City Considerations

The Quick Points

🎉 It’s a party. When the core of pickleball is fun, and fun is a great thing for groups, it’s no wonder there are so many formats spinning up around the sport. Backyard Pickleball Bash is a new name to us and they are looking to kick off a sports festival tour. The touring backyard party will attempt to bring pickleball, food, and music together in a fun blend. We noticed they are hiring a Festival Director if that’s of interest to help make this experience a reality.

🎾 Grand slamming into pickleball. Tennis legend Venus Williams launched a new line of pickleball apparel on National Pickleball Day from her company, EleVen. While she’s still heavily involved in the world of tennis, she felt that there needed to be a dedicated collection specifically for women’s pickleball apparel. As part of the launch, they announced their first pickleball pro-player sponsor, with Callie Jo Smith taking on the face of the brand.

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🏋️ Get people moving A key theme of gym and health clubs is always trying to add more value to their membership offerings. That means keeping up with the times and offering compelling classes and capabilities so that members consistently have a reason to visit and stay. Given its low barrier to entry, smaller space constraints, social DNA, and appeal to almost all ages, pickleball is becoming a must-have offering. Lifetime’s investment of $50 million to add 1,000 courts to their facilities across the nation is obviously the best example of this. So it was interesting to see Elite Fitness Clubs hiring a dedicated Director of Pickleball for their locations in Milwaukee. It seems each of their clubs already has tennis courts and they’ll be fully investing in pickle lessons and programming.

Speaking of Lifetime. Our fellow content friend and playing pro Kyle (@thatpickleballguy) was kind enough to put out an interview he had with the Lifetime CEO Bahram Akradi. Few notes that struck us but we definitely recommend listening to it in full.

• The convenient math of converting existing square footage of basketball and tennis rather than net-new building. $50M vs $800 million.

• In five years’ time Bahram believes we will definitely see an over-supply of courts and a large amount of pickleball-specific clubs may not be viable. References standalone squash, tennis, and racquetball clubs in their heyday.

• His interest in the singles game and his personal belief that it better shows the athleticism of the game at the pro level on tv.

📍 Picklecon picks Kansas City. Triple Crown Sports, a large sports event organizer, is bringing a massive pickleball experience, Picklecon, to Kanasas City on August 8-11, 2024. In a year from now, the event will host 60 vendors, 100 pickleball courts, and a large suite of programming, including tournaments, camps, pro play, panel discussions, and community activities. The event is estimated to bring in $3.9M in economic value to the broader Kansas City economy. For reference, in February 2023, the volleyball preseason national invitation tournament brought in 20k+ attendees to the city, and generated an estimated $13.1M in economic impact. Could be a big windfall for the city, and think other cities should take note.

💰 Picky price points. Last week we spoke with Austin Wood, the co-founder of the Picklr. At the tail end of the conversation, we asked “knowing what you know now with 8 facilities up and running, if you could instantly make changes to pricing, what would they be?

Well, we have our answer. Picklr CEO Jorge Barragan announced on Instagram their pricing model change. $99 per month for unlimited court reservations and leagues. It almost feels too good to be true.

1. There is precedent for $100-$140 all-in memberships. Ace is a competing franchise and their default is $129. The Picklr used to have their own $135 unlimited membership. Many independents offer it.

2. Such a simplified pricing model has to bring streamlined operations to their future franchisees.

3. The Picklr has 8 clubs actually up and running. That gives them a lot of data, anecdotes, and opportunities to experiment. One would have to give them benefit of doubt that they know this is wise over the longterm for both their owned+operated and future franchise locations.

4. We wonder about court time inventory and perhaps they’ll have to asterisk* court reservations with some frequency limit. It’s a risk they seem willing to take.

5. Feels like managed open-play and leagues will be a core driver of member value, especially for those beginner and intermediates who are looking for more fun with new friends rather than intense play with private groups.

💡 Glow ups. This was just plain interesting, so tossing it in. Margaritaville Beach Resort Riviera Maya (MLP’s title sponsor), near Cancun, not only recently launched new pickleball courts, but is taking quite the spin on programming. Every Friday, they are now hosting glow-in-the-dark pickleball tournaments for their guests. The experience is placed against the backdrop of a local DJ and drinks. If we had to guess, this is very much a one-time thing to try out, which actually works well given the high turnover of tourists coming to a vacation destination like the Riviera Maya.

What’s on our mind

⏳ Pausing for PKL. Ryan and Carolyn had a few minutes to stop by PKL, an indoor "eatertainment” venue in Boston. It’s self-described as a pickleball parlor (it feels like it) and there are 5 indoor courts with shuffleboard and two bars. For context there are next to no outdoor permanent courts in Boston and even a smaller amount of options indoors. They are currently charging $99 per hour of court time during prime time hours. We reluctantly paid for 30 minutes so we could drill Carolyn’s backhand roll and get a feel for the space before our flight. Courts were nice (good spacing on 3, real acrylic paint, bolted-down net posts, decently high ceilings). Ryan almost decided to not comment on playing conditions because his pickle-addicted brain should have realized it’s eatertainment…none of those details really matter as long as ordinary patrons are having fun and drinking with each other. The staff and space did feel pickle-native and integrated thought. We still don’t get the space monkey theme 🙂 We snuck a peak at a daily ops agenda left on a table and gleaned they did 2 separate 90-minute corporate events to the tune of an easy $6k. Corporate cards make eatertainment venues run round. Quick video tour here.

💭 City courts. A few disjointed thoughts after reading through a city council’s incessant debate around installing courts due to the potential of future noise complaints. Our running list of ideas for city parks & rec people:

• Don’t line tennis courts - it’s a headache for pickleball players, it’s a headache for tennis players, and inevitably causes a point of friction when pickleball players dominate the court time.

• Invest in post-tensioned courts - they can be more expensive upfront, but payoff in the long run, particularly in inclement climates.

• You are probably being overcharged by 20% during your bidding process compared to the deals private facilities are inking w/contractors.

• Given how long your permitting and studies take, by the time you cut the ribbon, demand for courts will have likely increased - factor this in and build additional courts upfront as the cost to construct courts only increases every year.

• Cover 25%-50% of courts for inclement weather months to keep the community engaged & playing.

• Identify public land ideally away from neighbors.

• If you’re going to build anywhere near homes, invest the extra $30k in sound mitigation - will save you the community friction and potentially save you from wasting money if the courts ultimately get shut down over noise issues.

• Don’t be afraid to charge your pickleball community - yes, *free is nice, but the pickleball community is often willing to pay for convenience and experience if properly executed on high-quality courts. For reference, in case you work for a city and are afraid to take the leap of faith…the City of Columbus Parks & Rec runs their pickleball courts like a business and we’re all for it. 118 courts across 35 locations. 60 indoor and 58 outdoor. Instructional programming at community centers, ability to reserve courts, open play. $10 all-access memberships. $10/hr outdoor court rentals. $50/hr community center court rentals. $100/2hr indoor complex court rentals.

*And at the end of the day…there’s no such thing as a free lunch anyway.

Breaking Ground

The Reset tracks publicly available court construction data to better understand the locations, costs, and development priorities going into projects across the nation. Our tracker can be found here.

Featured Developments:
Pickleball taking over mall space continues. This time a new six-court indoor facility called True Pickleball Club will be taking over a former Kmart location in Latham, NY. The 20k sqft facility will be located next to a Vent Fitness and Hudson Boulder (rock climbing gym), which the pickleball operators believe will further enhance the amenity experience for their pickleball players. The “all-in-one” location will be interesting for them to think about with respect to pricing if you assume that members will factor in the bundled cost of 1 or more additional memberships into their price tolerance - as you have the opportunity to capture a demographic who would pay to be a member if they could mentally bucket a pickleball club + gym as one cost. The location will offer lessons, tournaments, ladder leagues, and open play. Our one piece of unsolicted advice after looking at their court concept is that they should highly consider using a different background color than white - from personal experience, this is quite difficult to track the ball against.

Best of the Rest:

• A new sports facility, Volo, at the Baltimore Peninsula development is opening with 7+ pickleball courts, 4 beach volleyball courts, and other activities like soccer, football, bocce, and kickball, as well as food & beverage.

• Marine Park in Brooklyn, NY is opening 8 new pickleball courts today. The courts were built after years of pressure by the Marine Park Pickleball Association, which now has >1,000 members.

• An 18-court private facility is going up in Kirkland, WA, which will also offer players a complete fitness and wellness center.

• Detroit Lakes City Council approved the installation of 3 new pickleball courts at Peoples Park, which will join the existing 6 courts. The original project to put in 6 courts cost ~$400k, and now 4 years later, the cost to install the 3 new courts was also ~$400k.

• The City of Sidney, OH opened 4 new courts at Custenborder Field. Original construction estimates put the project at ~$160k.