Experimental Ideas for MLP

The Quick Points

🏟️ Pickle4’s Ballpark Series gets some competition. The APP and REVELxp announce a new partnership with the goal of hosting amateur tournaments in stadiums and ballparks. We previously covered the ballpark series here with Braxton’s in-person experience at Oracle Stadium. A few weeks ago we touched on REVELxp’s college tailgate offering.

It’s an interesting choice for the APP and is most likely a combination of some deal economics as well as existing facility relationships that REVEL can provide.

🏒 More pickleball nights. First, it was Florida Marlins. Then the Atlanta Hawks. Along came the Jacksonville Jaguars. Now it’s the Lightning’s turn for a paddle + ticket offering. There will be a court outside and we assume a Florida Smash (MLP) player will be there to facilitate some games. Pickleball is local and while this is no longer a novel idea in concept, it still is a worthwhile offering for each professional sports franchise in their local market. It is also a nice reminder that pickleball sells itself because it’s fun, new, and casual…all marketing departments are chomping at the bit to integrate into their community engagement.

🏫 Dinks or detention. Eight beautiful courts were recently installed at Paradise Junior High School in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas. This is the first time(?) we can recall seeing a fresh new installation at a junior high. Courts at public schools may be the biggest no-brainer for cities and towns.

• Daily daytime and afternoon PE and club usage

• Post-school and weekend hours it becomes a valuable community amenity

• The courts will have ample parking spots

• Nearby sound complaints should be close to non-zero.

 ⌨️ WIP. Work In Pickleball.

• PCKL would love to bring on a video content manager.

• Pickleball Kingdom is hiring a marketing manager.

• The Dink could use a managing editor.

What’s on our mind

💭 MLP thoughts continued
One comment we often make is that MLP is in a great position to experiment with new formats and ideas to create a more compelling in-person and broadcast/streaming experience. There were new things they tried this time that really improved things, and we’d encourage them to continue taking shots as there aren’t yet decades of established culture and precedent in the sport that people are expecting when they tune in or attend. So, some 2 cents ideas for MLP to test after last week. Some are more debatable than others, so call us out where you agree / disagree.

Experiment with a slate of evening matches on weekdays
As we noted in our observations on Tuesday, middle-of-the-day matches during the week are going to skew the in-person demographics to an older crowd who can take the time out of their day to show up and watch. Not necessarily anything wrong with that, but if there’s interest in reaching a younger demographic then offering an evening slate of games could be compelling. For those who want to attend in person, it’s easier to make an evening out of it with your friends or significant other, and on-site programming & offerings could be leaned into a bit more (e.g. likely to generate greater amounts of higher margin food & beverage sales if there’s a cohort of 25-35-year-olds making a Thursday night out of it). And if we believe that in-person can be a conduit to higher broadcast/streaming viewership, then experimenting with more ways to get people into the venue could assist.

Strategy and player companion guides for fans
We overheard numerous conversations in the crowd of fans asking each other who certain players were, who they normally played with on the PPA, what Challenger vs. Premier was, why a weaker team was put out against a stronger team first in mixed or a dreambreaker, and a slew of other questions that were trying to help educate fans on all the dynamics of MLP. This could be a really fun piece of content to push in either a hardcopy or via the website to help get fans up to speed on what they’re watching and educated on the strategy of the sport. It helps drive a greater appreciation, interest, and focus in the matches when your attendees can easily follow along, but importantly…when they can take an opinion on a situation. If you’ve ever sat in a room with football fanatics on a Sunday, you’d think each and every one of them either played in the NFL or were Bill Belichick with the way they’ll scream about play calling, penalties, or quarterback decision-making. While it’s fairly laughable at times (your authors fit in these camps), it’s an incredible retention and engagement mechanism for the NFL. Fans are hooked to every moment, they follow it in between weeks (and offseason), and are willing to engage in ancillary products (fantasy football, daily fantasy sports, etc.) not only because it’s entertaining (which it is), but because they believe that they can be a part of it and have opinions on it. And this applies to pretty much every popular sport out there. Educate fans to make them feel like they know more about in-game and player strategy than Ben Johns, and you’ll not only get them hooked, but be able to start cross-selling them on other fan activations.

Stop asking if someone wants to change their call
Personal opinion, but when a line call is challenged by an opposing team, we scratch our heads at why the officials ask the team who made the original call if they’d like to change their call. There’s no penalty to the original team if the challenge reverses that call. The only team with skin in the game on the challenge is the one who challenged the call itself. We were sitting by the players’ tent during a few matches, and every time an official would turn to ask the team if they wanted to change their original call, players behind us would say something to the effect of, “Why would you ever change your original call…”. So unless we think someone’s going to do it out of being a nice person, it feels like an unnecessary aspect of the game. Challenge it and get to the replays (which gets to our next point).

Consider not showing the replay live on the big screen (for now)
In theory, we really love the chance to get fans hyped up with live replays during challenges that show you what the officials see. However, it’s still early and some of the camera system tech could use some improvement in frame rates. We’re very understanding that it’s unfeasible to expect there to be systems already in place like the U.S. Open, so we don’t think it’s necessary to get a live look just yet and think fans will be similarly forgiving. The risk (which happened during one match) is that a replay is shown, fans make up their mind from what they’ve seen that a call should be one way, and then the officials come out and rule in the opposite direction and there’s a negative reaction to the call. Won’t beat this point to death as we touched on it in Tuesday’s edition.

Use IRL experiences to drive pro broadcast/streaming viewership
Touched on this on Tuesday as well, but a current theory is that it only takes a small window of seeing a pro match up close and personal to develop a true appreciation for how incredibly skilled these players are and how difficult the shots are that they’re making look easy. If you’ve played before, this will be almost instant, but even if you’ve never stepped on a court, the pace and technicality of many of the shots still leave attendees impressed. This helps drive a greater appreciation and interest in the game that will help convert some portion of these attendees into broadcast and streaming viewers, as they can recall from their live experience the aspects that can be difficult to show when watching on a screen. Getting fans into more MLP events is probably the best conversion funnel, but even watching teams warm up and practice with each other was quite impressive. Which creates an opportunity for players to be utilized by teams in their cities with fan activations. These don’t have to necessarily be sometimes time-consuming clinics hosted by the pros, but a real chance for many rec players to see professional level play for the first time. These could be exhibition matches or (stealing from football again) public practices & scrimmages. Bringing fans in to watch their local pros practice is extremely popular in football, and provides the NFL a chance to further activate their fanbase during offseasons with their talent. For MLP, this could be done in the potential offseason, or between events at the moment until a more packed schedule is released in the future. Lastly, as a side point and more for the MLP teams than MLP as an organization, these practices aren’t just good for show and fan activation, but will benefit the teams themselves. We expect team performance to continue to grow in importance as owners invest material amounts into their orgs to achieve results. Feels like it will be hard for new teammates to build chemistry and develop strategy together if they’re playing months apart, given that many combinations don’t also play together on in between PPA events. We could make another football reference between quarterback and wide receiver timing…but will spare y’all as you get the point.

Lean into food & beverage more at the events
In full disclosure, we don’t know the intricacies of the relationship with Life Time or other dynamics that could be at play, but strictly observationally, it feels like there’s an opportunity to drive greater food & beverage revenue. You’re not close to many alternatives if you get hungry or thirsty, it’s fairly warm out, and the events are largely a day-long experience. However, there seemed to be relatively limited food & beverage options available and they were tucked away by the entrance that you never really walked by unless you were on your way out, or seeking it out directly. Feels like most sporting events are incessantly in your face trying to sell you food or a drink at nearly every step inside a stadium (in your seat, on billboards, in every inch of walking space, on posters in the bathroom, etc.). Again, can’t speak to the unit economics precisely, but broadly speaking, food & beverage (particularly alcohol sales) can be lucrative opportunities to boost revenue, so we’re optimistic that this can be a more meaningful driver in the future at MLP events.

Get rid of ‘win on your serve’ and raise the score you have to reach
Okay saved the most controversial and debatable for last, as even your authors sometimes go back and forth since we could see both sides. However, it could be worth experimenting with axing the “win on your serve” rule, but also simultaneously raising the threshold to win a game (e.g. play to 25 or 30), so that the likelihood that the more dominant team’s performance can still emerge over the course of more points. Here are some of the factors at play in our mind. On one hand, forcing teams to win on their serve creates much closer games. It enables more come-from-behind victories, as the receiving team can still win points and claw their way back to tie it up at 20-20. We saw a few dreambreakers because of it and you can make a case that the fans love the comeback victories and it keeps people glued to their seats the entire time. However, we had some discussions with players, fans, and other people in the space and removing the win on your serve (we won’t call it a ‘freeze’…) creates unique opportunities for betting, while allowing a clearly dominant team to take advantage of the points they continue to win while not serving. Right now, betting lines are pretty narrow, within a few points at most, since many teams slowly work their way back to 18, 19, 20 points, even when they’re down 11-20. This makes for fairly unexciting lines to bet on. However, removing the ‘win on your serve’ could create a world where a dominant team becomes a -7 favorite. Or the line on a mixed match moves substantially based on the men's & women’s performance of the two games before. One potential risk is that it could lead to more blowouts and/or “expected” outcomes, but the team nature of MLP does create a higher degree of randomness that is exciting for fans. There are some other ways to debate it back and forth, but in any case, we’ve now seen one event with the ‘win on your serve’ method in place, so it could be interesting to see a new approach experimented with in another MLP to compare / contrast the two.

We’re sure some others will come to us, but that’s all for now.

And to leave you with one more thing on our mind…

The amount of LinkedInspo never fails to amaze us

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:
$700 a night to get your hits in. The Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay has four new lighted pickleball courts. It’s a bullish signal for the sport and activity when 5-star resorts invest money and real estate into the amenity. Anecdotally many of the racquet club directors we have spoken with describe pickleball as the perfect crossover activity for their golfing demographic. This feels like a perfect complement to their typical guests traveling in for the two 18-hole courses. Vacationers are continuing to filter for pickleball courts whether it is on sea or land and now they have a premium West Coast option.

The Corpus Christi Athletic Club in Corpus Christi, TX is adding new pickleball courts to their club. The president and GM of the Athletic Club Tom Deimler said, “The feedback that we're getting is people just want more. They want more courts. They want to be able to get on more courts and more court time. More clinics. More lessons. More of everything with pickleball.”. This doesn’t surprise us and we expect more and more clubs to move in this direction to meet current club members’ demands, as well as bring in a new customer cohort.

Real estate developer Thalhimer Realty Partners is looking to build a new racquet sports complex at an old hydro plan on Haxall Canal in Henrico, VA. The building is ~20k sqft and has a 6.5k sqft outdoor area (we’d estimate you could get 8-10 courts in there).

Best of the Rest:

• PickleMall has plans for another location, this time inside a former Toys R Us in Vernon Hills, IL.

• Albany County announced they opened the first county-owned pickleball complex at a Hockey Facility in Colonie.