A Post for National Pickleball Day (August 8, 2024)!

As frequent entreVIEW readers know, I am among the legions of people who became pickleball enthusiasts over the last several years, many of us (present company included) spurred on by the global pandemic. The statistics show that pickleball remains the fastest growing sport in the US, with about 50 million people in the US having played in the last 12 months, an explosive annual growth rate (over 85% in 2022). Contrary to popular perception, the average age of these players is 35 years old.

 
I’ve previously posted about my pickleball obsession and pickleball entrepreneurs here and here and I’m proud to report that my enthusiasm for this fun sport has not waned, despite my current status on the injured reserve list. In case you were wondering, contrary to the widely stated reports that Pickleball is to blame for rising healthcare costs, my injury was not pickleball related. I can only imagine the long-term healthcare cost savings resulting from lower incidence of heart attack, stroke, and other conditions among the population of pickleball enthusiasts being more active and increasing their social networks because they have pickleball in their lives!

Whenever there is explosive growth in a market, entrepreneurs see opportunity! This includes

• people opening pickleball facilities, some dedicated just to pickleball and others combined with food/beverage and other entertainment options
• pickleball equipment manufacturers who are trying to drive innovation with new products (paddles, ball enhancements, training devices, scoring and training apps), and
• brands targeted to enthusiasts.
  

While some products aim to make play easier or to help players improve their skills, others are specifically targeted at “quieting” the sport; one of the biggest complaints about pickleball (unless you’re one of the few remaining tennis enthusiasts complaining about repurposing of unused tennis courts to pickleball courts with dozens of people waiting to play) is that it can be noisy.

Not surprisingly, lawyers have also become involved in the pickleball “game.” I’m not just referring to all my colleagues and others who’ve taken up the sport. I’m thinking about both those (like me) representing entrepreneurs building the pickleball or pickleball-adjacent businesses, and even those peaky litigators involved in litigating pickleball-related disputes. These include the recent high-profile dispute between JOOLA (a paddle manufacturer) and USA Pickleball over the removal of JOOLA’s recent “Gen 3” paddles from the approved list, along with the dozens of lawsuits (all the way from California to South Carolina) brought by homeowners associations and neighbors objecting to the noise.

Until my inevitable next post about pickleball, Happy Dinking on this National Pickleball Day!