BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — Longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) men’s water polo coach Jeff Ma has launched a tee time rewards service with Troon as the golf course management company looks to streamline services for its members.
Ma, who previously worked 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.
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.”
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.
Arguably best known for being the inspiration for the book Bringing Down the House as well as for the movie 21, about his time on the unofficial MIT blackjack team, he and his teammates used math to dominate Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos, making approximately five million dollars.
A member of MIT’s water polo team and then coaching staff. Ma graduated from MIT in 1994 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He coached both the men’s varsity and women’s collegiate club teams at the institution for seven years. He was also honored by the CWPA as the 2003 Division III Coach of the Year.
Since leaving MIT he’s started several companies, including GolfSpan.com (sold to Demand Media), Circle Lending (sold to Virgin), Citizen Sports (sold to Yahoo!) and tenXer, an analytics tool designed to optimize employee performance, progress and productivity, which was acquired by Twitter.
Ma joined ESPN in November 2014 as their Predictive Analytics Expert. Per this arrangement, he does weekly TV appearances on SportsCenter and contributes as a writer on ESPN.com. In 2017, he started the Bet the Process podcast, a “sports gambling and analytics podcast,” and began appearing on The Tony Kornheiser Show podcast, picking college and NFL football games. In November 2018, Ma was appointed Senior Vice President of Product and Analytics at Duetto.
In May 2020, Ma became Vice President of Microsoft for Startups, a unit focused on recruiting startups to use Microsoft technologies.
