or secondary

Market as you suggest and you know it’s it’s certainly been a a story that has proliferated around the country it’s just a an interes golf story I suppose but um you know I don’t know that the golfer knows you know the average golfer knows which golf

Course that they happen to be playing um I think they they know they’re playing golf and um you know by and large I think the more Avid golfers certainly understand it but the average golfer who who shows up at and and just wants to play golf I’m not sure that uh they’re

Going to be particularly familiar with which system that they they’re ha they happen to be playing that day understood understood okay now one of the takeaways again and I think this is good for frankly to memorialize and to be able to always refer back to

There is no doubt in the last 14 days the case has been made and it didn’t have to be made by you guys it didn’t have to be made by Southern California Golf Association the case has been made that there is a lot of demand for golf

It really would it would not make a lot of sense to do away with golf golfer to start to re you know turn 18 whole golf courses into nine whole golf courses based on what’s happened last 14 days that that would be that’d be quite a stretch that that makes sense if you

Will yes I I hope so we we’re certainly interested in in in sharing that piece of the story I mean I think if you read say some of the the stories that have been published I think that component of incredible demand to supply is is sort

Of Lost in the story of of broker activity um my greatest fear with all of this is that um you know I don’t think that there’s a silver bullet from what I know at the moment and I’m not um I don’t pretend to be an expert in technology so

As you suggested golf advisory committee I I work for the Southern California Golf Association I happen to be on the golf advisory committee as one of 18 members I’m I’m currently the chair I can’t speak for the committee and what what recommendations it might take but

Based on the discuss that we had last week I can say that some really interesting ideas were discussed um I think some of those um changes that will you know ultimately come from this interest and in trying to mitigate the problem I think some are probably policy Solutions and some are probably

Technological although again I’m not sure that I can speak you know to get too into the Weeds on that at this moment I think a couple of the ideas that were discussed sorry you when you say policy is that another word for pricing that that I mean really because we had

Another guest on earlier and we’re going to put different voices together for this particular episode we had another guest on earlier that said essentially like yes it seems like there you could get a win with some technology or you could make some level of improvement but

At the end of the day some of this is just going to come down to pricing either you’re going to raise the fees and lower the ability for a gray Market to exist or you’re not and when I say you I don’t mean you Kevin I I just I mean the the city

Overall so is policy somewhat of a synonym for pricing um it could be I I think I’ll use one example of policy that was discussed which was having you know some skin in the game so as we said earlier you you don’t you right now you reserve a time

And you have until 24 hours in advance to cancel that time you know one policy ch would be a non-refundable deposit that that is a policy change that I think is quite likely um because ultimately there might be some way to cut into the the the market for

The Brokers now some facilities are highly sought after you know fraction of the market rate so there I’m not sure that that would work necessarily at every golf course I again I I don’t know at this point we’re going through the process we’re we’re we’re going to hear

Um in in the coming uh days we’re going to hear more from staff and uh there essentially what will happen is there will be another golf advisory committee meeting next week and and staff is going to provide some um um recommendations and and plan to have that public input

Process take place well the Gak the golf advisory Comm May well endorse what they see in the staff report they may add additional ideas or ask a lot of questions ultimately the staff will take the report to the board and that is the policymaking body now when they when

Staff goes before the board it’s helpful to them if they can suggest that we’ve met with the golf Community we’ve we’ve had the golf advisory committee review all of this and ask questions and and you know ultimately they would I’m sure like to see the golf advisory committee

Endorse whatever it is that they propose so that so let me welcome in Aaron gleon uh from golf geek software into the tech caddy podcast so Aon thanks for thanks for joining us thanks for having me Mike it’s uh it’s been a while man good to see your

Face good good to talk to you too so we’re here to talk um about LA City Golf Courses that that’s really the theme of this entire podcast so we’re goingon to have a couple different guests on uh in in the podcast it it occurred to me that we

Rated your booking engine very high I think it’s the number two booking engine in all of golf so that’s an extremely high rating and because your booking engine is also newer I thought I wonder how those guys would handle some of the tech issues that that the that the team

LA City golf courses are are are struggling with and so I thought you’d be good to come on now in exchange for your time I’m going to let you talk a little bit about your company overall we’ll get to that in a minute but let’s let’s I know you’ve kind of studied this

LA City course thing to to a degree let’s talk about a couple of different things so so as you know and as a lot of our listeners know there seems to be some people call it a black market other people call it a gray Market uh because maybe there’s nothing illegal happening

Here but there’s clearly reselling of tea times happening where someone gobbles up a lot of tea times they then transfer those tea times to the the the proper golfer name once someone has come to them and said I’ll pay you $50 more dollars per head or something like that

I know you guys ever thought who would ever thought the golf industry would have this problem right exactly exactly and and it it it it does make sense it would happen in LA because they don’t have a lot of holes of golf in La at

Least at least public golf so so talk to you know if you guys are big into solving problems over there I know that’s your big mind Mantra at golf geek but if you all sat around and were going to solve the problem talk a little bit

About what your thoughts are and how you would handle it it’s interesting that when that came up we had already uh kind of been rolling out um some problem solving uh Tech uh techniques and Tech in general uh for our client out in Sacramento who’s uh runs the municipal

Properties for the city of Sacramento um they were having some issues with people making tea times uh fraudu fraudulently um and so we rolled out um or are in the process of rolling out some new tech that allows us to detect that fraudulent activity we call it the

Fair play Guardian um so literally what it does is and it’s in the right now we’ve we’ve released it and it’s in its learning phase um learning what normal activity looks like okay then detect that fraudulent activity let me just jump in so we’re kind of I I didn’t know

That so we’re breaking a little bit of news here so you’ve got a new piece of TAC that’s part of your booking engine I think you just called it fair play Guardian but it sounds to me like it includes some machine learning then you’re you’re saying you’re in the

Learning phase that sounds to me like there’s some AI machine learning yeah essentially what it needs to do is it needs to learn what normal activity on the engine looks like what does a normal booking look like um and so the more data that it has to compare to obviously

The smarter it’s going to get regarded in regards to how will it detect that uh fraudulent activity so the problem they were having is very different from what the LA City golf courses are H are having people weren’t buying up tea times and reselling them um people were

Buying up tea times in front of their group and like they would buy four tea times and the three in front of them were completely fake and they would just book them back back back right um and so what would happen is they’d get two or

Three no shows and then the group would show up um so it was actually costing the Sacramento golf courses you know tens of thousands of dollars over the course of time and really because what we tried to do is solve problems like you said we wanted to solve this problem

For our client which is the golf course right uh our customer is the golf course the problem that La cities having it sounds more of a golfer problem but oddly enough I think the system that were in process of rolling out would help solve those problems as well and

And I do think what you just said Aaron is correct that um it’s a golfer problem that actually for years it’s been hard for golfers to get tea times at these at these golf courses because again they don’t have a lot of holes of golf but what they’ve recently discovered is

There is some nefarious activity going on and actually this was this came from a Tik Tok video where someone showed the marketplace that you can go to and pay additional fees to uh to get these tea times so so go on you’re right LA City Golf Courses it is more of a golfer

Problem than a golf course problem you’ve made it clear here your customer is the golf course it just so happens you think probably fix this is issue as well yeah so the idea behind what we’re rolling out is going to be if fraudulent activity is detected uh by the

Technology emails will get generated or texts will get generated to the operator saying hey we’ve detected this this could be fraudulent please you know take a look and that’s a time saer for the operator because we know that some of the operators at La City have said we we do occasionally catch people

But this is a full-time job to monitor how much fraudulent activity is going through the booking engine uh and so really what you’re saying is you’ve created a timesaver I’m assuming you’re Pro you I know you I know you guys there’s a lot of marketing automation with golf geek I’m assuming you’ve

Probably leveraged some of that to to to build your your fair play Guardian yeah the idea was we didn’t want to have the technology especially initially have the technology override anything or block anybody from doing anything right um what you don’t want to what you don’t

Want to do is create a scenario where you’re making it difficult excuse me for the 99% because you have 1% of your customer base that’s doing something they shouldn’t be doing right so if you don’t want to be in a scenario where you get online try to book a tea time and

The system says you can’t do it because it thinks you’re you know doing something you shouldn’t be so we thought it better to notify the operator via the texting or email system um so that the operator then can find out for themselves if indeed it is fr aent or

Not and I would assume then the operator can block you know can essentially disable that account from booking in in the future if they decide that that’s the appropriate action right yes got it okay so uh we’re also going to have um a Matt holder on from a weightless company

He wanted to chime in on this I think he’s a little cross with me about some things that we put in an article which is fine I’m happy to have the convers can’t imagine that I can’t imagine that Mike uh and I think it’s good to have conversations frankly you know of different

Opinions and I know gol geek does have weight list uh fun does does weight list play a role here or or not so much what what’s your thought on that well it can for sure um I mean the idea behind weight list the reason we developed it I mean we were we

Were of the belief and I think you know this isn’t you know some um you know great Epiphany but we were of the belief that you know weight list in our opinion should be a feature of a larger system um we were having a problem within our um

Atmosphere our environment of having no shows uh you know with the increased demand that we’re seeing we were seeing an increasing no-shows and we needed to find a way to try to alleviate that so kind of the you know the the the Arc of why we developed weight list started

From the no-show side of the business um trying to make it very easy for golfers to cancel right we were of the belief that if we can make it really easy to cancel P times then we felt like people would actually do that uh in our previous scenario we were having you

Know golfers even when they booked online might have to pick up the phone to call and cancel that reservation we felt that that was a hurdle to them actually canceling so we made it very very easy so we send out text reminders um on any interval you want you can

Start sending them a week in advance you can send them you know 48 hours in advance 72 hours of events whatever you want to do but in two clicks a golfer could cancel a reservation so so literally they get the text they click it takes them right into their bookings

Page within the golf geek software they click another link it says cancel reservations canceled okay so let me just get let me get this let me just get this straight so so this is outside of your weight list uh Tech if you will you’re saying you before you built

Weight list weit list you built reminders or I don’t know what you call it but you built something that would nudge the golfer to say hey now remember you’ve got a tea time booked here and oh by the way if you don’t want it just

Click this link and we can take care of that for you I see yes yeah and so I mean it it’s CRA I mean I get my haircut you know and I get multiple reminders from my you know haircut place I mean the golf industry interesting that you

Took a dig at me there with haircut that’s an interesting move you just made on me there but go ahead that’s fine it’s fine well you know exactly yeah yeah uh but you know it just I don’t see that happening in the golf industry on a regular basis there are companies out

There that are doing it but we just that was the first part of it right so we felt if we could make it really easy to cancel people would cancel they’re not I don’t think vast majority of people want to no show or just you know so I think

If you made it get easy and we’ve come to find that it that it’s reduced our no shows by upwards of 60% so it’s been very impactful right so that led us into the idea of okay so if we’re send a reminder out 48 hours in advance if

Someone cancels how do we assure ourselves that that te time is going to sell and that led us to the idea of weight list um so essentially what we did with the weit list is very similar to the reminders in that we wanted to make it super super easy right so you

Can go on if you don’t see a tea time that you that that that you want uh in a particular day part time range you can sign up for a weit list for that particular Golf Course um you can pick you know every Saturday for the rest of

The year you can pick that particular Saturday uh so that you only get this notification one time um and then once again when that tea time is available everyone on the wait list gets a text and when you click the link out of the text not only does it take you into the

Booking engine it takes you directly into the tea time that became available so if the 912 came available you’re going to enter right into the 912 if you’re already signed into the system you get one more click and that t time’s reserved it’s interesting you say that uh that is technology that that

Different vendors have been chasing uh for a while uh I can tell you way back in the day when we were working with W5 uh as as Golf Now answers we very much wanted to be able to deliver a link to a golfer that that really it was for

That specific tea time and and frankly we found it hard to do uh we found it hard to build so uh kudos to you guys for for building that that’s a that’s a massive saver and and that’s a massive timesaver for the golfer the other thing

I suspect it does is it really increases conversion yeah absolutely and that’s what we’re trying to do right so our idea of building golf geek is to solve problems and ultimately make um operators lives easier and present something to the golfers that is very userfriendly so that they don’t have any

Hurdles of trying to reserve that te there is another issue with the city of of Los Angeles golf courses right why would a reseller Market be so successful if the inventory was priced properly maybe and and look nobody’s here to hurt anybody’s feelings and and I would say old golf guys like us

Understand different municipalities have different missions yeah maybe the inventory isn’t priced the way the market says it should be priced is is there something to is it fair for me to say that I think that’s absolutely fair I think if you’re if you’re if you’ve priced something so affordably that uh

You you you can create this kind of gray Market as you called it uh obviously there’s a pricing issue I mean there there it’s obvious if if someone’s paying $50 more in the gray Market to be able to buy that same key time that they’re selling um you know for $50 less

Obviously you could eliminate a big portion of this problem by pricing your golf in more accordance with what demand would dictate but like you said I completely understand and sympathize with um and applaud the the idea of municipalities being there to help grow the game of golf as a PGA member that’s

Kind of our mission right grow the game so I absolutely understand why municipalities would um try to keep golf affordable in any given market so that we can continue to Foster the growth of the game and I think that’s important I do I think there’s a place for that okay

So let’s welcome in Matt holder from uh loop Golf and uh loop golf is is one of the uh you know new startups that’s gotten a lot of attention in golf so Matt welcome to the tech caddy podcast happy to have you here happy to be here thanks for having me Mike really

Appreciate it we we so just before you were on we had Kevin uh Fitzgerald on um who’s a public affairs with Southern California Golf Association also sits on The Advisory board for LA City Golf Courses you and I had a conversation yesterday trying to set

This thing up and and and make sure that we were gonna play nice and that kind of deal you you had an interesting perspective I thought on this I mean your point was well somebody’s being a capitalist right I mean somebody is is hustling and they’re so talk about that

A little bit you know share with us kind of your perspective and the other side of the coin so to speak sure I mean like City of La situation everything that’s going on there is is obviously uh very Dynamic and new things are coming up and there’s

A ton of nuance to it um but you know I think that where there’s there’s this kind of friction between what was intended and what’s happening and those two things are are colliding and everybody’s trying to make sense of it and from the side of the

City of La and and and some golfers in the city of La who are just like hey this is unintended you know we don’t like this or we’re not sure we like we like this or we don’t know what to make of it there’s also an other side of a

Ton of La golfers that are very much willing to engage in paying a little bit extra to get a tea time and to get the tea time that they want and they’ve been happy customers of you know tea time Brokers and things like that you know

Not not saying that you know not saying that we endorse any of it directly but um and it’s something that happens across other Industries as well whether it’s like ticketing or retail and things like that right a secondary market and we we had another technologist who’s actually owned some golf courses too on

Earlier today a lot of people on today and you know he made the point that you know in Ireland the Brokers buy 90% of the inventory and then they go resell it right like it’s not like this is unheard of uh it’s just a matter of is everybody

Kind of in the no and and does anybody feel like there’s something that’s happening Shady you’re the person I have used gry market today more than I’ve ever used it before Matt because you introduced me to that idea yesterday sure and it’s really kind of like is it

Gray or is it not and um but but no you’re right there’s there’s certainly other Industries and then other parts of golf where this happens all day long so yeah right and and within live ticketing I mean I’m sure a majority like you and I and a majority of the people are

Watching this podcast that probably use game time or SeatGeek or StubHub to get tickets to events whether concerts or or sporting events and you know those came about because a a huge gray Market existed of ticket brokers within uh within Live Events and it’s a it’s it’s completely legal um it was just

Something that technology hadn’t yet enabled and then these came along and have given great optionality to to Consumers to access sporting events that they otherwise might not even be able to attend because there’s just no liquidity for transferring tickets right so you know what I think what I think this

Situation I think like one of the big learning points uh and takeaways that operators should get from what’s happening in La is yes that there’s you know the these unintended things but I think also highlights just how much demand has impacted uh pressure on pricing and highlighting

The fact that there’s a lot of price opportunity and a lot of Revenue management opportunity that has yet to be extracted within Gulf that you know companies like Loop like we’re helping helping operators understand exactly how much of that pricing pressure upward pricing pressure there is so that they can repic their

Inventory I think it’s going to be very difficult to win back the confidence of the Golf Community the the the confidence has been lost or at least shaken at the moment and the the reality is they have 50 plus thousand requests for tea times and you couple other

Things that changed coming out of the pandemic not only had we seen golf um participation increasing for several years prior to the pandemic but then we know participation only increased in 2020 and 2021 and they’re at these systems here are at record rounds and record participation now we’ve sustained and

And captured that interest couple other reasons for that I think one the the LA City System is using forom and 10-minute tea intervals so the the golfer experience has really improved you you you don’t have five and a half hour rounds anymore you can tea off at 2:30

In the afternoon if you’re lucky enough to be on the box at that time you can play in four and a half hours it’s it’s really different experience and so back absolutely part of why we’ve retained uh a lot of this interest let’s back up for a second clue everybody in

Listening on what it was before that group went to forom in 10 minutes tell everybody where it was a few years ago yeah varies but um there five soms were permitted in in most of our Municipal systems um we we generally saw two groups every 15 minutes somewhere in

That that range um it it what a policy change might look like and one other uh discussion point was the idea of releasing a tea time that has been cancelled at random times or even random release of tea times in general so instead of every tea time opening at 6:

Am maybe a batch opens at six and a batch opens at six I these are just different ideas that are coming to light now I don’t know how that will work for those companies that um you know are scraping and and making you know the the customer a aware of tea times that

Become available I I know that um you know at the very least the idea of a cancelled tea time getting released at different times it seems that that would be helpful because explain explain that a little bit Kevin because I don’t think people realize what’s happening at 3:30

In the morning explain that a little bit yeah exactly so I think when you know the for example you know the the system here if it’s LA City what what you’re seeing is that there’s some turnover and so you have some that the tea times all

Go very quickly and then prior to that 24-hour cancellation window a lot of te times are are cancelled and I don’t know exactly what the percentage is off the top of my head but you know I’ve I’ve heard you know well Beyond 20% so there’s some churn there now um

Some of it is is is not you know brokering but what they’re also seeing is that the tea times get booked and then in the middle of the night a tea time gets cancelled and rebooked very quickly because in the LA City system you actually have to show your ID when

You get to the golf course so if you if you were a golfer who had paid a concierge service when you get to the golf course that tea time needs to have your name on it and you need your player card um so how is this happening I mean

These are the kinds of questions that you know been sort of looking into for for quite some time and I think um you know Bots and and you know something technological that’s one component but there’s also this there’s so much money to be had and based on what we’ve seen

The last few weeks how much above the the greens fee um some of these tea time times are available for through you know you know what was posted a couple weeks ago and what went viral that you know there there’s real money to be had there

So just the sort of how much of it is sort of brute human force of somebody having multiple devices and booking a lot of times and then essentially the golfer you know has an interest in say the 1010 time and then at 3:00 a. you you cancel the time at 3:00 am. you

Rebook the time with that golfer’s name so when the golfer gets to the golf course everything looks it was the golfer that booked it so and that I find would be extremely difficult to you know to to figure out what what can you do

With that if we if if there are four of us and we’re all hoping to play on Saturday and we all get on the the te- sheet at 6:00 am and we all book a tea time and then we saywell which one do we want to take well that there’s no

Brokering there isn’t a a no one is selling that reservation but the four of us are hoping to play together we’re gonna have one booked and three cancellations so that is problematic too because it just actually leads to more requests for tea times right it it it’s

More traffic on the site it’s more churn and you know it’s heartbreaking when you hear that a tea time you get short you you you a force them booked and two show up because that means there are golfers like like me perhaps sitting at home on

A Saturday morning um and and there was a spot for me so yeah we had that’s not great for the facility or the golfer we had another company on earlier and they they build booking engines for golf courses and they have a feature that they’ve named uh fair play guardian and

It really is built to address exactly what you just said where people are booking three T times and only using one of them and whatnot and so they’ve actually deployed artificial intelligence to start to identify when a booking looks unusual to the to the the mass of bookings that they typically see

And then alerts start to go off and notify different stakeholders at the golf course that hey we think this looks fraudulent not that we’re going to prevent the person from booking it because maybe it isn’t but you should really look at this one here’s this particular booking that our uh fraud

Technology you know SP rates is a very high likelihood of fraud so yeah there’s people out there Building Solutions for sure um well listen it’s been it’s been great to have you on we’re I’m super interested to know you’ve got I think you’ve got two meetings coming up in the

Very very near future first The Advisory board that you chair will meet and then from a meeting like that a recommendation will go to the what what is the next board called I’m not sure the so yes so the policymaking body is the the Board of Commissioners those

Those five members are appointees of the mayor so it’s really within the executive branch of government if if staff wants to make some kind of change they need board approval so the department provides reports to the board and then the the board will will sanction those changes and we’re we’re

Really part of that stakeholder process and um so essentially this is how it would Ty ly work we have a meeting on Monday we will we’ll get the opportunity to hear what the recommendations might be and then possibly endorse what staff presents and then when staff goes to the

Policymaking the board that body um then we will have vetted it to some degree and then the staff will be able to suggest that they went to the golf advisory committee and golf advisory committee provided feedback it could be that the golf advisory committee endorses the board report so on and so

Forth well that’s excellent that’s excellent I I can’t thank you enough for coming on on short notice I think it’s really cool that you guys make yourselves available uh to to help people understand this better um like I said in the beginning I I’m not so sure

That this is an indictment of the technology provider this is just an odd situation uh not a lot of holes of golf and a whole bunch of golfers and and so some Oddities will arise well your Point earlier I I certainly hope that one we can help mitigate some of the the

Problems that that have come from um this incredible interest in participation but also I hope that we can sort of parlay this into explaining that yes these golf courses are heavily utilized and we need them and and it’s it’s always going to be important for golfers to show up and make sure that

Those who have the opportunity to to make policy decisions they know that the community cares about these facilities and and wants to see them continue to do well and provide the game of golf that’s yeah so well said so well said well thanks again for your time uh and we

Look forward to speaking to you next week I’m I’m very interested to to see what comes of everything so thanks again Kevin thank you for having me