A longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur has launched a tee time rewards service with Troon as the golf course management company looks to streamline services for its members.
Jeff Ma, who has stops with the San Francisco 49ers and Portland Trail Blazers, oversaw data and analytics for Twitter, and was the basis of the main character in the poker book “Bringing Down the House,” has joined the company in a senior role and launched Rewards by Troon. Troon has more than 800 golf courses in its network, and Ma said the new service should help the company connect more directly with its customers.
Rewards by Troon has soft launched for one course, Eagle Mountain in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Ma expects an official rollout this summer. The venture has a team of six, with Silicon Valley-heavy backgrounds including Microsoft, Twitter, Stripe and Robinhood.
Currently, the app’s basic rewards program will give members points for playing Troon courses that are redeemable for free or discounted rounds at other Troon locations. This summer, Ma plans to start a premium subscription that may include discounts on last-minute tee times, concierge booking at premium Troon properties, access to play in Troon events and merchandise discounts at Troon properties.
“Historically, golf has had interesting economics, specifically around how they try to drive demand and specifically last-minute demand,” Ma said. “A lot of that has been about blanket discounting or trying to get people to pay for things in advance with the opportunity that they’ll get last-minute discounting. And while those programs are good … given the current demand structure that we have, meaning golf has never had higher demand, there’s probably better ways to look at and stimulate demand.”
After leaving Twitter in 2018, Ma began working in the hospitality business through a role with hotel revenue management company Duetto. Ma was picking up golf himself at that time, and said that role informed him of what might be coming in the space.
“There’s tons of parallels between what happened in hospitality and what will likely happen in golf over the next, I’d say 10 to 15 years, meaning golf courses need better ways to market directly to their own customers,” Ma said. “It’s only about 5% of courses that are third-party managed. I think it’ll become even more prevalent because it makes so much sense in golf. And obviously that’s one of the attractive things about Troon; they’re so dominant.”
The biggest revenue opportunity to start for Rewards by Troon, Ma said, will be through signups, followed by building out its loyalty program. Ma said the broader vision is to build the biggest loyalty rewards program in all of golf.
Troon President Tim Schantz connected with Ma through a mutual acquaintance at TPG Capital, which became a strategic investor in Troon in 2021. The two began discussions about the rewards program more than a year ago.
“What we were missing was a significant digital solution that could help our clients, our locations and courses, and help them interact directly with the customers, the players,” Schantz said. “We’re early on in the game. The first thing we want to do is tap into Jeff and create something that’s meaningful for the golf consumer.”
Troon is working on the program with NBC Sports Next, the division of NBC Sports that includes tee time booking services GolfNow and Tee Off, as well as subscription service GolfPass, in its portfolio. Troon was already a partner in GolfNow, and NBC Sports Next will provide back-end technology for Rewards by Troon, said NBC Sports Next President Will McIntosh.
“We’ve been talking to Tim and his team for a number of years about ways they could innovate what they were doing,” McIntosh said. “I was a huge proponent of seeing them modernize their approach.”
