Pickleball's Place feat. Ajay Pant
Welcome to Racquet Fuel, where we launch into great conversations and share powerful tools to help you become a stronger Racquet's leader. Your hosts are Kim Bastable, a former All American tennis player and now director of tennis management at the University of Florida, and Simon Gale, the USTA National Campus director of Racquet Sports. Today on Racquet Fuel, we'll take a dive into the trend of pickleball through the eyes of AJ Pant, vice president of Racquet Sports for Lifetime. Lifetime made a major move into pickleball, and we'll see how they did it and how it's worked out for them financially. Now here's Kim and Simon.
Kim Bastable:Welcome to Racquet Fuel. We're here again with my cohost, Simon Gale. Simon, how are you doing today?
Simon Gale:I'm excellent. Thanks, Kim. I have a someone I have a lot of respect for on with us today who I consider one of the best in the industry. So excited to hear what he has to say today.
Kim Bastable:Agree. Agree. We Simon and I, have AJ Pant with us today, a very long tenured and respected director and leader who's been at the forefront of Lifetime's major move. They were already the largest provider of indoor tennis, and now they are the largest provider of pickleball by a factor of 10, he says. That's incredible.
Kim Bastable:So AJ, we cannot wait to hear the details of what you have going on at Lifetime. Welcome to Racquet Fuel.
Ajay Pant:Thank you, Kims. Thank you, Simon. Nice to be here with you both.
Simon Gale:AJ, I've been in the country about twenty five years now and watched your career evolve from a distance and and we've spent plenty of time together talking over those years. You don't become the vice president of Racquet Sports at Lifetime overnight, and we often hear the saying, you know, one step at a time and your career has evolved that way. Maybe you can give our listeners a bit of an understanding of your background and how you ended up in this role so that we get a little bit more clarity on how you ended up in this prestigious role.
Ajay Pant:Well, tennis has been very kind to me, I suspect to three of us. I started off way back with voluntary, doing a lot of coaching back then, moved on from there to Midtown and Alan Schwartz and Doug Cash for about twenty years as their national director. Moved on then as senior vice president for Junior Tennis Champions Center in Baltimore area, College Park, Maryland. And Lifetime had an opening. They spoke with me, and I was delighted to take up the job.
Ajay Pant:I didn't start as a vice president. I started as a director of tennis. They were quite kind. They promoted me to senior director and then pickleball and squash, you know, as a big part of her offering. I'm now the vice president.
Ajay Pant:I have the privilege of overseeing all Racquet Sport for about 130 of our club portfolio.
Simon Gale:And AJ, the Lifetime brand has obviously evolved as we listen to your evolution within the company and the addition of Pickleball, for example. But you're also the biggest indoor provider of tennis and have made a conscious business decision to transition into the pickleball world. And I believe you're the biggest indoor provider of pickleball these days too. So correct me if I'm wrong on that, but also just talk to the change in direction to add pickleball and what it's done for Lifetime.
Ajay Pant:Sure. So let me just start with the scope of what we have with Pickleball in terms of real estate and spaces. We have 545 clubs as of today, which have permanent courts. That's 545 courts that are permanent. So we have our own specialized surface.
Ajay Pant:We don't use gymnasium or asphalt. It's almost like a kinda like a tennis surface, but not quite. We will be up to 700 permanent courts by the end of this year and, for sure, up to 1,000 permanent courts by the 2024. So just because we're, you know, all over the country, and no no one else is gonna have a thousand permanent courts across the country. Obviously, with that comes a lot of training and coaching for about 300 folks who are with us and are teaching and or doing some of the other admin work that we need in Pickleball.
Ajay Pant:Pickleball, our our founder and our CEO, Bahram Akrotti, he saw something coming on you know, down the pike, especially in the world of the what this could do with changing the the scope of Racquet Sport. Quite candidly, I did not. Right? I I just did not see this happening as big. He does remind me every couple of days that I was wrong.
Ajay Pant:So he he was Bahram was onto something. It was absolutely hands down a terrific move. It has changed our culture in terms of another Racquet Sport makes people be healthy and happier life. That's what our that's what our everything we do is about that. So this just adds to something, and, you know, I can certainly later go over the numbers which have just been staggering.
Ajay Pant:I I I never imagined a growth that would be this exponential.
Kim Bastable:Well, you you let let's go back. How many you said there's 545 courts. So how many clubs in The United States Lifetime have with courts?
Ajay Pant:We have, yeah, we have a 130 clubs with courts.
Kim Bastable:And then you have a number of clubs with none.
Ajay Pant:Yeah. And the and the reason that the remaining, you know, 50 plus clubs don't, Some of these are they don't have a they don't have two basketball courts. They only have one basketball court. So we don't wanna convert one if someone has two basketball courts, we're taking one and converting to three pickleball permanent court. But if it's one basketball, it doesn't seem fair to the basketball members, so we're not doing that.
Ajay Pant:And there's a couple that, you know, are are much more specialized boutique kind of clubs where we couldn't offer pickleball.
Kim Bastable:Okay. So that's that's helpful information. So you are a self proclaimed tennis guy. As you said, you didn't really necessarily see this coming. You've always been in the tennis world.
Kim Bastable:So tell us about what this has done to tennis at Lifetime, and are you worried about tennis, you know, nationally, even outside Lifetime?
Ajay Pant:Yeah. No. Certainly, as a disclaimer, if you cut my wrist, there's tennis blood coming out. That that's a given. With that being said, no.
Ajay Pant:At Lifetime, both are doing incredibly well. We lost about 16% of our total tennis courts. However, tennis participation and we we don't we don't look at revenues because, you know, we're we're a very big company, so we're not interested in talking revenue. We're talking about participation. Tennis courts are down 16%.
Ajay Pant:Tennis participation is up almost 27%. So tennis people are not going away or they're stopping. About 21% of our tennis player and our unique tennis players are give or take about 35,000 per month. 21% of them are also playing pickleball. But I don't have the specific data, but anecdotally, I don't know of anyone, unless there's an injury or age restriction, who has stopped playing tennis.
Ajay Pant:I can't think of anyone. I'm playing pickleball once a week, but I'm playing tennis three times. So that has been a big success for us. The pickleball, especially a lot of the leagues that we have and events, they are flooded with tennis players as well. They just you know, it's a fun sport.
Ajay Pant:I mean, a fun sport. It's a great exercise. It's just so social. So no, I think rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated in terms of pickleball will kill tennis or they can't co survive. I think that's just a lot of hyperbole.
Ajay Pant:Based on what we're seeing at Lifetime, I don't see any impact negatively for either one of them.
Simon Gale:So a quick follow-up on that, AJ, from a coaching point of view. Have you seen more pickleball specialists come in and and they're purely pickleball coaches? Or are you seeing tennis coaches add that certification and transition? What are you seeing in terms of coaching changes in behavior and where their time is spent?
Ajay Pant:Yeah. That's a pretty good question, Simon. Let me start by saying, tennis pros, sure, there are some. We're not talking out of, you know, 400 plus pros that we have. We're talking maybe tops, 50 tops.
Ajay Pant:They're actually also teaching pickleball in addition to their tennis duties, but they're not they're not stopping tennis. I don't know how to react to that because I thought it'd be a lot more, but it's not. Mainly, suspect because our tennis pros have such a full book of business that I don't know how much they can kind of go back and forth. However, in the world of pickleball, there is no shortage of well intentioned folks who wanna teach and or are pretty strong players. The dilemma and and we've we've figured it out by just doing our own internal certification.
Ajay Pant:It's, you know, three hours of prework, reassessment, nine hours of on court. That's why I'm in Houston doing the certification tomorrow and then another two hours of on court afterwards. So a lot of folks who are coming in into lifetime in the world of pickleball, very strong players, really good people, they are not as experienced in the world of coaching as tennis pros are, they just haven't done it. So once we get the training and they get the confidence, they're totally open, they're like sponges, you know, they're open and they'll do very well. But the nature of the business, it's just so new that there's not a lot of methodology with what's efficient coaching, what's effective coaching, what does coaching even mean?
Ajay Pant:Do people understand learning and teaching are two separate things? So we're pretty proud. We're doing this internally and so far the results have been superb. People really go, okay, I did not know all this simple stuff that you build power from the ground up. It's not from your shoulder.
Ajay Pant:Those kind of concepts though seem to really help.
Kim Bastable:I have a question for follow-up for that. It's just that early on I feel like in pickleball, there were it wasn't as complex a game. And there were a lot of people who wanted one lesson maybe to get the basics and know how to score, and then they are off and running and don't need more instruction. Do you see, since you see both sports so well, an equivalent amount of desire to learn, an equivalent amount of room for a tenant a pickleball pro to make a good living, or is there limited teaching opportunities in the sport overall?
Ajay Pant:Sure. So, so far what we're seeing, and we've been doing it for about two years, is the number of hours being taught is not even close to what we do in tennis. However, there are at least 30 people within our system who are teaching about thirty hours plus in pickleball. It's not the norm, but they are about thirty. Most right now would be in the fifteen to twenty range.
Ajay Pant:And Kim, to your point, what I'm finding out is to come in and start playing pickleball. We have our branded intro programs, and they're complimentary for our members. You can get in within a half an hour. You can rally, you can score, you're playing game. The and a lot of people just wanna do that.
Ajay Pant:They just wanna come in and play with their friends and, you know, do open play and and not do anything else. But for the ones who start to move into the $2.05 range and now wanna start competing in league, and we're about to start inter club leagues and travel teams, they then, no different than tennis, they want to do more. I am not finding a humongous market for private lessons. There is some, but for group situations, four or eight to two courts, that seems to be a much more prevalent theme because we're talking more about tactics and strategies as opposed to strictly mechanic.
Simon Gale:So A. J, with this shift into pickleball, and you were quite open about you didn't see it being what it is, how has it exceeded the expectations or what you thought or your ownership thought it would be versus where it actually is?
Ajay Pant:Yeah, well I mean, one of course, I was totally wrong. And more importantly, the results have been just humbling. Maybe that's the best way to put it. I certainly never thought this could even happen in Racquet Sport. So to give you some numbers, two years ago, our unique participation per month, two years ago was give or take about 6,000.
Ajay Pant:Now during our worst month, it's about 42,000 up to 50,000 in some other month. That's unique. The average pickleball player is playing about four times well, it's 3.5 times per month with us. They're they're repeats. They just keep going and keep going.
Ajay Pant:And obviously, you know, look, Lifetime is a humongous company. We have about a million plus memberships and these are not inexpensive. It's an expensive membership. So Pickleball, literally every month, we're adding more and more and more new members who and we can track it based on swipes and where you go, whose primary butt is pickleball. Of course, once they come in, love the spa, they love the tennis, they love the cafe, they love personal training.
Ajay Pant:But the drawing card when you're on the bubble is pickleball. And certainly in terms of revenues, which is not what we're measuring, which is not even it's participation and retention. But, you know, we've gone from doing 40,000 a month in revenue, and now, you know, give or take, it's 400,000, even 450,000 a month. It'll probably wind them going easily into the $1,000,000 range in the next year and a half. At the risk of being redundant, that is not what we're measuring.
Ajay Pant:That's not. It's the number of people playing and participating in leagues and lessons and clinics and things that Lifetime takes pride in that, you know, we have these offerings and it's not just open play.
Simon Gale:And so one of the the the maybe it's a myth that's out there or a label that I think is is not true at all is that, well, pickle players just want to play. They want to play for free. They don't want to spend money. It sounds like that's not the case at all and in some and I assume from a membership point of view, a membership's a membership, there's not a pickleball membership or a tennis membership, you are a member of Lifetime and there's no discount because I'm a pickleball player versus a tennis player.
Ajay Pant:You are correct on both counts. I mean, is look, the the notion that pickleball folks, you know, don't have deep pockets and they just wanna play. Look, this is no different than golfers telling three of us, you tennis people don't wanna spend money. You guys are cheapskates. I mean, this is just baloney.
Ajay Pant:I have not seen that. Certainly, there are some who enjoy social play, just open play. They enjoy it. But yeah, I mean, memberships are one memberships. And for those, if you have a product that is worth and it's valuable, whether it's a relationship with a coach, whether it's privates, whether it's groups, whether it's leagues, we're about to start a whole an entire subset with junior programming, again, age and stage based.
Ajay Pant:If there's a value proposition, no, no one minds paying. But if you and if the product is the same old, same old, I wouldn't pay either.
Kim Bastable:So so how are you maximizing this in regard to that crossover element? Since you're a tennis guy, I'm sure you're not gonna sit down and just sort of passively maybe be really all all in promoting just pickleball. So I'm curious. Do you have events where people come and do both, or you try to get one member out of a family on the tennis court, one playing pickleball? Have you ever done that?
Kim Bastable:Where are you with junior pickleball? Where how many socials a month do you have? How how is this just adding to programming, and how are you navigating that?
Ajay Pant:Yep. So two let me answer two separate ways. First off, in terms of what all this means to tennis, this doesn't mean Lifetime is not building more tennis courts. We are. So some of our new properties, and we're building maybe one new club a month right now, A lot of our new properties have tennis, whether it's indoors, outdoors, they also have pickleball, but we're certainly not in any shape or form walking away from tennis.
Ajay Pant:Mean, we're still building courts. The second part of your question came, the juniors, I'm proud to say this and I'm jumping a little bit ahead, but you both are the first to know. October 2, in partnership with Duper, we are going to launch the first lifetime junior play pathway powered by Duper and for all of us who respect coaching, there's going to be no more drills or clinics. It's all practices. We have the curriculum already done.
Ajay Pant:All practices. Every week there's going to be a non threatening duper format for round robin every week, every kid, every week. So you get used to saying, This is just fun. And then once a month there's a format, think Compass Drop, but it's being called Waterfall. That's being launched as well.
Ajay Pant:So this is We are already hosting, at no charge I might add, all of the collegiate pickleball regional and national championships at our clubs. This is not NC2A as yet. These are colleges either privately funding or funding kids to just go out there and play. We did one in Texas a couple of months ago with 106 kids. So we we are we are really proud that this is now taking Pickleball into yet another audience, which, you know, needs to be tapped, but no one's really done it because they I don't think people understand the nuances behind age and stage based.
Ajay Pant:So that to me as a coach is very exciting. I mean, is just gonna be one of those, and we have kids and more kids and more kids. Separately though, I have not as yet spent too much time doesn't mean we can't do it. I just haven't spent enough time on combining the two sports and trying to do stuff. The plan was to have squash, tennis, and pickleball, because many of our clubs have all three, to kind of do an Olympic style format, but I haven't quite gone there.
Ajay Pant:Now we have pickleball events, you know, about two per month at most clubs, and some of ours are national. We're doing our second annual Pickleball Fall Classic coming up. 81 clubs are participating, about 6,000 members are playing. So those are branded national ones. We're going to do a mixed trouble coming up in Valentine's Day, and that again is a national, every club, every so there's quite a bit of that.
Ajay Pant:They're very, very popular. And again, for us, it's not about making money, so they're quite inexpensive for members.
Simon Gale:So AJ, I want to pick up on something there because I've talked to you, I've been part of the evolution of 10 under tennis and the modifications and the implementation of Red Bull and the pathway and so on. And the whole point of that was to get people playing as soon as possible. But I think it's interesting to hear that in a pickleball space, you're basically gonna go with a play pathway, and I'm a big fan of this for tennis because I think we're way too instructional and we spend too much time teaching tennis, is if you can get them playing and get them hooked early, the motivation is created to then get better and I will take lessons, but we do it in reverse generally, we teach first play second. Do you see some crossover into your tennis pathway with this type of introduction? Is there any reason that couldn't be done at some point?
Ajay Pant:No, none. I mean, fact, categorically, probably speaking for both of us, Simon, talked about this ad nauseam. I don't want to make the same mistakes we made in tennis going back to the 1970s in this country. That's exactly why strategically we wanna get away from it. That's precisely the reason I wanna do it this way and not go back to the, you know, what we would call learn to play versus now.
Ajay Pant:You know? I mean, this is not my idea. It's been around for a long time. You play to learn. So this was very strategic that we're going to only go with practice.
Ajay Pant:And also we're going to change the mindset that if you miss a practice, no different than soccer. You miss it, you miss it. There's a commitment.
Simon Gale:Yeah, I think it's gonna be fascinating to hear the outcomes, and I'm sure knowing you, you will have data that will support the outcomes.
Ajay Pant:Oh yes.
Simon Gale:And I think that would be very interesting for the industry to hear how that pathway evolves over the next couple of years. So thanks for sharing.
Ajay Pant:You're welcome.
Kim Bastable:So what would you tell what's your advice? You've been through a very, you know, intense programming build, add pickleball to your to a lifetime. What do you tell the average club owner, club owner, director of Racquet Sports, how they can also, you know, make them maximize pickleball? I think some people see the phenomenon and build the courts and just think they'll automatically fill and sort of let it happen without intentionality. Where would you put the intentionality?
Kim Bastable:What what needs to happen to do this well from a director or leader perspective?
Ajay Pant:What what a neat question, Kim. If you don't have a very structured pathway, it's not gonna work. So you can't just say, well, I'm gonna offer private lessons and leagues and open play. And when we open this new court, it's not gonna work. So there has to be a very carefully thought through progression.
Ajay Pant:So as an example only, I'm not saying it would work for everyone, but for ours, if you are coming in and you haven't played, your first two lessons are branded by us as our intro program. You're going through that and there's no charge, so it's not about making money. Then we introduce you into open play in a very controlled setting, who you're playing with because we know our members and we can also use every lever we know, including artificial intelligence, to match people up. Then when you start doing that, we introduce you to socials. We're not pushing lessons in any shape or form.
Ajay Pant:All of these progression are mapped out and that is the SOP. I don't want to have people come into lifetime, or for that reason any responsible business, have a bad experience and stop playing. Again, I'm really keen and I'm a tennis guy. I don't want to repeat the mistakes we've made in the tennis industry. Like, get people playing.
Ajay Pant:Do not start pushing for lessons, it's not that hard. So if you don't have that, it's not gonna work. And two, be very, very thoughtful. The sports are here to stay, so you need to embrace them, and they will not take away from tennis if you do it right.
Kim Bastable:I'm curious what you mean when you say it's not going to work. So what do you mean by that? I mean, people will play on the courts, but I guess I would say is that all that we want?
Ajay Pant:Thank you for letting me clarify. When I say it's not going to work, to be more specific, if you just want, you know, the wild, wild, wild west where everyone's out there irrespective of level, ages and just banging pickleballs everywhere and no one's having fun. In fact, often that just leads to some really nasty, nasty situations. You've got a five o saying, I'm not gonna play with a two o and it just goes on and on and there's no retention. Well, if that's your model, then sure, that'll work.
Ajay Pant:That's not my version of work. I want people to come in, have multiple glorious experiences and wind up saying, oh, there's a whole pathway here. So I'm not I'm never threatened. I'm never in a position where I'm uncomfortable. They've got it scripted.
Ajay Pant:You know, what even if it's open play, what time is open play? Is it prime time? Is it early morning? What is the level? Can kids join open play or not?
Ajay Pant:Is it adults only? And then if I go into, well, we've got a mixer or a social event, how often do you do it? What's the theme? What's the level? If you haven't thought all this through, that's where I would say it's not gonna work long term or being sustainable.
Ajay Pant:Sure, you'll get people playing, but they're not
Simon Gale:gonna The stick the word I use a lot here is the customer journey. So what is their journey and and is it are we are we giving them a clear pathway when they first come in? And that sounds like what you're talking about is a clear pathway or a clear journey for them. And I've heard the word pathway multiple times, whether it's juniors or adults. So thanks for clarifying that because I think that's critical at any facility.
Simon Gale:I wanted to just start to wrap things up a little bit with, you've given a lot of insight in thirty minutes, so appreciate your level of detail. But what's the future for Lifetime? You've gone from just tennis and health facility to tennis and now pickleball. What else do you see coming down the pipe?
Ajay Pant:Well, it's hard to even keep track of how many things we keep introducing. Let me go first big picture. So as an example, right now, Lifetime has introduced the notion of dynamic stretching. It's not just stretching, it's very specific with qualified, certified people to stretch you before and after. Now, it's catching on like wildfire, but now we're tailoring that for Racquet Sports.
Ajay Pant:And this is not me, this is me, the consultant, but they're designing this curriculum. So now we have dynamic stretching including dynamic stretching for Racquet Sports. And as the guinea pig for this, the content is just rock solid. So that's another component. We certainly, even before COVID, we were looking into Paddell.
Ajay Pant:And I know Kim plays a lot. Marcus, for a lot of us, is a dear, dear friend. But with COVID and all the delivery and shipments, we have to put that on hold. But certainly, we're not going to shy away from saying we need to look at that. We need need to look at other Racquet Sport.
Ajay Pant:There's other businesses. You know, we've got 28 businesses. It's not just Racquet Sports. That's three of them. But, you know, we're already looking at, okay, what other businesses can we add?
Ajay Pant:So we've you know, there's a huge, huge movement right now with dynamic personal training. And again, I I'm not the expert at this stuff, but I can tell you what's happening is we've taken the traditional personal training model to now training all of our trainers on how you do things hand on. So if Kim is doing something with her shoulder, what kind of band can I use to increase or decrease her level of exertion and what she so it's very specialized? Now that's a whole different dimension. Squash, something as innocuous as the sport of squash, well, we're now using a modified ball that we're getting in from England to see if we can do squash for folks.
Ajay Pant:You know, I'm going to be 60 Sue, unlike you both who are young young people. But we're now finding with this different ball, it's easier on the knees for people like me who are trying to play squash. Well, this is all But if you're not doing this all the time every day, I just I think you're settling for less for your members. Plus, I mean, I'm speaking for three of us. You're also settling for less in the industry.
Kim Bastable:That's very exciting. Very good insight into some aspects that maybe many many facilities don't really have capacity to think about. I think it's great that you're on the forefront. You've got so many people that you can study this stuff with, what works, see what's beneficial. I mean, that's I remember when you told me that Lifetime changed its name from Lifetime Fitness to Lifetime, and you get in trouble if you call it Lifetime Fitness.
Kim Bastable:And, I mean, it does truly reflect, it sounds like Yes. A new a new model of of how you wanna impact people's lives, and those advancements say that. This wasn't a lifetime ad, but it seems like it's just a lot of good things happening. So we're we're pleased that we were able to spend some time with you today, AJ. You have provided great insights that I think we we in the Racquet's industry can benefit from.
Kim Bastable:Do you have any final thoughts, Simon?
Simon Gale:No. It was a lot to absorb. In thirty minutes, we could talk about it for days, I'm sure. But it's just fascinating and I think there's a consistent theme with these people we speak to about constant evolution and looking for what's next and how do you make something better and don't settle. It there's just a constant theme that I'm hearing and AJ reinforced that today over and over.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. And it's interesting. You I don't ever consider you to be resistant to innovation. So the fact that you the owner of Lifetime, you know, was a step ahead of you and and you were sort of going along, that that guy's pretty innovative, and, it's obviously paid off well. But I think as you said, we need to do it well.
Kim Bastable:We need to add it well. We need to not just build the courts and expect them to come. So very, very good information. So that's all we have for you today on Racquet Fuel. We're excited that we've had this time with AJ.
Kim Bastable:We wanna thank him for his time, and we'll see you next time.
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