Exec Transition at MLP

The Quick Points

🎉 Pickle Pop Culture. We won’t tell J.Lo she was playing with an indoor ball but it is cool to see A-listers dabbling. Lion’s quarterback Jared Goff was also playing over the holiday.

🕴️ Movin’ on up. MLP announced two new execs joining the ranks, with Julio DePietro taking over the role of CEO from interim CEO Brian Levine (who will transition to a Strategic Advisor), and Bruce Popko stepping in as COO. DePietro brings unique experiences from his time at the hedge fund, Citadel, and as an independent filmmaker, while also becoming fully immersed in the world of pickleball as a part owner of the Florida Smash. We think it really matters that the top leadership plays, enjoys, and understands the sport. Twitter and pickleball feel quite similar to us. Everyone knows they are a thing but the people who actually tweet and the people who are addicted to pickle are a bit quirky and curious. We are reminded of many times that Twitter hired product executives who didn’t actually use the service. There was no soul or intuition in their execution. It’s a whole other thing and an advantage to have someone be a true believer at the top.

Popko’s background as the COO of the professional sports teams, the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres, will bring some deep sports industry experience to the expanding pickleball league. We’re encouraged by the continued professionalization of MLP, but continue to feel that given the sport’s nascency, they’re still in a unique position to experiment with new formats to attract viewers, participants, and pros before they need to hold the same stature as legacy professional sports in the United States.

🎗️ Komen is comin for pickle. As we have shared many times before, pickleball is an amazing group activity for all levels and backgrounds. That is why companies, groups, and non-profits seem to be hooked on running pickleball events as fundraisers. It has proven to be so effective in fact that Susan G. Komen is hiring a full-time senior manager of year-round pickleball events. The Alzheimer's Association is another non-profit very focused on tournaments as a format, having hosted 20+ since 2022.

What’s on our mind

🤞 Just take a look. We are so hungry for courts here in Austin that it sometimes pains us to see daily openings of facilities both private and public. New Albany, a city north of Columbus just opened a 16-court park. When you have lived and covered pickle as much as we have you can just feel how much energy and activity is going to be immediately created for hundreds of citizens and in the coming year, thousands more. Ohio pickleball is real.

newalbanyohio

View more on Instagram

🗒️ Think like an owner. Myths and reality lessons learned edition. Here are some notes a private facility owner is likely to share.

• I’ll just have a part-time college student at the desk. Staffing gets hairy and you will probably need 6-10 part-timers in the mix. An extra staffer during rush hour is almost always needed as they can fill in for no-shows as well and help with the pro shop.

• Courts are just painted concrete. Players are paying a premium to play, they’ll want and expect cushioned courts so they can play as much as they want without joint pain.

• It’s more work than you think. Just having a physical facility built is half the battle. The management of people and community is the real art and challenge. Continually adjusting programming (open play, round robins, etc) education (101, private lessons), and hosting (tournaments, corporate) is a lot to handle.

• 6 courts is enough. If you can manage 6, you can run a 10-12 court facility. The real hurdle is real estate and upfront financing, not having twice as many courts operational.

• Court fees will make the money. Membership dues and court fees keep your lights on. Leagues and lessons make some money. Corporate events and parties are where the real margin is at.

• Lights are lights. Don’t skimp on this key element, invest in proper lighting. In-direct LEDs aren’t cheap but your players will thank you.

Breaking Ground

The Reset is beginning to track publicly available court construction data to keep track of locations, costs, and development projects across the nation. Our tracker can be found here.

Featured Developments:
Life Time Fitness continues its expansion dominance, adding 12 outdoor pickleball courts to its luxury club, Champions, in Houston, TX. The 24k sqft addition is expected to be completed by October 1st. From what we can tell, this is a completely new build being done on a pretty quick timeline, as opposed to Life Time’s typical approach of converting existing tennis and basketball courts over to pickleball. The estimated cost of the project is $880k, which translates to roughly $73k per court, or about in-line with some of the data we’ve been collecting for new court builds. Life Time continues to put its money where its mouth is, and we’re quite excited to listen to the discussion during this quarter’s earnings call.

Yet another eatertainment venue is going up, this time in Orlando and backed by another celebrity superstar, Rob Gronkowski. Crush Yard Pickleball Club & Restaurant started in South Carolina and is bringing the concept to Orlando in a 50,000 sqft space. While the number of courts hasn’t been disclosed yet, the company is planning to invest ~$4M-$5M in developing the project. For reference, Crush Yard in South Carolina offers memberships for $95/mo or $7.45/mo, with different perks for the different levels, as well as pay-to-play offerings.

The David Ensignia Tennis Academy is leaning into pickleball with the launch of their DETA Pickleball Club with 16 dedicated pickleball courts available for rental, alongside clinics, match play, and classes.

Best of the Rest:

• Rhinebeck, NY will see three new courts go up at Thompson-Mazzarella Park at an estimated cost of ~$205k.

• Minot, ND converted their existing three tennis courts at Roosevelt Park to eight new pickleball courts for an estimated project cost of $90k (~$11k per court).

• While it may seem like pickleball is everywhere, it gets us really excited to hear about first-time court openings in larger cities such as Chattanooga, TN. The city is opening its first official public outdoor facility, with 5 courts and new site locations already in place to develop another 4-8 courts.

• GoodBounce, an eatertainment concept out of Louisville is planning to open another location in Clarksville, IN. The 16k sqft facility will open in the fall with six indoor courts.