Tuesday Night Pickleball

The Quick Points

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Play across the pond. Better is essentially the YMCA equivalent in England and it will now use several dozen of its 240 locations across the country to offer pickleball. A new partnership with Pickleball England will help both organizations facilitate World Pickleball Day and beginner 101 (apparently called taster) sessions across the country. Deliberate and aligned collaborations like this excite as it 1. continues to grow the game in new regions and 2. is very aligned with the ever-important theme of accessibility and approachability.

🥒 Mr. Pickles joins Mr. Pickleball. The 2023 Biofreeze USA Pickleball National Championships in Dallas next month added a new boozy bev to the sponsorship slate, with Wolf Spirit’s Mr. Pickles Pacific Northwest Gin becoming an official sponsor. They’ll have a front-row seat on “Pickleball Boulevard” at the event, alongside other food & beverage options at Brookhaven Country Club. Shocker (and refreshing) to us, Mr. Pickles wasn’t just another overused play on pickleball, but actually the name of the distillery’s spirit animal, a 7-year-old American Pitbull Terrier that the master distiller rescued from a pound…lucky dog(s).

🇵🇭 Pickle Mall, the Philippines edition. Ayala Malls is an upscale mall and retail destination operator in Singapore. They recently kicked off installing courts throughout various locations. The vision comes from the top, down with the Ayala family present and playing at the event. It’s a premium endorsement of the sport and certainly a very convenient way to continue growing the 1,500+ active Singapore player base.

🇪🇸 Rafa embracing pickle? Even more international news. The first Mediterranean Open Pickleball is slated to happen in December where 200 players will converge on the island of Mallorca. The Open will be hosted by the Rafa Nadal Academy. It looks like our U.S.-pro friend Brandon Lane will be playing and competing! In our opinion, it is a very significant endorsement of the sport. It is an opportunity that all racquet and tournament directors have to be contemplating at this point.

🧦 Sock x Selkirk. If you didn’t hear the news in August, Jack Sock officially retired from tennis to focus exclusively on pickleball. He makes headlines again this month, after signing a partnership deal with Selkirk and joining other notable top pickleball pros on their slate of sponsorships.

🏟️ College competition. On the back of our other notes regarding pickleball on college campuses, this was a fun read about the focus and level of competition exhibited by the student bodies at some universities. The University of North Florida moved up to #17 in the national ranking for DUPR Gamma Pickleball Power Rankings after competing in the Florida Regional Tournament. This tournament hosted 24 teams across 17 universities in the region playing for a spot in the Collegiate National Championship. This club was formed about a month in advance of the tournament, and like many others, faced some uphill battles getting equipment and finding the right facilities to practice at, given that it still hasn’t become a sanctioned collegiate sport yet.

💼 Work in Pickleball:

• USA Pickleball Association is hiring a Director of Community Relations

• Parent company, Sports Facilities Companies, is hiring a General Manager for the Macon Pickleball Complex in Macon, GA

• Wild Dunes Resort in Isle of Palms, SC is hiring a Director of Pickleball

• Racquet Club operator Cliff Drysdale Management is hiring a Director of Pickleball in Tyler, TX

• Pueblo Tennis Center is hiring a Head Facility Director for Tennis & Pickleball in Pueblo, CO

What’s on our mind

We have some extended thoughts on a few topics we’ll get to you all soon, but going down a pretty random road in pickleball today.

It’s Tuesday, and we decided to watch some Tuesday Night Pickleball from the Arizona Pickleball League played at Jigsaw Health’s, The Orchard Indoor Pickleball Club.

Where is it held?

The Orchard is an indoor air-conditioned facility that’s centered around two courts, high-top seating tables for fans, an immersive sound system, and a fully stocked bar. From what we can tell, it’s not a spot for you and your rec friends to go play, but clearly leans into corporate programming (can host events up to 120 people), birthdays, and its unique live-streamed pickleball league.

So, what’s the Arizona Pickleball League?

The league is a variation of team-style play, where every team has two women and two men. Each match consists of two sets, first played by each mixed team (set 1) and then played by each gendered team (set 2). The mixed teams and gendered teams only play one game to 15 points, win by 1, and using side-out scoring (i.e. you have to win on your serve). If a set is tied 2 games to 2, then a 3rd game is played to 5 points (win by 1). The league consists of 5 teams, the Gilbert Gladiators, the Peoria Pythons, the Tempe Tornadoes, the Surprise Stingers, and the Scottsdale Scorchers. Matches are live-streamed on The Dink’s YouTube channel (who is also a main sponsor alongside Proton).

What seemed interesting to us?

Trying something new
Pickleball is still largely in its infancy in terms of relevance, adoption, awareness, and first-time participation. And while we can’t predict the future, we’re confident that for it to survive being more than a fad at the rec level and possibly emerge as something with staying power at the pro level, then all verticals of the industry are going to need to continuously iterate and experiment with new ideas, formats, technology, etc. In our view, that’s what this is. It’s not trying to present itself as “basically pro”, or just a new “pro league” / “pro format”. It does a good job relaying itself as high-caliber players, who have some exciting points to watch, and would be entertaining if you were there in real life the same way you may enjoy watching a really good point among your skilled friends (more on this in a second). And if someone thinks it’s pro, just have them wait for the end of the stream to kick over to a replay of DC vs. the Squeeze in the MLP finals and you may have the same experience as one of us checking the YouTube settings to see if it accidentally got flipped to 2x speed, or if Anna was actually running that fast and Zane was actually hitting the ball that hard with Riley. Nevertheless, we love to see The Orchard and Arizona Pickleball League leaning into something new at the local level. We’ve said before that pickleball can have such strong local intricacies, so testing new ways to get people engaged in pickleball at the local level excites us, and could be a pretty unique model to see new facilities who are iterating on their business model partner with upstart [FILL IN THE STATE] Pickleball Leagues to drive sponsorship revenue and publicity to convert corporate business and memberships.

Fun production value
On the live stream, they kick off every game with player intros, where they showcase the player in a fun way and ask them a series of questions, which are basically 1) When did you start playing pickleball?; 2) What’s your sports background?; 3) What got you into playing pickleball? (usual response is something like “someone took me out once and I fell in love with it"…never heard that happen to anyone else in pickleball…); 4) Do you have a pre-game ritual?; 5) Who’s your biggest fan?; 6) Favorite memory/part of Arizona Pickleball League?

The player intros are a cool way to get spectators a little more involved with the players, since honestly, there’s a common challenge at almost every level of pickleball where many viewers don’t actually know who a lot of the players are unless they follow the sport closely, or recognize names from their paddles. In MLP/PPA’s case, it will likely be a function of time (i.e. more people following the pro game) and marketing (i.e. both teams and individuals leaning into their brands) to change the tide here for the average pickleball rec player to know >25% of the pro players. However, there could be some lower-lift content ideas to get the names and backgrounds of your players out there more and into the public eye.

For the in-real-life audience, they definitely lean into some really high-energy / slightly over-the-top aspects. There are pyrotechnics, National Hockey League-like entrances with the lights in a dark room, a loud DJ playing music and intro’ing players, walkout themes for players, and basically an on-site hype person in the form of their security guard(?). Almost guaranteed to not be some peoples’ cup of tea, but again, they’re trying something new, and clearly aiming for a younger crowd. Which, frankly shows on the live-stream. Demographics definitely skew younger, from kids with their families to young professional-aged couples.

More people watching than we thought…sort of…
Alright…at one point towards the end of the match, there were 287 people watching live. Yes, that’s nothing. But also, we’re quite surprised that almost 300 people sought out watching +/-5.5 level pickleball play on a Tuesday night at 10:30pm (CST). Further, a good deal of their matches tend to garner anywhere from 1.5k - 4k views after the fact. Not sure if it’s even wilder that there are 4k people who wanted to tune in and watch it later, but we presume the League must be doing something fairly interesting or compelling to get people to still seek it out on YouTube. Maybe this is some degree of actual Arizona fandom, maybe it’s for the curiosity to see what antics will occur on the sideline from the DJ or a random fan, maybe it’s pickleball addicts that want to consume even more pickleball content because they’re weeks away from the next PPA/MLP event. Or could be some combination, but it’s intriguing that this extremely niche product whose core value and reason to exist is not for streaming/broadcasting (in our opinion), is still able to attract viewers.

Non-competitive with other nights
The obvious ones to point out are Sunday day/Night Football, Monday Night Football, Thursday Night Football, and (maybe) Saturday college football…yes, will die on the hill that the NFL is the most dominant entertainment business in history considering it literally has 1 single product that runs for 6 months out of the year and generates $12bn+ per year (compare that to Netflix’s $32bn in 2022 over 12-months and hundreds to thousands of shows/movies later). But we digress.

Even though your brain may want to go there, we’re not actually talking about Tuesday Night Pickleball trying to be non-competitive with dominant pro sports nights. Rather, we’re looking at it from a viewer’s (both in-real-life and online) opportunity cost of time. We’d estimate that the Arizona Pickleball League realizes that one of their biggest competitors is other popular evening attractions in Scottsdale from Thursday night dinners, Friday / Saturday shows and bars, Sunday days w/friends & family + Arizona Cardinals football, Monday Night Football (yep), etc.

As Netflix’s CEO once wrote in a quarterly letter, “There are thousands of competitors in this highly-fragmented market vying to entertain consumers and low barriers to entry for those with great experiences.”…so, we’ll give them credit for trying something new by angling the product to an off-market night of the week to test an already pretty out-there idea.

What feels off?

At the end of the day, we don’t believe they’re trying to make this into a nationally broadcasted product or even trying to bill this as top professional talent. So a few of the things that felt off were just some personal observations. Of course, you can always push for better play, but the main piece that felt off was this seemingly hushed tennis commentary from the announcers. It was quite the contrast and dichotomy when put side by side with the insanely high-energy theatrics in almost every other part of the production. Would love to hear the announcers get into it and explain why what you’re watching is harder than it looks, especially when you don’t have the speed of shots or frequency of hands battles that are prevalent in PPA/MLP events.

What’s it’s purpose?

For The Orchard & Arizona Pickleball League

In our view (without ever having talked to anyone involved in the Arizona Pickleball League), its reason to exist is largely around being a fun and unique in-real-life experience that brings people out on a Tuesday night, drives decent food & beverage revenue (would guess there may be a rev share between the venue & the Arizona Pickleball League), but importantly helps create higher dollar sponsorship opportunities for the venue + league. Furthermore, the increased foot traffic of local Arizona residents, plus branding of being the home of Tuesday Night Pickleball, and frankly a nicely designed & laid out space all likely contribute to pretty decent corporate and private event revenue. Which as we’ve written about, can be extremely lucrative if done correctly for a facility. Usually, the balancing act for a facility is how to keep members paying $100+/mo happy if they can’t get access to courts because there are frequent events being hosted on-site. The Orchard solves this by never catering to rec players, period. They’re corporate and private events focused, and things like Tuesday Night Pickleball help enhance their brand and drive these types of events Wed-Mon.

While the streaming element also increases distribution cheaply, we think a bigger purpose is to create marketable clips for players, the venue, the sponsors, and the League. As we’ve been thinking about lately, just because you can slice pickleball a million ways and try to build a pro team with owners and broadcasting around it, doesn’t mean we need to make dozens of pro-team iterations with hopes of signing network deals. Sometimes things can be phenomenally successful ideas built around harnessing local energy and excitement for a well-delivered experience and that’s it.

For the players

And if you’re a player on one of the five teams, it’s no doubt some fun publicity and exposure for rising pickleball players to showcase their talent on a more repeatable basis against other skilled players and under some pressure (live stream + IRL fans). Some portion likely have professional aspirations, while some portion may see this as a genuinely fun competitive outlet that helps their personal brand.

For spectators

Largely touched on this above, but the younger demographics and general atmosphere make it seem like a fun, different experience for your Tuesday night. Almost every seat was taken in the live stream, and it’s purposefully not trying to sell out some large stadium seating setup. It’s more like 75-100ish people at a comedy club sitting at a high-top table eating and drinking while watching something unique and entertaining to them (as they presumably have some baseline level of interest in pickleball and likely aren’t as skilled as the players on the court). And this is definitely a stretch of a heuristic, but at the end of the match, the crowd seemed to clear out pretty quickly. Our interpretation of this is that 1) people were willing to stay to watch until the end, suggesting there was something relatively compelling about the experience, but also 2) the audience was not simply filled with the players’ best friends & family there to support them, as those people likely would have stayed around longer after the match instead of darting for the exit like a normal event - suggesting there was some level of organic interest in attending.

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:
An interesting one to come across. A gym, Four Seasons Fitness, in Glassboro, NJ announced a 25k sq.ft. expansion plan which will host six indoor pickleball courts. One nuance is that the pickleball center will be marketed and sold as a separate upsell membership, with gym members receiving discounts. The pickleball courts are expected to take up a majority of the expansion, however, they note that there will be two other new gym areas which include an expansive turf area and additional workouts. This expansion plan isn’t too far off from what we’ve been advocating for - a dedicated pickleball-centric facility, with functional fitness/stretching, locker rooms, and co-working, to bring players into the facility multiple times throughout the day and the ability to keep them there before & after (work calls, etc.). Every minute you keep someone’s feet in the door is a chance to upsell them higher-margin items & memberships. Doesn’t seem like they’re stopping with pickleball either, and from afar looks like they’re making some serious investments to increase swipes in the facility (a Life Time Fitness metric), with expansions of their cycling studio, a running track, and cardio section.

Lil’ Rhody Pickleball is a new pickleball-centric facility that opened in North Kingstown, RI last month. The facility hosts five indoor ‘pro-cushion courts’, made of layers of rubber pellets, two coats of sand, and several layers of acrylic topcoat. Questioning the all-white walls…but, some interesting data points and comments from management:

• 50% of members are new to pickleball

• ~1,000 people played in the club in under four weeks

• Pricing:

  • $49/mo gets you 120hrs per month of free drop-ins; $30/hr for court reservations (+$79 initiation fee)

  • $39/mo gets you 120hrs per month of free drop-ins; $40/hr for court reservations (+$79 initiation fee)

  • Drop in rate is $15 per drop-in; $60/hr for reserved courts

• Programming is a key focus of the club for people to play with similar skilled individuals and lessons are an important way to bring people into new skill groupings

Olivette, MO is boasting to become the home of the world’s largest indoor padel + pickleball club, with the construction of The Padel + Pickle Club. The facility will host six padel courts and eight pickleball courts (not as big as we were expecting tbh). They plan to host a range of amenities, from locker rooms and shower facilities, to food & beverage. The rendering feels a little compact to create a really unique experience, as they’ve seemed to opt for the adjacent stacked courts model.

Best of the Rest:

• Arizona-based Pickleball Kingdom announced plans to open 20 franchised indoor facilities across New Jersey.

• Jamestown, ND got six new pickleball courts at the Two Rivers Activity Center, dubbed the “Applied Digital Pickleball Courts”.

• Amherst, MA plans to get three new pickleball courts at Kiwanis Field, with at least $120k allocated towards the construction.