Pickleball is one of the fastest growing sports and the demand for courts is greater than ever. With that mind, SPORTIME Pickleball has announced second and third locations in New York and New Jersey as part of broad expansion plan.
The Westbury Long Island, Wayne New Jersey Locations, joining already announced Armonk New York Location with goal of 200+ dedicated indoor courts by 2030.
Sportime President and CEO Claude Okin joined SportsJam with Doug Doyle to talk about the expansion and his days as a World Team Tennis coach.
"We're the largest operator of indoor tennis courts in New York state, so we had 200 tennis courts operating when the pandemic happened and pickleball started to percolate. We were hearing from our members and people in the community that they us to help them play pickleball at our clubs. We had the space. We had what we call "soft times" when tennis courts weren't fully deployed or where space could be shared. So we started in the business in what we call "hybrid-playing environments" that are shared spaces between tennis and pickleball. It became clear that people were jazzed for the sport. Our existing staff and team liked playing and quickly learned the game."
Okin says it was apparent though that dedicated pickleball courts are needed.
"In our case, people sort of embraced the rising tide of more racquet sports, more fun, more health and more social interaction, so we started developing dedicated court spaces when we could. We already have 71 indoor pickleball courts in operation and 17 of those are dedicated pickleball spaces. Obviously, we plan to have 200 more of those dedicated pickleball courts under management in the next five or six years. So we're all in. We love it. I don't think people have to choose between racquet sports. I think people with racquet skills can deploy them across platforms."
Okin would know. As a former coach of a World Team Tennis New York Sportimes, has many years of experience in the racquet space. While he never achieve his goal of being a top professional tennis star, he has become a "guru" when it comes to club ownership. SPORTIME clubs are state-of-the-art, yet affordable, and feature the best tennis, sports and fitness facilities and programs, including the John McEnroe Tennis Academy (JMTA) and SPORTIME Volleyball Club (VBC). SPORTIME clubs serve individuals of every age and athletic ability, 365 days a year.
"I went to work at an indoor tennis and ping pong club in New York when I was 12 years old, two years before I was legally able to work. I wanted to play tennis and said I'll do anything to get some court time. I never stopped working at tennis clubs 50 years later. I have the advantage of having watched in-person the birth of the commercial tennis club industry in the 60's, 70's and early 80's."
The veteran club owner says there are similarities to the expansion of pickleball to the explosion of racquetball in the 80's and 90's. Racquetball eventually died in the early 2000's when courts disappeared except for exclusive clubs. Oki thinks pickleball will remain a popular sport for decades.
"Racquetball brought people together from all sorts of walks of life, but I always try to explain to folks that I think the real staying-power test of a sport is the capacity for it to become a business. It's now absolutely clear that people love pickleball enough that they are willing to spend some amount of discretionary income on it. That's very important because if something is only free, it generally doesn't last and people don't invest in it and infrastructure isn't good. We are going to have great infrastructure in pickleball."
You can SEE the entire SportsJam interview with Claude Okin here.
