By Harvey Silverman, Contributor, Golf Business
California likes to brag about being “first in the nation” on just about everything – tech, climate, consumer protection, you name it. With AB 1954, the legislature has a chance to put something on that list that actually matters to golf course operators: protecting your tee sheet from people who don’t own your golf course, don’t maintain your turf, and don’t answer to your customers.
If this bill passes, it won’t just be a California story. It sets a marker for every other state wrestling with third‑party tee time brokering and the erosion of affordable access to municipal golf.
What AB 1954 does
AB 1954 is formally titled the “Blocking Illegitimate Reservations and Protecting Equitable Access to California’s Publicly Owned Golf Courses Act.” Strip away the legislative prose, and it comes down to one simple rule:
If you don’t have a written agreement with the municipal golf course operator, you don’t get to list, advertise, promote, or sell that course’s tee times on your third‑party platform.
A few key points operators should care about:
- It applies to golf courses owned by local public agencies – cities, counties, charter cities, special districts, joint powers authorities – and to private operators running those courses under contract.
- It defines “third‑party golf reservation service platform” as any website, app, or internet platform that offers or arranges reservations for on‑premises service at a golf course and is not owned or operated by the course operator.
- It makes unauthorized listing/selling of tee times an “unlawful business act or practice” under California’s Unfair Competition Law, which carries civil penalties up to 2,500 dollars per violation in actions brought by public entities.
In plain English: if someone is scraping your sheet and listing or reselling your tee times without your consent, they’re no longer just annoying – they’re breaking the law, and you have a clear legal hook to do something about it.
Why this is aimed squarely at municipal golf
There are more than 220 municipally owned golf courses in California, all embedded in public park systems and operating under a different mandate than daily‑fee or resort facilities. Their business model is not “charge as much as the market will bear”; it’s “make golf maximally available to local residents, seniors, juniors, school teams, local clubs, civic groups, and charities, while covering costs and reinvesting in facilities.”
That model – deliberately affordable, deliberately open – created a predictable side effect in golf‑starved urban areas like Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Bay Area: demand for tee times “second to none.” Predictable demand plus limited supply equals opportunity, and third‑party tee time brokers seized it.
“The preservation of affordable, accessible public golf is always at risk, but it is a California value – consistent with California’s ‘better angels’ of an open, opportunity-for-all society,” says California Alliance for Golf (CAG) Executive Director Craig Kessler, credited with putting this bill into motion. “California’s public golf community appreciates San Diego Assemblymember Chris Ward’s leadership in authoring legislation that gives the state’s municipalities a powerful tool in maintaining those values for California’s public golfers, along with the support of the cities of San Diego and Los Angeles, and the County of Los Angeles. More are sure to join the queue as the bill traverses the legislative process.”
Here’s the problem in operator terms:
- Brokers mass‑book prime times, then re‑sell or “broker” them at higher prices on secondary platforms.
- They effectively insert themselves between you and your customer without touching your maintenance budget, labor line, or capital plan.
- They reduce the already strained supply of affordable recreational opportunities for the residents the Muni system is supposed to serve.
Municipalities responded with band‑aid reservation rules – tighter windows, more verification, hoops for locals to jump through – which mitigated things at the cost of frustrating the very golfers the system is designed to favor. What they did not have was a clear, state‑authorized civil remedy aimed at the brokers themselves. AB 1954 is designed to be that tool.
The DOJ case that exposed the legal gap
In 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicted two Los Angeles‑based tee time brokers for failing to report 1.1 million dollars in income, 700,000 dollars of which was alleged to come from reselling tee times at 17 Southern California Muni courses over two years. Whether prosecutors ultimately prove those numbers beyond a reasonable doubt is almost beside the point for our purposes.
The uncomfortable truth for operators is this: the brokering itself – scooping up municipal tee times and reselling them – was permissible under California’s civil code. The only thing that arguably broke the law was the alleged failure to report and pay taxes on the income.
So from an operator’s point of view, you had:
- A clearly harmful practice that distorted your access model and customer experience.
- A federal criminal case focused not on the distortion but on the IRS issue.
- State law that effectively shrugged off the core behavior.
AB 1954 is written to close that gap for publicly owned golf by making unauthorized third‑party brokering unlawful and tying it to the Unfair Competition Law framework.
What AB 1954 does not do (read this twice)
Any time you see a bill aimed at “third‑party platforms,” the natural reaction is to worry: “Are they coming for my existing vendor relationships?” In this case, the answer is no, and the bill language bends over backwards to say so.
Both the California Alliance for Golf’s support letter and the CAG release make the same point in bold: this bill does not touch legitimate, contractual vendor relationships.
- It only covers brokering “without the consent” of the public agency owner or the contracted operator.
- It explicitly says it does not affect agreements “freely entered into for ostensible mutual benefit.”
- Well‑known tee time and marketing platforms that operate under written agreements bringing value to both municipality and vendor – and to golfers – are not impacted.
For operators, that means you keep every tool you already use: dynamic pricing vendors, distribution partners, website booking engines, marketing platforms – as long as they’re under contract and operating within that agreement.
AB 1954 is not about limiting your options; it’s about affirming your right to choose who sits between you and your customers – and on what terms.
Why this matters beyond California
The bill is written as a matter of “statewide concern,” which ensures it applies to all cities, including charter cities. But the implications don’t stop at the state line.
Other states share the same basic ingredients:
- Municipal courses priced to serve residents and priority groups, not to chase peak‑rate yield on every tee time.
- Urban markets where tee time demand outstrips supply at popular public courses.
- Technology platforms capable of scraping or mass‑booking inventory and reselling it to the highest bidder.
If California – with more than 200 municipal courses and some of the most competitive tee sheets in the country – codifies a clear, enforceable rule requiring written authorization for any third‑party tee time platform, that becomes a model statute any other legislature can pick up and adapt.
And you know how this tends to go: once one large state moves, everyone else suddenly “discovers” the same problem and starts introducing copycat bills. In this case, that’s not a bad thing.
What operators should be doing now
AB 1954 can’t be heard in its primary Assembly committee (Arts, Entertainment, Sports, and Tourism) before mid‑March, and it’s likely to see the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee after that. That gives operators a window to get educated and get involved.
A practical checklist:
- Inventory your exposure. Do you see your municipal course listed on third‑party platforms you don’t do business with and didn’t authorize? Screenshot everything.
- Clarify your authorized partners. Make sure your current vendor agreements are written, explicit, and clear about where and how your inventory can appear – including affiliates.
- Talk to your city or county. Many elected officials still see tee time brokering as insider baseball. Spell out how it affects resident access, junior golf, and the municipal balance between cost recovery and community service.
- Coordinate with your golf associations. The California Alliance for Golf, SCGA, NCPGA, SCPGA, CGCOA, GCSAA, and others are already publicly supporting AB 1954; plug into their advocacy so you’re not a lone voice.
California has never been shy about leading with policy – for better or worse. In this case, protecting equitable access to publicly owned golf by giving operators real control over their tee sheets is squarely in the “better” column.
For municipal golf course operators, AB 1954 is not theoretical. It’s about whether you and your public agency set the rules for how your tee times are sold – or whether that decision is effectively outsourced to the secondary market, one scraped reservation at a time.
For the NGCOA, California’s model is one that will be shared with other municipalities through its advocacy work. But as mentioned before, AB 1954 sets a marker that could, and likely will at some point, extend to protect daily fee and resort courses, as well. Johnny Law is on the prowl.
Harvey Silverman is a contributor to Golf Business and the proprietor of his marketing consultancy, Silverback Golf Marketing. Harvey authored NGCOA’s “Beware of Barter” guide and has spoken at their Golf Business Conferences and Golf Business TechCon.
