The First Serve

What to Know: On May 25th, the PPA Tour released their full broadcast schedule, which will cover 270+ hours of live play.

Where to Watch: The broadcast deal was struck across multiple big-name platforms, including ESPN, CBS Sports, Amazon Prime Video, and the Tennis Channel.

What to Watch (literally): The platforms will cover 20+ tournaments in 2023, which includes events such as:

The Reset’s View: For most professional sports, the majority of the value for players and organizations is derived from lucrative broadcast and streaming deals. The PGA Tour generates an estimated $600M+ annually in media deals, and the NFL’s numbers are eye-watering, bringing in ~$11.1bn in revenue, with the vast majority coming from TV and streaming deals. That translates to ~$347M in revenue for each professional NFL team (note: the NFL evenly distributes their revenue to each of the 32 teams). For some context, Amazon is paying $1bn per year for the next 11 years to get exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football, ViacomCBS, Fox, and Comcast are paying $2bn+ per year, and Disney (ESPN/ABC) is paying ~$2.7bn annually.

Conversely, much of the value in the broader pickleball space has accrued to the consumer-centric equipment companies, with professional teams and players representing a smaller portion of the market. While it’s unlikely to reach the scale of the NFL in the near future, these platform deals are an important step for pickleball’s maturation.

Pickleball’s nascency also affords it the opportunity to experiment with new formats that are more conducive to the sport and its demographics, rather than trying to copy decades-old sports leagues. The smaller court sizes, quicker points / games, vertical nature of a court, and unstructured tournament frequency may make it more conducive to be designed for a mobile-first viewing experience. Particularly as pickleball’s demographics move younger, it increases the optionality to tap into live streaming via platforms like YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

One last point on younger demographics opening new broadcast / streaming opportunities for the sport. Try not to laugh, but World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (yes, the WWE) spoke about these demographic trends and pickleball’s early broadcast opportunities during MoffettNathanson’s TMT conference on May 18th.

WWE’s Key Points 

• It’s relatively easy for streamers and broadcasters to make investments into both tails of the curve. I.e. it’s easy for them to spend a few million $ per yr going after pickleball coverage, as it’s such low dollar amounts for them and gives them access to a new market. The other tail of the curve is spending big money $$$ on deals like the NFL, which is also an ‘easy’ sell internally given the high-value nature of those rights.

• Internal WWE research shows that consumers >35 yrs old still turn on their TV, while those <35 yrs old look to streaming options first for sports.

• Streaming platform dominance - (shockingly to us) WWE is the #1 subscribed to sports league on TikTok; the #7th overall subscribed to YouTube channel (92M+).

• Unless you’re a dominant franchise like the NFL or NBA, the WWE believes most sports leagues will need to distribute content through a platform for the foreseeable future, rather than distribute direct-to-consumer on their own.

What we think it means for pickleball:

• Valuable for pickleball to gain more mindshare as it’s streamed / broadcasted to more devices, particularly if there is an appetite for large platforms to spend relatively low $ amounts to get the rights.

• The APP’s research released in March of this year suggests that the average age of pickleball players has dropped to 34.8 years old, with the largest age group of ‘avid’ players being 25-34 years old (40%); These demographics present the opportunity to look to streaming-first distribution methods for the sport.

We’ll be keeping an eye out for any viewership statistics released by the PPA at the end of this year, and also look to see how the MLP and APP grow their broadcast / streaming footprint.

The Second Serve

The What: Old news is still interesting news. Walmart partnered with a racquet sports booking platform, Break the Love, to bring pickleball to more communities across the country. Walmart is offering 125,000 fully comped reservations for Walmart customers, associates, and Walmart+ members. The partnership launch was done in tandem with a push by Walmart to roll out a pickleball initiative to sell customers the equipment to get them on the court, alongside short-form video content to help build basic skills.

The Where: The partnership is being run across courts in 11 different states - AR, CA, FL, GA, KS, MO, NY, PA, TX, UT, VA. Additionally, they are hosting 25 community events across the country, with programs and giveaways.

The Why: Walmart and Break the Love highlighted their desire to bring customers in local communities together, while making pickleball more accessible to the general public.

The Reset’s View: Maybe we’re cynical, but Walmart and Break the Love are likely seeing a lot more opportunity than simply “community building” (though that’s an admirable and hopefully successful second-order effect).

For Walmart, they benefit from any increase in foot traffic through their stores, as customers will need to 1) buy entry-level equipment, 2) buy athletic wear, and 3) become repeat customers for nondurable goods like balls. #3 in particular creates a unique cross-sell opportunity each time a customer returns to replace broken balls. By giving priority access to Walmart+ members, it gives the marginal customer & pickleball enthusiast another reason to sign up. In case the cross-sell angle isn’t obvious yet, right below the court reservation section, you get served this…

Note: If Walmart starts selling cheap Duras, you can make your charitable donations out to ‘The Reset’…

For Break the Love, this is a smart partnership and no doubt was a difficult one to land, so props to them. It gives them a degree of leverage, brand strength, and social proof when selling their platform to pickleball facilities. They’re able to pitch pickleball locations across the country that working with Break the Love essentially gives those facilities the opportunity to access 125,000 incentivized reservations paid for and marketed by one of America’s biggest brands, Walmart.

At the end of the day, this is another example of big-name corporations seeing pickleball as a way to advertise and jump in on the trend. As we noted earlier this week with Subway…

While the individual sales of pickleball equipment and apparel are likely immaterial to Walmart’s (and other large corporations’) revenue, these businesses will continue to be in search of new ways to cross-sell / upsell new and existing customers - pickleball being the latest push.

What we’re reading, watching, and listening to…

📚 Former MLB Execs Team Up To Bring Pickleball to Big-League Ballparks
🎥 A walkthrough of a newly completed Picklr facility
🎧 Pickleball needs better rivalries