Ecomm Estimates

The Quick Points

🏪 The APP gets e-commerce abilities. Pickleball Superstore is now the official retail and e-commerce partner for the APP Tour. We found it interesting that this deal “gives the APP an equity position in the Pickleball Superstore business.” Fun way for a Tour to get upside in a rising e-commerce brand and build out a new channel. The owners of Pickleball Superstore have their hands in a lot. They are also behind two Hub facilities locations in San Diego and San Jose and recently filed a fundraising round with the SEC, which we covered late last month.

🗺️ Grow an amateur tour. The World Pickleball Tour is hiring a CEO and a Tour Operator. To be honest, we are not personally too familiar with the WPT. They tout themselves as the “largest amateur tournament series in the world” and have executed on over 40 events. If you have played or been to one, please let us know what you thought! :Smash that email reply button: Regardless, those two roles are extremely interesting as everyone vies to be an amateur’s first and repeat tournament experience.

🎙️ Barstool puts Ron Saslow on the stool. We have covered Barstool’s interest in pickleball with their recent tournament and creation of a dedicated Twitter account. It was still surprising to see them do a long-form interview with MLP team owner Ron Saslow. Ron owns the Chicago Slice as well as paddle company ProXR. Definitely give it a watch, it’s really fun to see an interested newb (Eddie) learn about all the moving pieces within the pro scene.

🎓 Colleges invest in communities. Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek Michigan announced a plan for a 12-court facility. They are asking the public to help contribute to the effort to upgrade 8 existing ones and add 4 new ones with lights and windscreens. It’s a great example of a college interfacing with local community to create a win-win. It reminded us of Broward College in Fort Lauderdale with the launch of the beautiful nine indoor court Diadem Pickleball Complex. The collaboration helped reduce unused space and create a new revenue stream. Here’s college president Gregory Haile describing the effort.

What’s on our mind

📕 Random but interesting. Here’s an old New York Times article from 2014 titled “A Funny Name, a Serious Sport. Pickleball, Anyone?” It reads as if it was written last year with the classic where did pickleball originate, this game is so fun and approachable for many, sound mitigation complaints sequence. There is only one pickleball-focused article in all of the NYT’s archives prior to this.

⏲️ How quickly things can change. Hats off to PCKL for their creative and persistent Twitter presence. A mere two weeks later…

🧮 E-commerce nerds. Pickleball is the hot thing and that brings with it more Shopify analytics. We came across this in a brand review and it would put Recess Pickleball at roughly a $1M run rate with their direct online sales. They are selling ~30 paddles per day at an average $95 price point. From our point of view, Recess is the leading Whitelabel + stock paddle for elevated eatertainment, apparel, and sportswear collaborations. We would expect that to bring a significant revenue channel. Nettie has a fair share of these types of aesthetically pleasing vibe partnerships too (see their custom “Hamilton” paddles among others). Diadem seems to be doing well with one-off custom paddles for corporate events.

🍒 Another cherry-picked stat. Came across an article from the state of Washington that estimated the PPA Seattle Open brought in $5M to the Seattle-area economy over the course of the 5-days of playing. That’s serious money for local businesses and at the time, it seemed like Seattle’s Mayor, Bruce Harrell recognized the positive impacts the sport brought to his city when he announced during the awards ceremony, “We need more pickleball courts, it’s as simple as that!”. But keep in mind how this contrasted with the headline that Seattle’s Parks Dept. immediately removed the 24 courts built for the tournament once it ended. While we laid out some thoughts about how to best go about constructing new courts at the city level, we need to spend some time talking to people who can help educate us on where the decision-making happens within local governments. Our outside-in view would expect the mayor of a city to have decent influence, but we also recognize there are going to be bureaucratic battles between local departments, city councils, and other special interests that slow down these processes. We’re encouraged by the whole-of-city approach that some towns are taking around the country, and if anyone knows any city officials who want to have an open conversation about the pros/cons/considerations of building pickleball courts in their community, please put us in touch.

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:
The city of Columbus is at it again. They continue to be one of the most under-reported cities seemingly going all-in on pickleball from both the public and private perspective. This time, it’s a community eatertainment space being built & operated by the developer of the Gravity apartment complex (Kaufman Development) and Land-Grant (a nearby brewery) that will include rotating pickleball courts in warm months, an ice rink in cold months, art installations, and an outdoor bar. The park will open in October and sit on ~2M sqft. of mixed-use space. TBD on how the ball tracks against this one-of-a-kind court color combo, but can’t say they’re not getting creative…

Las Vegas is getting a new luxury pickleball facility, called Electric Pickle. Knighthead Capital Management announced that the facility will host 10 courts, full-service private cabanas, outdoor TVs & fireplaces, bocce, and a 10k sqft restaurant. If we had to, this would largely fit in the eatertainment bucket, but feels like they’re targeting a social-club type angle. We’ll need to speak with their team to understand how their revenue model works, as a push towards memberships starts to fit the bill of ‘social club’, as opposed to capturing one-time Vegas passer-bys which will come off more like an upscale Chicken N Pickle eatertainment center.

Carmel, Indiana is getting a new pickleball-focused country club later this year, Pickle On Penn. The facility is has tapped Ryan Atkinson as GM and Ryan Sunderland as Head Chef. The country club will feature 8 indoor courts, as well as pickle-native amenities such as real-time video analysis and programming with local pros. They’re adding in a full kitchen and bar for players to stay and interact after playing as well. Our simplified heuristic remains, “are you coming to play, and then eat/drink? Or play while you’re eating/drinking?” - as we think this helps distinguish whether a facility is going to be measured on their pickleball programing (“fitness facility) or ability to run a restaurant (“eatertainment”).

Best of the Rest:

• Exciting to see this Mississippi announcement, as we don’t hear that state come up too much these days. The city of Tupelo approved a $1.28M contract to build 12 brand new courts on Fillmore Drive that they expect will be done by November. At $100k+ a court, we suspect this higher rate is because these are completely new builds on dirt, and will also include a fairly large parking lot.

• Brookings, South Dakota is finally moving forward on a pickleball construction project 3-years in the making, as they finally received an anonymous donation of $450k to move the project forward. The city plans to build 8 new courts with lighting and fencing in Hillcrest Park.

• Garfield Park in Aurora, IL is undergoing a massive redevelopment project which will include four pickleball courts, alongside EV charging stations, splash pads, playgrounds, two soccer fields, and a multi-use artificial turf field.

• The City of Charlotte, NC built a new court in place of a basketball court for $22k in Sheffield Park. The city plans to add another 55 courts across the county.

• The City of Moose Lake, MN opened four new pickleball courts at the Art Ohlgren Recreational Area.

• The City of Cedar Rapids, IA is building a 10 court complex in Jones Park.