We want to welcome Kevin Fitzgerald back to the Tech Caddie podcast. Kevin is assistant director of public affairs for the Southern California Golf Association. And then he also chairs the golf advisory board for the city of LA golf courses. So Kevin has been really gracious with his time with me and we've already had him on once before. I think Kevin, the first podcast we had you on has over a thousand views. So a lot of people saw us have a conversation.

So welcome back to the Tech Caddie podcast, Kevin. Thank you for having me. Glad that we have something new to share within, I think about a week, week and a half of the last time we spoke. Exactly. And so today is the eclipse day. So that's Monday. What is it? Monday the eighth, but this will probably go live on the 10th, the morning of Wednesday, the 10th. We're trying to run down a couple more guests, but we'll see what happens there. We were just speaking off camera.

We'd like to get somebody from the city on, but that's proven to be a little difficult. Why don't you give us an update on the last time we talked, you knew that there would be two meetings coming up. I think actually on April 1st, there was a meeting and then maybe on the 4th, there was a meeting, but why don't you give us an update on what's transpired? Sure. So yeah, as we suspected, there were two meetings last week. The first was a special meeting of the golf advisory committee.

That's the subsidiary body that makes recommendations, works with the golf division. And then that was last Monday. That meeting was scheduled. It was a really good discussion. The golf advisory committee heard a board report that was comprised of really two different elements. One was to revise the golf rules, regulations and code of conduct.

and really sort of provided a little bit more strength to the code of conduct. And then the second piece was the implementation of a pilot program that is a $10 deposit per player, a non-refundable deposit when you book a time. And so the Golf Advisory Committee had a really good meeting. We had the opportunity to ask questions, consider alternative ideas. And the Golf Advisory Committee did ultimately

endorse the staff recommendation with a vote of 14 to 1, so overwhelming support. And then on Thursday, the Recreation and Park Board of Commissioners, they are the policymaking body. The five members are appointed by the mayor and they heard the board report, the staff report, and again, asked a couple really interesting questions, particularly about the pilot program.

and potential for alternative ideas in the future monitoring the pilot program to determine how effective it actually will be. And then the golf division, the staff will continue to report back to the board on a regular basis to try to get at that question, how effective is this pilot program? So the board, one member recused herself.

But it was a four to zero vote. So unanimous. Right. So it was and we have these meeting notes and I think I'll post them in the wrap up. But it was a unanimous vote because the one person recused herself and it was approved. Right. I mean, the stamp on the document says approved. And so it was approved on April 4th is my understanding. Correct. Yes. Last Thursday. And so we don't have an exact date of when this

deposit non-refundable pilot program will be implemented. Our sense of it is that it would take a couple of weeks. Well, let me chime in on that. So I follow up with GolfNow and I have several people that I speak with there and I'll just say he or she, cause I don't want to give, but he or she said, I'm just looking at some notes here that this could be implemented in less than 24 hours.

So GolfNow's position was, we can do this overnight. And I do want to just give a little bit of a shout out. So before I left, GolfNow had started to institute what's called a sales order process. That's an integration between salesforce.com and the GolfNow system. GolfNow's salesforce.com administrator's name is Michael Barnes, excellent at his job.

And so, and actually this is something that the general manager of GolfNow, Jerramy Hainline, I think it was his brainchild, it should be, the thought was it should be easier and quicker to implement customer requests. And so, and so when GolfNow said to me last week, or someone from GolfNow is probably the best way to say that, that they could do this in less than 24 hours, it's because of some work that GolfNow has done over the last couple of years to really serve people quickly.

And so I'll be honest, I was looking forward this morning to maybe booking an LA city tee time with a $10 non-refundable You know, I wanted to go experience it, but it doesn't seem like it's live yet. And, you know, really it was approved four days ago. It's not live yet. It's some element that was discussed is that there's going to be some kind of marketing to this. So they're probably working through that as well. They're not going to sort of go cold turkey and.

all of a sudden you get a notification there's going to be a process make sure that you know everyone in the department is very well informed. Anyone involved all staff at all the golf courses understands the policy very well. It can speak to it and then so that's interesting I didn't realize that it could potentially move that quickly on the technology side so that makes me think that it's going to happen you know sooner than even I had imagined. Got it and then and then also so but but along those kind of similar lines, some text on the LA city website has updated, right? And just as a reminder to everybody, Kevin does not work for the city of Los Angeles golf courses. He's simply on an advisory board. So sometimes I screw up my pronouns a little bit and I say you guys or something like that, but it's, this isn't on Kevin, right? Kevin. We certainly get a lot of emails and there are a lot of golfers in the city of Los Angeles. And I've heard from many of them in the last few weeks and

You know, again, it's part of the stakeholder input process. We do get the opportunity through this golf advisory committee to be heard as a golf community. And so, you know, we, we get access to those who are making these decisions and weighing the pros and the cons. And I think it's, it's a great avenue where golfers get the chance to, you know, to, to speak with the leadership, the brain trust of the city's golf system. I completely agree with that. And it's, and it's,

I'm not going to say it's completely unique, but I certainly live in a city where that doesn't exist. And so I think it's great that you guys are able to have that voice. But here's one thing I did. I did want to point out. So some, some text on the website has already updated her the approval on the fourth, where they talk about, um, uh, the, the booking includes.

I'm trying to read this with bright lights on here. Tee times through only web-based site or web-based application or other application talking about things that are not permitted. It struck me, and I know you and I talked about this a little bit last week, it struck me, Kevin, that there's no mention of the phone in this new updated text, right? And the reason I say that is, and I also confirmed this on my own over the weekend.

the city of Los Angeles does maintain a 24/7 phone bank, if you will, to book tee times. I have an email exchange with the city where they say, yes, you can book tee times over the phone. And then I actually spoke with someone on the phone about the book of tee time. And, you know, it occurred to me that the brokers could use a call center as well. And it almost seemed like some of this language was so oriented to web-based and to

you know, one at one point they call out mobile devices. And I thought, boy, you better remember the old school stuff too. Because that would certainly be a way to kind of circumvent some of this new language. Yeah, interesting. You've my wheels are spinning now as far as what you just raised. So I have a couple of thoughts that I'll certainly be getting more information on here. Okay, yeah, it is it is interesting. Um, uh,

You know, the other thing, so I watched some news coverage of this with city of, uh, I think it's, is it KALA Kevin? Is that the right call letters? Probably KTLA. KTLA. Okay. CBS, Kcal nine, one of, one of those. Right. And you know, one of the, one of the interesting things that was mentioned there was, well, what about the poor guy that's just playing at two o'clock in the afternoon? And this doesn't really impact him or her.

And now they've got to put this deposit down. And I actually thought not a bad point, you know, I mean, it seems somewhat fair to bring that up. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think for, for many golfers, this is going to be an additional step and, and a hassle. There's, there's no getting around it. I mean, I think, you know, this, um, this is something that I think some kind of pilot program at deposit, there was going to be action here. It's raised a lot of concern.

great amount of attention, various media outlets, our golf advisory committee meeting a few weeks ago now, we had four different news teams videotaping the entire meeting. There was pressure to move forward with something to help mitigate the issue of brokers, concierge service, however you want to describe it, a de facto greens fee increase.

For that golfer that plays in the afternoon on a weekday, I think that's something that we're going to have to continue to reconsider. It could well be that this pilot program works very well. It could well be that it doesn't work as well as we would like. And maybe part of that would be an afternoon, weekday time that you don't have that. I don't know. I don't know how it all play out. But I know that from the reports that we heard from

from staff, the quick booking, the cancellations, it looks pretty similar across the board every day. So I know that there are times that, particularly weekend morning times that are highly sought after, but every tee time is highly sought after. And as you know, I'm sure you've looked at the system. If you try to book, it could be Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, it doesn't matter.

it is really, really hard to book a foursome. Oh, no question. Yeah, you're talking getting a sportsman. So I think the sense was that the good with this trial will outweigh the negatives, but there absolutely are some negatives. And this is absolutely going to be tweaked, I would think over time. And I think, you know, one key issue that came up at the golf advisory committee was that, you know, there was a sense that

to endorse the board report, but also to encourage staff to continue to work on other ideas, other mitigation measures. Maybe that is in replacement of this pilot program, this $10 deposit. Maybe it's in addition to, we'll see where that goes. But I think that, you know, our sense was that the golf division staff is continuing to explore alternatives.

And I think there was a general sense as well that how are we going to help move forward with something that gets at the heart of the matter without just raising the greens fees. I think that came up with something that was very well supported because there was probably a sense from many of us that the first idea was going to be

an additional fee, you know, a service charge $10 on top of the greens fee, something like that, a reservation fee. But instead, I mean, I think the deposit was a unique way to to try to get at the problem without going straight to a greens fee increase, which I know, you know, they're very concerned about the optics, and also the accessibility and affordability still being paramount. That's the mission of the system. Sure.

provide an affordable and accessible system. And so I think that the Golf Advisory Committee, you know, through that discussion, it was it was clear that there was great appreciation for the idea that the answer wasn't just going to be let's just make the system more expensive to access. Yeah, no, I think I think the deposit thing is a is a great way to go. I do think just almost a prediction.

I do think you'll ultimately evolve to a deposit only in certain day, day parts. That's just my gut. I think that that's ultimately, um, where you'll get. I also think, you know, you, you made a statement the last time you were on that I thought was really smart and frankly, really honest. And you talked about that golfer confidence had been eroded, right? That, that you guys had, and I shouldn't say you guys.

that there had been a loss of some confidence among the larger golfer community, which I thought was really great of you to, I mean, I think you kind of said the quiet part out loud, right? Which was great. I wonder if ultimately it wouldn't serve the city best to start to release some reports or some dashboards occasionally, certainly with no personal contact information or anything, but to start to show.

on the website, here's the booking window, here's the activity that we're seeing. Certainly your technology partner, I think, would love to participate in that. Someone, a third party person, whether it's, you know, someone like me or someone similar to me, but not me, would certainly could do that. There are people in the industry that have great working knowledge of the GolfNow system. Let's put it that way, that can analyze those reports.

and really turn those into easily consumed pieces of data just so the golfer community can start to regain some confidence. I think that that might be interesting if you guys go that route. I will say this, I am still interested in seeing some data that would dive into

Is this bots or is this something else? There are a whole lot of people in the LA golfing community today that are saying this is not bots. This is, this is some small group of people getting access to inventory before the rest of the people get access to. And there's, I don't think I believe that as much as maybe I'm starting to look that way a little bit more based on some things I've seen. It's also interesting, Kevin, and maybe you could comment on this in the,

terms and conditions or code of conduct or whatever it is. They actually talk about, you can't resell our tee times unless you've been given consent. And I thought when I read that, I thought, well, wait a second, who's been given consent then? You know, the way it's written almost leads you to believe that does that mean some people have been given consent?

Uh, and that might be an interesting thing to lean into. And then frankly, if you're talking about gaining golf or competence back, share with us who has been given consent. Well, yeah, I don't know exactly where that language came from other than the fact that the city attorney is involved with language about a code of conduct. So I know from my research on California's anti scalping laws, that that that's very similar language. Um, you know,

prior to where we are now, there's no deposit. So essentially we've talked about sort of reselling, but really what is happening is you've made a reservation and you have not put any skin in the game. You haven't purchased anything. So you're not really reselling because you didn't buy anything. So this essentially you have now...

They've aligned that language closer to what I've seen with the anti-scalping law. So in California, if you are purchasing a concert ticket, and granted concert tickets are very different from a tee time at a municipal golf course, but you are, as I understand it, permitted to buy the ticket. And then if you can't make it, you could give it to someone else and that person gives you the

price that you paid for the ticket, the ticket value. You are not permitted to resell it above the price that is on the ticket. That unless you have consent of the venue, I believe the artist, so on and so forth. So there are systems that.

these venues use and I can't I don't want to get into naming any of them. But essentially you go on these platforms you can get a ticket and somewhat dynamic pricing. I mean the pricing is much higher than what the ticket value says. Well if the venue has permitted that and even perhaps given those tickets to that platform then it's OK to do that. It's not OK as I understand it unless you have all of that consent in writing. And so my guess is that

It just aligns very much with California's laws as it pertains to those venues. And it could be that it leaves the door open for some platform if there's a way that the city would like to have the times available on another page, as long as they have the consent to do it, then they can. I know that the city attorney is involved with any updated code of conduct language. So,

But yeah, again, thanks for raising the point. I certainly asked some more questions about that language in particular. You know, another thing that you come across when you really lean into the code of conduct and regulations, et cetera, the city of LA has made room for dynamic pricing. In that document that was submitted on April 4th, they actually included all of the, I mean, there is pricing in there that references the word ceiling.

And then there's pricing in there that references the word discount. And you can even see a delineation and discounts about what's available, what's allowed before and after 9 a.m. I think it is, it might be 11, but you know, there's some time of day in there. And so I thought it was interesting that you all are open to dynamic pricing. Certainly there are ceilings right now. I'm not sure I've seen a tee time though price at the ceiling yet, but I could be wrong. Maybe maybe they're always priced at the ceiling. I don't think so.

Correct, they are below the ceiling now. So when the city wants to move forward with a change to their fee schedule, they need to get approval through the Recreation and Park Board of Commissioners. So that's a process. I mean, and actually it's telling how important this broker concierge service issue is that the board heard this item.

last Thursday, because usually it takes quite some time to get on an agenda. They have it's a big park system golf is one component of it. So it's a $30 million component. But it's Yes, it's one component. Absolutely. Absolutely. But um, and so okay, and so dynamic pricing is at least considered, right? Obviously, brokering is what's

the topic of the day. We don't know exactly when it will go into effect. I'm curious to just hear from you. What do you think the impact will be? Do you think that you would theoretically could be online at 6:10 in the morning and see some weekend tee times? What's your sense for what the impact will be? Well, I think in terms of the confidence, look, when the board report was released on Friday afternoon,

I was on the phone for at least eight hours plus over the weekends, calls from a lot of golfers and a lot of emails. And I would say as you brought up, there were some concerns and some of those have been, you know, considered at golf advisory committee meetings and some questions were raised by the board members last Thursday. But by and large, I would say the sense was that, wow, I'm happy something is being done and I'm

surprised how quickly something's being done. That's sort of the consensus. Now, it isn't to say that everyone I spoke with loved the idea or thought it was the best idea going forward, but I think there was an appreciation that they didn't just raise the rates, the city's trying to stick with an affordable and accessible model, and we're certainly appreciative of, you know, doing something. However, I don't think this is where you're going to end up. Now, I heard that a lot. I also heard

you know, a lot of golfers suggest that this might really help. So I think in general, it was just it was positive in the sense that something good was happening. I want to go back one one one point on the dynamic pricing. So the reason I bring up that there's a ceiling, they it's easier to have a ceiling that is set out a ways so that the greens fee maximum price and you brought up mornings on a weekend.

before nine o'clock on a couple of the golf courses are five additional dollars. So there's that and not every golf course is exactly the same Green's fee. So there is some variability there. Where I think it's different from dynamic price, you brought up that it's a ceiling, the ceiling is well below market. Oh, yes, no question. Using dynamic pricing because in the sense that you're not taking advantage of the demand on those, you know, weekend morning times and so forth. So I, you know, I,

I agree with what you said. I think that's important to frame those that the ceiling is not so different from where we are now. And it's it is well below market on many of the golf courses at the high high high times, high traffic times. Yeah, no, no question about that. Back to my question. What do you think the golfer experience will change? You know, if you were trying to book 10 minutes after six in the morning, you're looking nine days out, right? You've got all the filters set up. Do you think it'll be a different experience for the golfer?

You know, I really don't know the answer to that. I have to believe that a lot more tee times will be available. And in part, right now we have, you know, concern about brokers. We have concern about, you know, these concierge services, all the rest of it. But also, it's so difficult to get a tee time that let's say we were going to try to play next week. You get on at six o'clock. I get on at six o'clock. Our two friends get on at six o'clock. We probably book four times with the intent of keeping one.

And so some of this turnover, the churn and cancellations, it has to do with the fact that because it's difficult, it actually incentivizes booking more times and more searches. You know, the city has over 50,000 searches a week for tee times. There aren't that many golf courses and there certainly are not very many tee times when you're looking at six per hour. So I think, you know, I do think that the experience will change somewhat. I have to believe that there will be

less times booked. Now, on a Saturday morning, Sunday morning, like you said, I mean, it's going to take a lot of effort to win back the confidence of the golfers because my sense of it is that when you try to book a time for Saturday at 9am, I'm not sure how often you're still going to get that that tee time. I mean, based on the numbers that we know how many golfers are we know how few tee times are our

Maybe if your percentage chance increases from 2% to 4 % or 5%, this is significant, double your odds, but you still didn't get a tee time very often. I do think that it will help in the sense that there will be some lesser percentage of tee times booked, which means that there are more, because like we said, that isn't brokering that we all booked a tee time and we choose to cancel three of them.

that is not going to be a good strategy going forward because you will have paid a deposit then on four different tee times. So you're going to have to sort of coordinate that we want to book one time now as a foursome. And that again, that's it's it's a hassle, but it should leave more availability on the tee sheet. I would like to think it's going to make some real difference at some of those highly impacted times. I think unfortunately,

it's going to be extremely difficult and you may not see it may not feel like a huge difference in your chance to secure that time Saturday or Sunday morning. And we'll have to see. My concern is that you're asking the question for a very good reason that I don't know that it's going to be that different for certain times. But I think at one o'clock on a weekday or two o'clock on a Saturday, I have to imagine that.

you know, you're not going to see the entire tee sheet, you know, disappear in a couple of seconds through 4pm. But again, we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Exactly. Well, it actually, I don't know if anybody else has talked about this. It actually creates a market for a small amount of technology, just like personal concierge technology, if you will, right? Where, hey, I maybe pay,

$49 a year for a subscription to just a personal bot that will book a tee time for me if it's available. Right. And that actually wouldn't be breaking any rules because there's no reselling going on or anything like that. It's just that you as an individual golfer, and maybe you're taking care of your three buddies, you are using a little bit of tech to find an available tee time. But, but that's probably.

step 87 down the road. So we'll see. I mean, I think we're where that becomes a little bit murky very quickly is if you are paying for some kind of service again, without without consent from the golf division, then is that the same situation where it's a de facto greens fee increase because you can't get one without it? Right. You know, to me, I would read that a subscription service is really not aligned with the

the new code of conduct. Right. And if you, if you, for people that haven't tried to book a tee time lately with LA, if you go on the booking engine today, you are seeing a cloud fair Cloudflare landing page first to prove that you're not a bot. And then you're being taken to the inventory. Uh, which w and so I think that's fairly new, isn't it? That, that wasn't happening. I don't think three or four weeks ago.

It was there, but I think they slowed it down so that it was visible because it wasn't visible. Oh, I don't think the golfers understood that that was actually taking place because it happened so quickly. So again, I think a little bit of that is just adding a bit more confidence. But yeah, I do have to check the box that most of the time that identifies that I'm a human. Yeah. And if not, it's it still takes a couple seconds and shows that it is verifying and

You know, I've spent so much time, you know, playing with the system, trying to figure all of this out the last few weeks. And, you know, I've been locked out because I've tried to book so many tee times. I haven't booked them, but I get far enough along in the process that it blocks me. So the system works in that sense. And now I'm a legitimate golfer, and I was just trying to get more information, you know, sort of different trials to see where I could, you know, how successful I could be. Right.

You know, one of the, one of the things I noticed, cause I've been doing the same thing, just prepping. One of the things I noticed was there's not great consistency across the entire portfolio when it comes to the booking notes. It struck me that different golf courses are using different terms. They've, they've, they've organized their sentences differently here or there. Uh, and I, you know, I just kind of came away from that wondering like,

is not, it isn't all the messaging coming from the central office, the, you know, to set these tee time notes, but that's, that's kind of splitting hairs. I really think now you're basically we're at a point now where we know because of your, your technology provider has said, Hey, this can happen really quickly. It hasn't happened yet. Albeit it's only been four days, give everybody a break. But if this thing gets out to like 30 days and it still hasn't been implemented,

I'm sure there will be quite a lot of pushback because essentially the city has won some favor in what they were able to accomplish Thursday and Friday. But if they wait too long, I think then the confidence begins to erode again. Well, as soon as I hear a date for the launch, I will I will certainly let you know. I don't expect it to be 30 more days. But, you know, they did sort of set the expectation at the meeting that it would take it would take some time.

And so that was why sort of my guess was, you know, a couple of weeks. I think what happened was the LA Times article indicated that it was live. And I think what happened there was the author got confused with the $10 no show fee that will still remain in effect. And I think a lot of people read the LA Times article and thought, oh, my gosh, it's already live. But actually, it's not. So.

And there have been some strange things that have found their way as allegedly as facts into some of the stories that I've read. Things like an additional day for those with a senior card. I mean, I don't know where the urban myths begin, but there were things that were just incorrect in some of the stories. I mean, we talked about some of those things a week or so ago that this idea of a 10th day, it just doesn't exist. So I don't know.

Yeah. Well, listen, thanks again for coming on. I think we're almost to the finish line. We're not quite there, right? But we're a lot closer. And it is impressive when a big, big city like Los Angeles moves from the Monday to the Thursday to the Friday, that is lightning fast for a battleship of that size. So that's really encouraging. And we'll look forward to seeing this stuff go live.

Yeah, and I think you know I appreciate the interest and I do you know I work at Southern California Golf Association so LA City you know was front and center in this. That's sort of where the story broke, but I I'm quite sure that we're going to see some some movement with some of the other systems. I I think there's a sense that. Like you brought up a couple times where we need to make sure that we're doing everything we can to if we're behind it to catch back up.

If we're, if we're, uh, if, if we've sort of, uh, been able to avoid some of the, the concern and let's get out ahead of it. So I think, um, we will see some movement with some other systems as well, uh, to, to try to make sure that the, the tee sheets are as accessible as possible to, to the every golfer. That'll be great. That'll be great. And man, it'll make the game so much stronger. People that right now are playing once or twice a year are going to start to play five and six times a year.

And that is great for the game. So I hope so. I've heard that a lot. You know, I've pretty much given up. I've given up trying to golf. And that's really sad. It's heartbreaking to me because, you know, but we say it all the time. We love the idea of growing the game. Well, it's hard to grow a game if there isn't anywhere to grow it. I mean, you need to be able to get on a golf course or what game are we growing? So I agree. I totally agree.

Okay, well, thanks for coming in, Kevin. I'm sorry you won't see the eclipse but but there's a lot of things to see in California. We're gonna see a little bit of it. I think I saw about 50% in in LA. So well good. That's I don't have the glasses but I'll get one of those cardboard boxes or whatever it is. There you go. There you go. Okay. All right. Well, thanks, Kevin. Thank you. Bye.

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