Pickleball Business Forum Panel 4: The Ever Evolving Pickleball Media Landscape

The Ever-evolving Pickleball Media Landscape

Featuring Ken Solomon, Bob Whyley, Laura Gainor, and Thomas Shields hosted by PPA Broadcaster Dave Fleming from the Pickleball Business Forum at Brookhaven Country Club in Dallas.

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All right panel number four coming up we’re going to dive into the world of media and the media landscape the first person I’m going to bring up here is I assume he is here I have not seen so I might be introduced the chairman and CEO of the the Tennis

Channel please welcome Ken Solomon to the stage is also from Tennis Channel I’ve got the SVP and head of production at the tennis channel put your hands together for Bob Wy next up the founder of the Dink and up swing Sports thrilled to have Thomas Shields here today Thomas welcome

And last and most certainly not least the founder of vosberg Gainer and pickle ball in the sun what’s better than that say hi to Laura Gainer here everybody so Thomas uh you got the dink started why did you choose that name and how has the dink evolved from where you

Started to where you are today great question so why do we choose the dink probably because we didn’t have many better ideas um I think a lot of people actually often will say to me it’s so cool you built a business around your passion and uh that’s actually not the

Case I wanted to start a side hustle see if I could flip a business and my family was becoming obsessed with pickle ball at the time we’re a tennis family we were transitioning to pickle ball so it was proximate it was relevant there wasn’t a lot of coverage so uh we said

All right let’s let’s take a crack at it and along the way I became obsessed with pickleball and then I fell out of love with pickleball and then I fell back in love with it in the psycho repeats when you work in pickle ball um you know

Sometimes you don’t love it as much as as you once did uh but you know that was about three years ago this month since then we’ve grown it from a newsletter into two newsletters a News website we have three podcasts within our Network now and a social media presence we’ve

Also started to expand into e-commerce we’ve made some investments in uh Tech and apparel and that’s upswing Sports our parent company and uh yeah it’s been a it’s been a fun ride just riding the wave like everybody else yeah and the ra the the wave is something else so we’re

Going to talk to you later about what’s working what’s not and all that Ken thrilled to have you here to see you and everybody good to see everyone here good morning good afternoon even and uh yes the California I don’t know what day it

Is I don’t know what city but I right my California friend so Ken obviously tennis channel has has been your baby and has become quite a uh successful Enterprise I think what this group wants to know is as pickle ball TV gets launched and folks today pickle ball TV

Is becoming a thing literally today so 247 36 massive uh thing what on Earth can we learn from from all the years of Tennis Channel that we can put into the sport that this group loves well Bob Wy and I uh and our team made every mistake for

Pickle ball with tennis over the last 20 years to make sure we got all those out of the way so it would be smooth sailing and um I mean it was a pretty crazy idea 20 years ago the idea of a tennis channel people looked at you funny and

Said a tennis channel what would you put on it and how would that that’ll never work and you know tennis all day long and what we found is once people came to it and created a destination where anyone in the country knew that they could see in this case tennis 24 hours a

Day seven days a week which was a very counterintuitive idea to sports which is normally a force scarcity model where you drop your match in the middle of a series of either other sports or general entertainment and hope that people find it once a week um we thought creating destinations

Would work and it’s been a long fight and we have the scars to prove it don’t we Bob but we do that’s not an exaggeration you know how it works they first they they they make fun of you and then they try to kill you and now we’re

Killing we’re killing it I would say we’re we’re Sportsmen we’re lovers not Fighters and um a lot of things but what we do know is what everybody in this room knows which is that there is a deep passion for this game that is only begun to be sort of introduced to the world

And that even everyone who plays it there’s so much more they want to know there’s so much more they want to be involved with whether it’s their own playing whether it’s watching the greatest players in the world 24 hours a day seven days a week when they want to

See it and exactly how they want to see it whether it’s mobile whether it’s a broad freely penetrated service like pbtv it will be ubiquitously available to everyone so then it’s just our job simply to get people hooked and we know that this game has the ability to do

That in a way that nothing in our lifetimes ever has so I think the real answer is every single thing we did uh is relatable to the idea of creating a 247 truly integrated that’s gobbledygook in the media business oh it’s going to be we’re going to have a website we’re

Going to have this and we’re going to have what our Sports we realize pretty quickly Bob and our team is we actually need all of these great technological advancements that they’ve created in order to be able to tell the full story it’s not a story you’re living in this world it is a

Lifestyle whether you are a fan a player or both and the idea to be able to serve people in this country and to use this platform as a forgive me a table that every brand in the business can come and put their brand on top of and know that

The people know where to find it which is the real key in the modern media Universe it’s just too fractionalized people can’t find anything you know great there’s a million dollar this or whatever that somewhere that’s one day people have to stop their lives and tune

In or you know try to record it if that even is something that exists anymore today you know in this country by example if there’s a gr tennis match on or coming up or if you just know there is but you don’t know what it is 98% of

The time it will be on Tennis Channel or one of our platforms that will be even more true for pbtv and so the access for the person who’s been wondering about it is that any good I don’t know I’ve heard about this game but I don’t really get

It bum bu bum is it really a Pro Sport do you have any we ask if I don’t know do you think cornhole will make it on TV or I mean Poker or cooking why does that work on TV pickle Ball’s amazing on television thanks to all of you and to

Bob and to all that we’ve done together with PPA and MLP so we’re pretty excited we’ve made a lot again it’s not a joke we made a lot of mistakes and learned how to do it and what not to do and so this has allowed us to launch this week

With a 24-hour channel in tens and tens of millions of homes we’ll be in close to 80 plus million homes by the end of the year that’s extraordinary it took us 15 years to get that done with tennis channel the original Tennis Channel now we’ve got several of them so awesome and

Can’t wait to see the evolution of that for sure so Laura you’ve got a dude who says it wasn’t his passion project but now is it it is to his to your left you’ve got two guys who’ve been living tennis who’ve jumped all the way into

Pickle you have as well in a different way and I think what you bring to this and I’m thrilled to have you here is what’s going on at the Grassroots level how what’s going on to market the game to the folks playing at their Parks playing in in their communities your

Perspective I’ve Loved we’ve known each other for a long time share what you’re seeing out there in the in the world well pickle ball is my whole life um yeah so I was fortunate exactly four years ago I launched my agency boss for Gainer which is now a year after that I

Had transitioned it to be the world’s first pickleball marketing agency I knew there’s this huge opportunity in the growth uh so I made a specific Niche for it four years ago I had brought USA pickle ball on as my first client I had never heard of the sport before um so I

Jumped right in and it was actually incredible to be out there at the USA pickle ball Lounge to see the logo was my good friends that I brought in to actually do the USA pickle ball brand relaunch four years ago we did the new logo new website um and I just kind of

Jumped right in it became again my whole life I started playing and now that you see these entertainment complexes I had started the Chicago pickleball club with my friends and that’s why all of us love this whole sport because it’s Community it’s fun it’s social so this boom of the

Social club we’re now going to see that here of course over the next few years and Beyond and so now fast forward four years I’ve just been in this an incredible position that I consult Brands other agencies um everyone was kind of asking me and I kind of kind of

Took that knowledge of pickleball for granted that I’ve kind of learned and um had over the last four years where I was literally on calls all the time just kind of educating them in the sport who’s the PPA tour who’s the AP tour who’s Major League pickleball um so

Actually a year ago I started this newsletter on LinkedIn that’s in my voice kind of sharing that knowledge because people again just directly reaching out to me so I do this pick aall newsletter on LinkedIn and I send it every Friday I did this morning so

That way we got the live stream details out there of course for today’s incredible panel and congrats to PPA first of all and you pickleball this whole pickleball Boulevard the pickleball Forum as uh Ann said today this pickleball business forum is just going to continue to grow from here on

Out because I’ve seen it personally where I think some of people even here they messaged me and said that they were coming to the pickall business Forum because they saw it on my newsletter and kind of wanted just to come out because everyone’s just so eager to learn about

The sport and how to sponsor it how to jump in um so again I’m just fortunate and then U as I mentioned it’s just kind of my passion as well I moved to Florida in the midst of the pandemic moved to a community in Noti that we are so

Fortunate we live in this master plan Community where we have 12 pickleball courts water parks for my kids we get around in a golf car and so it became this lifestyle where I was playing pickleball every single morning so that was inspired me to launch the pickle

Ball in the sun brand um which really Lifestyle brand continuing to evolve always evolving um because of course I’m a mom of two so I just need to make sure that I’m managing my workload properly um and now I work directly with clients um to help them with their Consulting

Marketing work with celebrities we were just out with Katie Perry um a couple weeks ago she had a tournament for her foundation so I’m just incredibly fortunate it’s just amazing all the opportunities that I’ve been brought on uh to help with as well love it yeah you

Are you are dialed in and uh we love that so Bob you’re the head of production for Tennis Channel everyone wants to know hey what are you what are you taking from what you learned from tennis what is what is the evolution of putting the best foot forward with

Pickle ball everybody loves the firefights how are you getting The Passion of pickle ball out to that audience watching on their phone watching on their Smart TV Etc well uh first I just want to take a I have been taking a mental snapshot of of all of

You that I’m looking at because I would imagine uh this time next year it’ll at least be doubled maybe tripled it’s it’s a metaphor for how quickly this sport is growing um I don’t look at pickleball the same way I look at tennis so uh four

Years ago we had a a meeting and the meeting was you know what do we think is going to be the next iteration or what do we need to do to kind of grow audience make sure you have positive ebaa that kind of thing and I was all in

For pickle ball there was just something about that Sport and even though it wasn’t really televised that much maybe a couple things here and there the one out in Indian Welles um I just I thought that uh that pickle ball was going to be huge in this country and I don’t know if

It was because of Co or or what but I mean it has exploded in the last two three years I mean exponentially so I would imagine there going to be a lot more people at this meeting making a living uh on this great sport so uh first thing when it comes to the

Coverage of the sport tennis um for years the game camera is at the end zone right and it doesn’t move that much and you don’t see anything until usually after the point is done you see them in replays you do cut away live shots of the players so then you see the replay

Of what you just saw but from a different angle pickle ball will not work in television if you treat it the same way as tennis with that inzone camera it just doesn’t show the difficulty as well as the fast hands of the sport so I remember when uh I I

Thought to myself when we actually do this for the first time I’m going to do this completely different and so Connor uh was um was somebody we ended up partnering with at Orlando probably two years ago maybe three days three years ago and so I told Connor I was like

Listen we’re gonna do the coverage from a jib camera at the 50 yard line because most of the action especially in doubles and doubles is amazing in this sport happens right at the kitchen and so I just think you’re going to be able to see the speed and if we get the right

Height and the right depth you’re going to be really be able to see how difficult and how awesome this is and some of the points that we’ve captured from the jib is just been amazing I the players out there are amazing and um so so that’s one of the big the big changes

Is you can’t cover live pickle ball like you do tennis and we don’t uh the other thing to know is that um at this event because we’re launching pickle ball TV we’re really going to bring out all of our our weaponry and we’re going to have 15 cameras including RF drones uh so

We’re we’re we’re really excited to to show off this Sport and and know that from Ken and myself and and all the folks that are part of Tennis Channel we are all in we are agnostic and we are all in on this Sport and uh you know if

We can get just a you know 1% of half of 1% that play pickle ball watching it which we will I mean it’s going to be a boond doggle and as Ken says which I love One Plus One will equal three right because if pickle ball TV is successful

You all will be more successful and uh obviously we’re not just all altruistic by what we’re doing but you know a rising tide does what Ken lifs All Ships that’s that’s another Ken Solomon ISM sto an line an said that earlier this morning by the way by the way when I

Originally said that back 300 but but but real quick K by the way I just wanted to give props to this guy too this is Dave fling has been uh Dave FL Fleming has been a very pleasant surprise and that’s that sounds like a backhanded compliment but it’s not right

When you go into a new product and uh they don’t do much television and they’re very new to it you know I didn’t know I didn’t know how good he is and Dave he done a great job so Dave is going to be somebody that you’re going

To see uh for for a long time on our air uh Lord willing is he’s just killed it Hannah John’s uh Ben sister has uh she has done an amazing job teaching herself you know because she has done this for a couple years now how to be sideline and

How to do postmatch so um The Best Is Yet To Come I I I have to add to that Dave if it’s okay and hopefully is this working is this all making sense we are so excited when you say well what are the differences in in the tennis world

It was a completely different thing thing first of all no one even knew who we were we didn’t know who we were and but we had a team that stuck together to really try to figure out how to tailor a game that could sort of care less

Whether or not we were there believe it or not um into a 247 365 always on live sports and entertainment media base and channel that’s hard especially when it’s being played all different places simultaneously there’s lots of different courts going on etc etc but this team and I you know someday you’ll all

Hopefully pass through our building uh it’s more than just a building it’s a place that was designed to facilitate the very same types of production challenges that we have with pickle ball now we get to work directly with the sport itself with the benefit of hindsight of all those right and

Wrong decisions that we made and you know they say it it’s really true the wrong ones are the we will not go down the rabbit holes of the ones the mistakes we’ve made with a building filled with 200 people who go to sleep and wake up thinking about how to make

It better and more exciting and generally the way the sport that Sports work is you know the sport or whoever it is produces the event they license it to a broadcaster broadcaster Pops in does it and pops out and that’s kind of B and

They try to hold the sport to task if it doesn’t deliver what they think they wanted we are working together every day to say on the long tail where is this going how big can this be what are the things that are special and unique about pickle ball for television that nothing

Else does and Bob and Dave were talking about that jib camera that Bob’s talking about floats at the kitchen in tennis it is almost impossible for us to get a shot where you have in double or singles a quick you know popcorn at the you know

At the net in in pickle ball the ability to to to get tight on that cat and mouse of when’s the trigger going to get pulled this is fantastic television it’s compelling engaging and we’ll draw people in and we’re already you know three qus of the

Way past where we were when we started this started with tennis all excited about how to do it special and different and our view is not to fulfill demand that exists but to drive and create demand every day through all of the things that we know and do together with everyone in

The sport everyone in this room works together considering just the inherent strength that this sport has people say what’s the secret to the sport it’s the sport it’s the statue is in the stone and all of us are just chipping it away so that people can see

It more clearly because when they do we all know it’s addictive it’s the most compelling addictive inviting fun thing that’s been brought to Media we think for a long long time and and we’re not here to just do okay we’re here to win so Thomas how do you use the dink to

Drive that demand how do you make the decisions about how do I appeal to someone that want to watch the best players how do I appeal to the amateur players how do you structure your ecosystem to fill a lot of different master part one and then secondly a lot of

People here who want to reach the audience that you have that are potentially part of what they want so how do you make all that work my chance to pitch I like it yeah um I I think um there’s a number of different audiences in in pickle ball and when we started we

Would just cover what I thought was interesting which is like firefights right and um to a degree I think that’s been exhausted and you need to find new ways to shine a light on the sport um we’ve also sort of transitioned away from only Pro coverage right so we’ve

Started to really lean into more instructional content other things like hey what paddle should you buy how do you set up a court in your backyard right kind of the more 101 stuff uh because I think you know the broader segment of the market is the Casual

Player right it’s it’s the Grassroots so you know when we started it was like let’s just cover the pros let’s just film Ben John’s all the time right and now it’s evolved into something a little more comprehensive where we can appeal to these different segments within pickle ball um so everything from Pro

Coverage to equipment reviews uh and everything in between so um things have definitely evolved as as we’ve grown so what’s worked and what hasn’t and how do Brands whether they’re entrepreneurial or big Brands what do you recommend they do whether it’s on your platform on the TV platform what from your experience

Should they be thinking about yeah well if you I think from like an Ecom perspective I mean one of the kind of trending topics is uh and one of the things I hear a lot now is you should literally just hire a full-time content creator inhouse right like if you’re an

Ecom brand you might spend a ton on paid media and then it becomes you know basically you know how much are you paying to acquire a customer but um you can offset a lot of that and in many ways have more effective marketing if you just have a content creator inhouse

Creating that compelling content there’s a ton of r really great content creators I think we tweeted the other day that pickleball is one of these weird Sports where like the ratio of content creators to players is so high relative to other sports or segments or markets and that’s

Just because the passion is is there we’ve kind of harped on that already today um so I think if you are a brand figuring out how to create that original content and um you know getting away from just filming the highlights which will do well a great firefight will do

Well um but more like narrative storytelling uh relatable content um like you know memes or skits around you know kind of the the common things that happen like the inside jokes of pickle ball if you will right like um I don’t know what a good example is off the top

Of my head but trying to figure out how to create that organic content that you can then sort of organically to use that term again Infuse your product into I think is something that everybody should be thinking about if you don’t have that in house you should be partnering with

These different content creators or People Like Us who can help you create those relationships or create the content ourselves um and you know just create a new way to advertise in a way that actually just appeals to the people who are playing the game yeah I think

We’ve talked about that a lot today where we are very into our Sport and we protect it and we want you to be authentic so if you just show up with your new thing and have a pickle ball commercial we want you to to be invested

Here and I think a lot of people do have this idea that I have to do it myself so I hope people are recognizing today that there are a lot of experts out there that can help them that they don’t need to put all the onus on themselves they

Might be great paddle uh Creator but they don’t know anything about marketing okay well there are people here to help all of you do that so that’s one of the huge mistakes that the tennis world makes everybody tries to be a generalist and an expert in everything whether they’re

A rights holder whether they’re a federation whether they’re a tournament owner we’re going to have our own website we’re gonna have our own magazine we’re gonna have our own this we’re gonna why just do what you do really well and build on the ecosystem of all the talented people who are try

Find best of breed Partners integrate and scale quickly because the it’s there no everyone in this room knows Bob said it you said it it this has never happened in my lifetime I’ve never seen anything that has been as naturally and organically explosive in its grow in its ability to attract

People it’s like it’s like one and done I mean you get someone everyone here knows it you get someone out there they’re probably hooked I mean at because at any level that becomes interesting when you have media assets that are integrated that can touch people without having to actually bring them

To the court and you’re continually giving them that we we always felt in tennis Bob’s you know the master of it we could get people who never even watched tennis before that was our Target who the tennis never we figured if we could get them two times we got

Them and I mean Bob you could tell him about Dave porno at the US Open you know this guy founded you know bar stool who never set foot on a tennis court and what happened there it’s that that is the apocryphal story and that’s what I think we’re all trying to

Do please tell the story I know I mean Dave poroy fell in love with Sabal Linka because she’s a a beast she’s number one in the world and she’s a Savage and you know he changed his Avatar to sabinka couldn’t change it back but he he had

This social post on X in the middle of the night just exacerbated because she came back in one in the most amazing way and so uh we had him on the show the next day hun live talking about it but uh this is a guy who never like

Tennis more probably closer to a tennis hater or just you know just didn’t consider it in his world stumbled into one match he finally got goated into going into a match at the US Open came out and posted that I have seen the greatest competitive sport fan based sport to

Watch in the world Sab for couldn’t stop mean and it was her a woman no less right and that he was saying this is you got to watch it and he was saying you got to beted on it and where you can do that that’s great too and just flipped

Them that quickly and that’s what we’re we’re we’re in the business of inoculating people of creating addicts for this sport because it in the best possible way to make people’s lives better and more fun and fulfilling it’s it’s funny that he brings that up because I texted that that some of poroy

Stuff to Connor parau and said we got to figure out how to make this happen right like how to bring these Outsiders into the sport who when they focus their attention on something a lot of people move with them right it’s not it’s easier said than done but but those are

The opportunities and Laura you see opportunities from a a lot of different places what are small and big Brands coming to you to solve and how are you helping them navigate the pickle ball ecosphere and Ian like Jason said I mean Nike is just waiting for the opportunity

To come in it’s just incredible I mean so many brands are also they’re just right now they’re just getting educated like I mean if we’re still at the infancy of the growth I’ve been a part of it for the last four years but it’s just incredible to see how the brand

Activations have all changed and again that pickleball Boulevard is perfect this is pickle ball it’s social it’s Community everybody’s engaging it’s just a great opportunity for us to kind of have this common interest and then just those stories I mean the celebrities again they’re just really helping to

Grow this Sport and I just secured this morning um my interview of my career is going to be happening in December for pickleball magazine for the next cover story and it’s just opportunities like that that all these celebrities are just really helping to grow I had the chance to talk

With Marin Morris again it’s just taking those opportunities people are loving this sport um Marin Morris was playing pickleball on tour so I just reached out to her and I said hey we would love to feature you in the cover of pickleball magazine she was having her crew come

And set up right next to her tour R Us on every single stop and so I got a chance to talk to Marin Scott Foster um um the had referee for um the NBA right when we hit that Co when all the NBA referees were stuck in that NBA bubble

In Orlando I got the chance to talk to Scott Foster he was teaching everybody how to play Pickleball and again all those people are now packing their paddles all those NBA referees are now uh on tour and they’re packing their paddles wherever they go to all these

Games to play and as I mentioned the Katy Perry she her and her sister play every single Sunday night at the Monaco club with Orlando Bloom uh Orlando and ktie Perry had a tournament for Katie’s Foundation that her sister runs the firework Foundation uh so I got the

Opportunity to go out to Santa Barbara and again it’s just connecting it to her foundation is incredible it’s helping these kids that are living in underserved communities that get to have these Camp fireworks and this pickleball tournament that we went with one of my clients um again it’s as Carl said I

Think that there’s what more than 600 padding manufacturers are paril is coming in I’m very fortunate through this newsletter that I mentioned just opportunities I’ve gotten with Brands and now working with the former owner of JanSport that’s now launching a pickle ball apparel brand that actually is

Going to be four pickleball players um actually talking with Pro players recreational players what makes the perfect pickleball apparel because again with tennis um it’s not having a tennis ball in our pocket you know we need apparel for all of you for the players um that you want to work with so again

It’s just amazing the opportunities that I’ve been given them feel very very fortunate that got into this sport four years ago and it’s just I’m very blessed to be able to meet so many people talking to all these Brands clients and um as I mentioned when I talked to

Clients I realized it was all knowledge I was kind of taking for granted to help these Brands so um yeah so I’m just always happy to talk to everybody and just kind of hear all these fun new ideas and how everybody’s getting in but as you said make sure that you’re kind

Of working with people that really understand the sport because it’s and have build that team um as well because I know the PPA tour is doing a great job of building your team to make sure you can keep up with this growth in the demand USA pickleball was doing the same

But you need people that understand the sport the working on your team to make sure it has that authentic content um and be able to speak that brand voice you can tell when someone’s not a pickle ball player when they’re talking on air or um in their social media content so

Of course having all these experts um and Dave is the best commentator uh of course in all his fun fuse on air it’s been fun to just watch all this whole media landscape grow over the last four years and of course again the live stream with pickleball TV 247 um

Featuring That Celebrity Showdown tonight as well yeah it’s going to be awesome and I you know I think that’s the thing to re remind everyone that there are people that have been down the road so if you’re depending on where you’re Journey is you have people that

Can help Elevate what you have you find them on pick Boulevard yeah literally I mean it’s it’s the it’s the boulevard of dreams out there go go fulfill your dreams out there everybody that one hopefully the boulevard not a broken dreams unlessa you went out early um one

Thing that we learned in tennis it’s probably a good lesson and just to to think about I’m sure many are here there’s sort of this lwh hanging fruit of You’ve Got a Brand if you’re looking for sponsorship right to elevate the sport um you’ve got the lwh hanging

Fruit of of either someone who’s an endemic because they’re whether they’re actually a equipment manufacturer something that’s very very directly and obviously relevant to the sport and and and you know they’re kind of easy to get into the fold but what’s so magic about these Sports is that the clientele first of

All they’re dual gender Sports genuinely and we never thought we’d have something that’s even more dual gender than tennis and Tennis certainly on court makes the idea of Mak doubles even more real uh pickle ball does than than tennis which I don’t know that we’ ever thought we’d

See so you have a unicorn in the world of media and sponsorship where you have all the power of sports which dominates everything when it comes to you know advertising and sponsorship and yet instead of just selling a male audience you have the ability to sell an adult

Audience and if you’re in the parliament immedia it’s an adult 18 to 49 25 to 54 audience it can be younger it can be older but that sweet spot is hit equally between male and female viewership nobody else has that you’re not and they’ll put the thumb on the scale and

Say oh well our work with the NFL and all the rest and we’re not going to be taking the NFL down that’s not our job but the ability to reach for marketers an audience that is as affluent forward-thinking healthy fit they travel more than anyone else in the

World they have more disposable income as a rule this is not to the exclusion of people who make a little less but you have a literally the golden audience available at your disposal with something that people are so curious about whe they know anything about it or

Not that you’re in a moment to really take advantage the second is is the less obvious sponsor the the big luxury manufacturers and travel when you realize the purity of the audience which we will be doing our part to help deliver in scale globally certainly nationally first we’re already making

Plans this is happening globally as some of you know and it’s I think it’s going to be there’ll be a lot of for of other languages being spoken in this room too you have an opportunity to reach pickle ball becomes a preferencing tool not just the obvious place where

Someone who’s needless to say somebody’s in the equipment business or even in the sports business overall or the sports athletic where business goes but somewhere where a banking partner goes someone where a particular type of services partner goes where they can’t get the kind of audience that we will

All that you deliver now will be delivering every day 24 hours a day and spinning up and they’ll be then going online and they’ll be creating different integrated Partnerships we got a we got a green field here right now everybody in this room has a has a Wonka bar it’s a really

Exciting moment and U it’s not doesn’t happen very often I promise you that I love me a Wonka bar let’s go Ken that’s that’s beautiful so Bob I think a lot of people don’t recognize sort of the the process of of of how pickle ball is

Televised how it works a lot of people see me and go wait I haven’t seen you I’ve heard your voice all year but how we do we we aren’t necessarily Courtside that may change down the road but where are we today how are you using your phenomenal Tennis Channel facilities and

Where’s this going down the road as this uh Channel expands great well uh you heard Ken mention International but this is real I mean pickle ball TV will be a international platform so think about that with all the things that you do it’s exciting we’re not leasing a

Product like we do with tennis or the NBA or basketball and you have rights restrictions in territories things like that pickle ball TV and the product of of what we do will be seen everywhere so thanks for bringing that up Kim um we do something that’s very state-ofthe-art

With pickle ball uh we produce everything back in our 2110 facility in Santa Monica California and and 2110 is just a terminology used for how something is ingested received with video and audio but you know it’s just ethernet you know back in the day you’d

Have a you’d have some type of duax or track cables and that’s all gone so we’re in a state-of-the-art facility and then what we do is when we come to a venue like this we just have to have the right amount of bandwidth uh whether

It’s 200 Megs or a gig um and then we put every single isolated feed into this bandwidth gets interpolated spit out in our production control room in Santa Monica and we literally produce from there we do replays from there we add the graphics the storytelling the studio

Insertion everything is done uh back in Santa Monica you’re not going to see an Uplink truck you’re not going to see a TV truck here uh we have some type of Hub that takes everything in uh you know but that’s how we do it right now you know somebody like Dave Fleming because

We’re new at all this right this is this is a new sport and as Ken likes to say if something doesn’t work it’s okay we’ll change it and that’s a lot of freedom when that’s coming from the top but but right now uh you know uh let’s just say Michelle and uh Michelle

McMahon Dave fim are going to be calling a match they’re going to be doing it from this Hub unit that we have because they have a multiscreen up up there and it just uh in the early stages it’s easier for us to communicate with them and so they’re literally seeing

Everything that’s going on not just program uh but the isolated camera so they can get a better look and feel right and then we’ll have Hannah John’s or Cameron Blackwood on the court um you know doing sideline at this particular event um not only are are we going to do

What we’ve been doing and plus it up with the amount of cameras and the coverage that we’re doing we’re going to have a desk here so I would imagine uh Laura and I know Thomas we’re going to invite them to the desk and we’re going

To talk to them about the things that we do we’ll bring players over to the desk as well so um we’re not starting from scratch we’re starting with 20 years of experience when I left Fox uh to join and to launch Tennis Channel I was kind

Of made fun of Tennis Channel you guys aren’t even going to be on analog cable said the guy who ended up launching NFL Network he’s gone and who knows what’s going on the NFL work but uh it’s a great property it’s a great thing but we’re still here and and we’re doing

Just fine um and the other thing too when Ken brought up the US Open US Open we had badges that said NR old on it that was non rights holder right so the sport didn’t Embrace us you know it took you know some couple years

Later we were live in prime time yeah it took somebody like you know with Ken and his and his amazing skill sets to kind of break down those walls um we’re not there to pick a ball we’re coming to a sport where we have 20 years of

Experience of doing a a product that people love and we’re doing it with people that uh were in harmony with you know in I don’t mean holding hands I mean the blending of voices so with folks like Dave and Tom Dundon and Connor and you know the folks with MLP

We’re In Harmony with them and so we are we are in it to win it together and we are going to make sense of a very big cumbersome schedule right there’re going to be a lot of events uh next year obviously I’ll let the PPA and MLP

Announce that but we’re going to be at all of them and we’re going to make sense of why this particular event in January makes sense to why the USA Nationals the San Clemente in December um that’s what we’re going to be here for Dave if I could just add one more

Thing to that and that’s an important thing to remember as you go about thinking about how you are going to build into this um we are about maximizing the sport and getting the most people to be able to enjoy it the longest they possibly can through the most Insidious way possible by

Entertaining the hell out of them and so one thing that I would urge everybody in this room to do is to not pattern yourself after other sports in the way that you approach how you do your business because tennis was very different sports is a force scarcity

Model as a rule right there’s a couple of games you know there’s a game a week per team kind of more or less for a short period of the year and there’s a reason why there’s not more because they because they can say tune in to this one

Three hour block and try to build the Tower of Babel every time and and just hang everything else off it the beauty of what we realize the beauty of tennis and now pickle ball which are unique in this regard is the continuity is the ability for a fan whenever they want to

To go to it and it will be there in some form or fashion either live or live enough when we say live enough it’s not like a oh so it’s not quite live no one can watch all of it all the time but if it’s something that happened in the

Relatively recent past right if this is a current match right between the John’s brothers or whoever it is s of Mi St it it’s it’s news and it’s something that I want to see that I want to plug into in a world that I care about so when Bob thinks about deploying

And I’ll probably regret saying this but you’re all invited out to California to come see the building you should do it you heard them okay you should do it and and because it’s not your father’s oldmobile we literally built with the greatest technologists broadcast Tech ologist in the world he built and his

Team um and gendler who’s also designing the 100 mile city in Saudi Arabia they’re the best Architects you know Visionary architects in the world a 70,000 square foot machine that can process as many courts as you can throw at us from anywhere in the world simultaneously live in real time bring

It all in make it all pretty put the context behind everything that’s happening with every single one of those matches and then if we do our jobs right put each one on the appropriate platform and let you as a viewer know without any friction where they all are so that you

Don’t have to be walking around checking the Box you know the website you’ll be on the dink right but you won’t you you can just know that if you go there you will be seeing the most important things going on in the world at that moment on

These platform forms we’re there for you to make it easy for you the fan all the time 247365 and that is a breakthrough as opposed to sports which the traditional Sports which I spent a lifetime in and many of you have which is get everybody

To show up when we tell them to for three hours and then do it again and they do imagine when we can say you can come here and turn it on and just leave it on and that is is what people do and this sport can win because of those

Unique attributes yeah I can’t wait to see it so exciting uh Laura last call for you how did these folks take advantage of of this Sport and how do they use you or others to differentiate what they’ve got in the marketplace through media like your newsletter or other things

What what’s one thing that they should all take away from there I think definitely I mean it’s all about being authentic and as I mentioned I have my pickall market newsletter which you can connect with me Laura voser on LinkedIn subscribe to that newsletter I’d love to

Share it I mean utilize all these people again we’re at the infancy of the growth there’s so much opportunity to come and I know Thomas with the dink has so many like popular stories on the dink where you’re all consuming this content we all love the sport and everybody’s again

Just starting to get to know all these Pro players they’re all starting to make a brand for themselves there’s a new wave of players all coming in my daughter’s playing right now in her PE class um so it’s all going to change it’s all going to shift so everyone do

It all together all media platforms I mean there’s just so many great let’s all get together and do it together is just huge um so we can all have the one common goal of continuing to grow the sport and making sure that all these professional players can make a living

Off of it all these Brands can come in and succeed so yes please do message me say Hello I would love to continue all conversations Thomas where’s this going last call for you um all right let me take a second to shamelessly pitch something we are having an event on

Richard Branson’s Private Island um it’s called the Necker pickle ball forum if you’d like to get involved reach out uh whether you want to attend for a week in a villa with Richard Branson playing pickle ball live performances uh or you’d like to get involved from a sponsorship standpoint

It’s going to be a really cool event um something that nobody’s done before and uh we’d love to work with um anybody who’s interested and uh yeah so forgive me for the uh sales pitch but if you give me the the floor to take advantage

It’s all good you’ve done a lot for the sport so I can give you 30 seconds there Thomas for that you know I’m this is exciting for me obviously and I appreciate the kind words from you guys to be the one of the people that’s getting to voice where this is going but

Folks this takes all of us and I think you know you’ve heard these guys talk about authenticity and and and collaboration and all of us recognizing how we can all pull this forward so your opportunities within the nwor that’s launching today within what Thomas and Laura are doing are immense I think the

Challenge for you is what is how creative can you be how how how differentiate differentiated can be and as as as we’ve said up here today how Ken said he’s he’s made a bunch of Errors we’ve all made a bunch of errors but you have to try and I think that’s

The thing that launching a pickle ball Channel shows that we’re we’re going for it as a as a collector here and uh this was a really fun panel so thank you guys so much for being here give it up for Ken Laura Thomas and Bob and Dave thanks sir