Observations from MLP ATL

The Quick Points

🎯 Ace in ATL. Extremely convenient timing for us, as we were in Atlanta for MLP and Ace had their formal launch event for their first-ever location in Roswell, GA, which is about 35 minutes north of downtown. It was PACKED and props to them for creating a lot of energy. They had food trucks, a DJ, and 14 filled courts with paddle stacks. Zane Navratil and Collin Johns were also in-house filming some My Pickleball Coach content.

At the end of the day, pickleball clubs are all about creative programming and recurring community. You can’t really feel that as an outsider for a one-off special event but here are a few passing observations.

• Aesthetically, it felt fine? Nothing too bold or remarkable. Noticed that one long wall of the facility wasn’t dark, the white could have made it hard to see the ball. We continue to believe that design considerations matter.

• Court dimensions felt good and spacious enough. Ceilings definitely 20+ ft high.

• It was loud. Packed courts and a DJ obviously didn’t help, but we could imagine not exactly loving the experience on other days. There are very few indoor clubs right now that seem to excel in noise dampening (again…design design design).

• Welcome desk and mini-pro shop were impressive and modern looking.

• You get the feeling that major suburbs can / should each have a location. Build up a strong member base of 1,200+ at $129/mo with a lean staff and you have a pretty good business.

• There is a lot left to be desired with large amounts of people at a pickleball event (launch, birthday, etc). There needs to be a creative court MC or a new format to involve more than 4 people every twenty minutes.

🍔 White Castle slides onto Columbus’ shirts. Columbus-based White Castle has partnered with the Columbus-based franchise of Major League Pickleball. The Columbus Sliders are here. The new name and logo placement on the jersey comes as part of the deal.

It comes at an interesting time as the DC Pickleball Team lands a major corporate sponsor for their jerseys as well. AARP was a highly visible logo across all variants of their team uniforms and is rumored to be a $100,000 deal that lasts through season 2 of 2023. Hats off to their dominant performance and second-place finish this past weekend.

…and both hats off to the Orlando Squeeze for taking it all home this past weekend. The team consisting of Anna Bright, Rachel Rohrabacher, Zane Navratil, and Andrei Daescu put on an impressive performance all weekend against tough competitors. Would recommend everyone give the finals a watch.

🎾 PPA x Tennis Channel partner. Good for pickleball exposure. Unclear how it fits into the merger. This partnership has been long in the works and it entails a few things.

• Tennis Channel will produce all PPA events

• Almost all PPA events will appear on the Tennis Channel

• A 24-hour pickleball channel will be created

To be honest, we don’t think we have ever noticed if a pro pickle event has been produced by the Tennis Channel. Maybe this is a good thing…it’s done right and nothing terrible sticks out. Or maybe it’s a bad thing…there is no distinct style or upgrade in the angles, sequence, and pacing. Pickleball shouldn’t be tennis-lite and we have a lot of ideas for what not to do on a digital production. That said, we are open-minded that the Tennis Channel can produce a tour event consistently better than most. We like the fact there will be a dedicated 24hr channel, as it seems like a great background TV item for all clubs and eatertainment clubs to tune into.

This announcement barely mentions PPA’s parent co (“newco”/Unified Professional Pickleball org) and is another data point that the recent merger feels quite undefined. While the merger isn’t officially inked yet and the dust is still settling, we certainly are of the belief that both organizations, MLP and PPA, are solely thinking and operating for themselves. Yes, there will be an agreement regarding venue selection and player scheduling across the two events, but….it feels like two organizations, two tours, two different true norths. While the talent is pooled it seems like both will very likely be operating in parallel worlds with their own brand, incentives, and focus. That could all change if the new CEO decides to transition from a holding co of two organizations to an integrated holistic professional offering. But until then, it feels like two kids forced to play in the same sandbox.

👋 Fast hands.

• USA Pickleball announces Quiet Category. This “equipment will promote products that deliver essentially 50 percent or less of the acoustic footprint of equipment commonly sourced and used in community parks.” This includes paddles and sound-dampening court equipment. It is an important but niche focus that will certainly help a lot of HOA boards of directors develop a solution for nearby court residents. We’ll withhold judgment for now about the sound-dampening equipment until we have a chance to see it ourselves (would love any intros)…but we have some pre-existing thoughts about pickleball’s sound “problem”.

• The Pickleball Club is hiring for a Senior Corporate Controller. They have a 12-court facility open already in Sarasota and plan on opening up two more in the first half of 2024.

• Another college campus adds pickleball courts. It’s the best $61k The University of Mississippi could have spent on their student life. They converted three tennis courts to eight pickleball courts. Pickleball clubs at colleges are an absolute no-brainer. Get the kids moving and talking.

• Sonic gets in the game. Can’t say we ever had this idea for a fast food location. A newly opened location in Canton, TX has three new permanent courts that look sweet. In fact, you can book here with CourtReserve. Time to get some games in if you ever find yourself an hour east of Dallas.

What’s on our mind

Quick observations and thoughts from MLP’s 2023 Season 2 opener in Atlanta. We’re formulating some ideas on opportunities that MLP could lean into, but will save those for another post soon.

MLP shows well in person
While questions remain for how to drive increased broadcast/streaming viewership, being up close and seeing the speed + intensity of points really shows well. Whether you’ve played the game or never stepped on a court, it’s hard to not get a sense of how incredibly difficult the shots are that these players are pulling off. Seemingly “easy” dinks quickly transition into speedups and hands battles, or hard-cutting dinks out wide opening up an ATP + ATP defense. Further, the intensity from the players and ability for them to engage with their teammates and crowd help attendees feel in on the action.

Rec play can facilitate an appreciation for watching it on TV
Quick anecdote that was relevant to this weekend. A friend of ours played for the first time a few months ago during a wedding. He hasn’t become completely addicted like many of us (hard to find reasonably priced courts in NYC right now), however, he had a ton of fun and would definitely go out there again. He stumbled into a restaurant in NYC on Saturday that happened to be broadcasting MLP ATL, and even after limited play time to date, he was able to have a better appreciation and interest in the difficulty of what he was watching.

In-real-life events may be the bridge between rec player addiction and broadcast/streaming viewership
Early thought exercise. Maybe the usual argument that rec play addiction leads to —> pro sport viewership actually requires a bridge that is first seeing a pro event in real life. It helps to clearly put on display the technical and athletic talent that these pros have, and anyone who has stepped on a court will almost instantly watch an MLP/PPA point and realize how incredibly challenging it is. Maybe that’s the catalyst for someone to seek out every future pro event to either attend in person or tune in live, now that you know from an in-person experience what is happening on the ground, even if the broadcast can’t capture the intricacies.

Felt well organized
Maybe a low-hanging fruit compliment, but the event itself seemed well run and largely went off without any glaring trip-ups to the casual attendee. While this feels obviously important, shortcomings unfortunately become apparent quickly and can sour an otherwise good experience. So, not having any apparent attendee-involved issues is a win in our mind and props to the countless people working behind the scenes to make it happen.

Replay challenges have room for improvement
Could fall into suggested ideas, but wanted to flag one critique we heard multiple times from fans we spoke with was that the lack of precision in the replay / challenge videos makes it difficult for fans to take the refs’ final judgment seriously. It’s quite understandable that things are still being worked out before an expensive system like Hawk Eye in tennis can be implemented on the courts. However, in the meantime, we think fans will give MLP a hall pass if they don’t show the ‘replay’ video on the big screen.

Predominance of daytime matches selects for older demographics
We’ll get into more detail and thoughts here when we lay out some opportunistic ideas, but as a strict observation, the daytime matches during the week are inherently going to self-select for older demographics who often are more likely to have the time and ability to attend daytime events. This understandably then leads to some of the common commentary when watching on TV about how old the demo can look at times when you pan to the audience. What isn’t reflected on TV, however, is the energy, excitement, and commitment all demographics of fans bring to the court. The weekends and evening matches were when you’d see some of the younger demographics (e.g. college kids and families) show up.

Revised scoring system provided greater simplicity
One of the multiple reasons for rally scoring in its original design was to simplify the scoring system. The previous concept of ‘freezing’ at 20 & 18 added an element of complexity that threw people off. With the new season, the scoring & winning rules were streamlined to a simpler formulation, “First to 21, win by 2, and must win on your serve.” While there were still some pieces to clarify for people, this all in all felt much more straightforward and easier for people to follow along with.

Pro game has the potential to be equally addicting as rec play
Everyone knows about how addicting rec play can be for people. What was a little unexpected, given the lack of clear conversion to-date of rec players to pro viewers, was how dedicated (and seemingly addicted) many fans were to the event. There were countless people who drove 5+ hours to be there (one person in the crowd drove from Canada). Fans often cited their love of certain players, whom they follow in every PPA and MLP tourney, as the reason they wanted to come out and show their support. People jumped at the chance to get a ball, hat, or paddle signed by their favorite player. Many spectators clearly latched on to certain teams during the game. While some people said they were “rooting for a dreambreaker”, the passion of the spectators suggested that many in the audience were taking a specific side, and staying until they found out if their ‘team’ won or lost. It was rare to see people milling about watching games from afar. When fans sat down to watch a game, they were locked in until the end, at which point they’d race to the next premier or challenger match - the fans seemed to want to consume as much pickleball as possible, and if time permitted, any downtime was spent trying to get on an open practice court to play for themselves.

Seemingly early adoption of some team loyalty
While many fans were definitely out there to root for the rivalry of specific players, it was encouraging to see how many attendees seemed to associate with one (or multiple) teams throughout the weekend. People were wearing the shirts / hats of the team they supported, and weren’t only cheering on the players they loved, but the teams as a whole. This is still early days and a directionally optimistic note for the teams who will need to start trying to activate and monetize their local fanbases.

Ownership involvement / attendance
Staying on the theme of teams…it was great to see the level of excitement and commitment from so many team owners out there. As we’ve written about before, there’s still work to get celebrity owners out and involved in their investments, but we saw one positive data point towards this over the weekend. NBA player Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks came out to support the players on his recently invested team, the Atlanta Bouncers. Despite their tougher performance this weekend, the excitement of the action kept Young out there supporting the team and brought him back a second day to continue watching the action. Again, maybe it takes an in-real-life experience for the pro side to further build its base of supporters - particularly among the celebrity backers.

More thoughts to come…

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:
Dill Dinkers is planning an impressive expansion in San Antonio, TX, with plans to open 20 indoor clubs in the broader San Antonio region over the next 6 years. Each location will typically have 6-12 courts, and be a pickleball-centric facility.

Best of the Rest:

• Specific locations haven’t been picked yet, but the latest proposal in Denver, CO calls for $2M to be allocated to build 6-10 courts throughout the city.