- 6 weeks ago
Pickleball is exploding—and Australia is just getting started. In this episode of Sport’s Cutting Edge, we sit down with National Pickleball League founder Ron Shell to unpack how pickleball is becoming a cultural and commercial force.
From his high-powered sports business career in the USA, to building a start-up league from scratch, the 35 year-old Australian shares why pickleball stood out as a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Shell reveals how accessibility, low infrastructure costs, and a massive untapped audience are driving rapid growth—and why the real strategy isn’t just building a pro league, but growing participation from the ground up.
We dive into the challenges of breaking into a crowded sports market, the importance of platforms like Dailymotion for reaching new fans, and how branding, Instagram, and real-world activations are shaping pickleball’sidentity.
From his high-powered sports business career in the USA, to building a start-up league from scratch, the 35 year-old Australian shares why pickleball stood out as a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Shell reveals how accessibility, low infrastructure costs, and a massive untapped audience are driving rapid growth—and why the real strategy isn’t just building a pro league, but growing participation from the ground up.
We dive into the challenges of breaking into a crowded sports market, the importance of platforms like Dailymotion for reaching new fans, and how branding, Instagram, and real-world activations are shaping pickleball’sidentity.
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SportsTranscript
00:02Hello and welcome to Sports Cutting Edge for the Australian Sports Technologies Network,
00:06powering sport through innovation.
00:07We are here all thanks to Dailymotion, Dailymotion Pro.
00:12What a magnificent product it is that is used by our guest here today.
00:15We're talking about the hottest sport in the world right now, the number one growing sport
00:20in Australia.
00:20It is pickleball.
00:22And we have the founder of the National Pickleball League, Ron Schell.
00:25Welcome aboard.
00:26Ron, thank you so much for your time.
00:27Thanks for having me.
00:28Really excited to be here, chat to you, and talk about this sport.
00:32Mate, now I do mention Dailymotion because, well, they're friends of both of ours now
00:36because JB and the team have been sponsoring us for about six months
00:40and we do love that support, JB.
00:42Dailymotion.
00:43Now, Ron, actually, you know, we'll play higher and lower.
00:45So Dailymotion, streaming content, being able to access your fans
00:50and monetise your fans is what they allow a beautiful sport like yours to do.
00:55Yes.
00:56Dailymotion, international company, have a huge monthly audience.
01:01Like, how many active users would you say they have per month?
01:05We're going to play higher and lower.
01:06Jeez, that's a great question.
01:07What do you reckon?
01:08I mean, there's 7 billion people in the world.
01:10Yeah, so this is a global question?
01:11This is a global question.
01:1710 million.
01:18I'm glad you didn't go too high.
01:20Higher, Ron.
01:21Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:2315 million.
01:24Much higher, Ron.
01:25Okay, 150 million.
01:27Double that and go a little bit higher.
01:30450 million.
01:31400 million active users every month is what Dailymotion has.
01:36There you go.
01:36400 million active users every single month.
01:39Yeah, that is crazy.
01:40So that's the thing.
01:41So you, as a sport that's growing and emerging, is able to access 400 million active users every single month.
01:48And, Ron, I mean, we're going to talk a lot about your personal journey and the journey of your sport.
01:54But, just off the top, like, the difficulty of accessing an audience when you're not the AFL, the NRL, cricket
02:02or tennis in a country like Australia, where those sports dominate.
02:05In America, obviously, the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, ice hockey as well.
02:10The use of a platform like Dailymotion, how crucial is it for you to be able to reach fans?
02:15Yeah, I think it's really crucial, mainly because, yeah, as you said, we have such a lower, at this stage,
02:22fan, you know, viewer base, let's call it, than traditional sports, which is super normal when you've just started.
02:29We're up to, you know, even just our third year of professional pickleball.
02:32And it's not about just running more events.
02:34It's actually convincing people that the sports they've known for the last 50 or 100 years go and actually give
02:40up some of that time or some of your other spare time to now engage with something you've just heard
02:45about or just played for the first time.
02:47So we've really got this journey here where it's not about necessarily converting people to super engaged fans immediately.
02:53It's like getting them, hey, just watch it once, just watch it twice.
02:57And it's really hard to do that.
02:58And so that's where Dailymotion can help.
03:01And we're going to invest a lot more time this year.
03:03We did only a few tests last year.
03:04But even if we can get people just sparking interest and going, what is that?
03:09Oh, the National Pickleball League.
03:10Oh, I heard about pickleball.
03:11I've read about it in some articles.
03:12I might just watch a bit.
03:14That's a great start for us.
03:15It's not going to be a click of the fingers.
03:18But it's hard to find how you're going to get people, you know, how you're going to increase your viewership
03:22without tapping into existing networks.
03:25Because I could yell and scream from the rooftops that we're running an event and it wouldn't really increase things
03:32that much because people don't know about pickleball.
03:34They're not used to engaging with it.
03:35It's not in the Australian culture of sport.
03:38Like you didn't grow up with it.
03:39You didn't know about it.
03:40There isn't this long history.
03:42So it is about trying these different things, tapping into existing sort of audiences.
03:46And that's where we're going to invest some good time with Daily Motion this year.
03:50Yeah, gotcha.
03:51The first time I came across pickleball was living in New York and it really started to blow up a
03:56couple of years ago.
03:57In terms of being personally involved, though, I had the great honour last year, 2025, hosting the inaugural AO Pickleball
04:05Slam at the Australian Open.
04:07And we used Show Court 3 and it was absolutely magnificent, like a mini coliseum.
04:12It was the first time I've been up close with the sport.
04:15And I just loved it.
04:16It is infectious, the energy you get in that sport and the sense of fun.
04:20But the other thing that really got me as well, the professionalism of the sport.
04:25Caroline Dunham, who was a superstar French tennis player on the big court back in the day, competed at the
04:31Australian Open back in the year 2000, 2001, then came back and competed at the AO Pickleball Slam.
04:37So obviously she had this great career in her 20s playing, you know, big court tennis.
04:41And then now, 20 years on, 25 years on, being able to play pickleball.
04:46Then you get the young kids that are involved.
04:49A very good mate of mine, Corey Mostran, who's a wheelchair athlete, plays pickleball up in Brisbane.
04:53So literally everyone can be involved.
04:57What about for you, Ron?
04:58Like, I know you were living in the United States of America.
05:01Tell us, what was your first interaction with pickleball?
05:04Yeah, it's a great question.
05:06So I was living in Denver, still working at my existing company, PointsBet, the sports betting platform that was in
05:13Australia and the US.
05:14And I remember it was March 2022, I started to get asked to play pickleball.
05:19And I was actually, funnily enough, I mean, now considering the role, I mean, I was one of those people
05:23that kept turning it down.
05:25Well, firstly, it didn't sound like a real sport.
05:28Secondly, I had enough sports.
05:29I'm a sports fanatic.
05:30I'm like, I don't need another sport, sort of, you know, it's got a silly name, which is something we're
05:34always working against.
05:36And then thirdly, I was like, yeah, okay.
05:38And then it took six months to convince me to even play.
05:41And I remember I played in August that year.
05:43So literally five or six months after I first got asked.
05:46And the thing, it didn't stand out to me at the time because I wasn't yet thinking about new businesses
05:51and new opportunities.
05:52But when I did go back and start to think about it, the people I played pickleball with weren't the
05:56people I would normally talk about sport with.
05:59So, you know, the people I talk NBA or NFL living in America, they were people that didn't really care
06:03about sport, but they seemed to talk about pickleball and they seemed to really enjoy it and they were really
06:09into it.
06:09And so it sort of clicked in my brain that there's maybe this sport here that actually is not only
06:14for people who like sport, but maybe people who haven't found a sport throughout their earlier stages of life because
06:22it's such an accessible sport.
06:23And so, yeah, I played a few times in the States, but then when moving back home, eventually just remembered
06:29to look into a bunch of different things that were happening in the US and one of them was pickleball.
06:35And it was trying to understand how, because the sport was invented in 1965, but really it only rose to
06:42prominence since COVID.
06:44And the main reason for that was that people were coming back and looking for something social and to interact
06:49with other human beings and do some wellness.
06:51But also some very smart people started to invest in dedicated infrastructure.
06:57So previously pickleball was only played largely as a retirement feeling sport or as a niche sport in multi-purpose
07:04sport facilities, shared lines, et cetera.
07:07And then they started to make content that was really attracting a younger audience that was built for social media
07:13and two pretty simple things on paper.
07:16But that's what started to drive this sport going from two or three million players to in the US, there's
07:22reports of up to 50 million players now, you know, which is a ridiculous number.
07:26It's one of the most participated sports now in the US.
07:28But really it was like dedicated infrastructure to make the sport credible and then make it younger because it was
07:34always 60, 70-year-olds for such a long time.
07:37Yeah.
07:37And that's where I was exposed to it for the first time.
07:40And that's the other thing that really got me, I'll be honest with you, is it sort of feels like
07:43from every walk of life you have a home with playing pickleball.
07:47There was a bloke that came over, world champion Tyson McGuffin, and he competed at the AO Pickleball Slam.
07:52One of the coolest dudes you could ever meet in your life, like a real sort of surfer dude sort
07:57of vibe.
07:57And so you've got sort of that surfer, skatey sort of vibe, but then also you've got kids.
08:03You've got, as you say, people that are retirement, accessibility.
08:06So it's really something for everyone.
08:09Okay.
08:10And you know what, actually, I find it very emblematic that you, 35-year-old high achiever, is the one
08:15that's driving the pickleball cause in this country.
08:18Now, I want to reflect on that, put some meat on the bones.
08:20So you go to high school, Melbourne high, very prestigious, and to school, we could do higher and lower, but
08:26it would take too long, 99.15.
08:28So in the top 1% of all people in Australia in the year that you graduated.
08:32You go to Melbourne University, which is the top 20 universities in the world, up there with the likes of
08:38Oxford and Cambridge and MIT and Harvard.
08:40So you're going to that uni.
08:41You do the undergraduate.
08:43Then you do a Master's of Finance at Melbourne University.
08:45Then you go do another Master's Boston College.
08:48You start working with Tom Waterhouse back in the day, a accountant with Ernst & Young.
08:52Then you go to the United States of America with PointsBet.
08:55You're based in New York City.
08:57Then you go to Denver.
08:58So you've achieved so much.
08:59And at that stage, in the first 30 or so years of your life, you move back to Australia.
09:04And as a young man, you decide pickleball is what I want to do.
09:07And you're the one leading the charge in this country.
09:10It's amazing.
09:10You've always been a high achiever.
09:13However, why was it that you looked at pickleball from a business point?
09:17You're not just, oh, this is fun.
09:18Obviously, you're not going to devote your personal resources into something you don't think you can win at.
09:23Yeah.
09:23So why is pickleball, from a business standpoint, why does it have so much blue sky?
09:28It was a great little summary you gave of my life there.
09:31We could record that, feed it into AI, and you've got a memoirs.
09:34But I appreciate it.
09:36No, look, it's interesting.
09:38I actually looked into many things.
09:40Like, I think a lot of expats, let's call them, you move, let's say you lived in America, Europe, or
09:45wherever, and you move back to Australia.
09:46Like, a lot of people do this where you're like, oh, there was such a good idea there.
09:50Can I do it in Australia?
09:51That's a common thing.
09:52But I actually remember, funnily enough, we looked into paddle and pickleball equally.
09:57Interesting.
09:57So paddle's the other fastest growing racket sport in the world, more popular in Europe and South America, while pickleball
10:03is more North America.
10:04Now Asia's just absolutely exploding and Oceania.
10:08And actually, almost lean towards paddle originally because there were only 20 courts in Australia at the time.
10:15However, once we were sort of comparing them, and I was looking at a few other things, I think the
10:20key thing for me was I do love sport.
10:22So if I could stay in sport, that'd be great.
10:24It wasn't 100% a prerequisite.
10:26And then I do like emerging things or things that are new and starting up.
10:33But looking at both of them, the thing that swung pickleball ahead of paddle as a commercial opportunity, at least
10:39in my mind, was that two things.
10:41One is pickleball was more accessible.
10:43So you've got tennis being the hardest racket sport, paddle probably in the middle, and then pickleball right at the
10:48bottom.
10:49So that's number one.
10:50So in my mind, you opened up a world where you actually had a theoretical target market of everyone.
10:55And that also means from a marketing standpoint, you have a theoretical target of every brand that could theoretically be
11:01associated with pickleball.
11:03The second one was upfront and capital costs associated with pickleball versus paddle.
11:07Paddle courts cost about $100,000.
11:10Pickleball courts cost between $10,000 to $20,000, depending on whether you're doing certain different solutions.
11:15So less upfront costs, larger market.
11:19And so that was the main reason.
11:22And then I thought, like, looking at what happened in the U.S., you know, you've got Australia and the
11:26U.S.
11:26We do mimic a lot of things, whether it's pop culture or sport.
11:30You know, we follow along in the footsteps.
11:32And just looking at that success in the U.S. and the blueprint there and having lived there, it wasn't
11:37a huge jump to try to take those things to Australia,
11:40especially with my marketing background and the other founder, one of the other founders is, our head of brand is
11:46this brilliant marketer, Eben.
11:48We used to work together at PointsBet.
11:50I thought that the opportunity wasn't just pickleball in Australia.
11:54It was, can we be the brand?
11:56So everyone's investing in property and equipment in pickleball and leagues like us.
12:01And our name suggests we're a league, but this exercise for NPL was always, let's say we're a league, that's
12:08our credibility piece,
12:09but how do we own the subculture of the sport?
12:12Because to me, that's where, if you can be associated with every part of the sport, where someone's like, oh,
12:17I saw that court.
12:18Is that NPL court?
12:21Oh, I went to a pickleball event.
12:23Was that a national pickleball league event?
12:25Oh, I'm proud to wear, you know, NPL merchandise.
12:28I'm proud to be associated with it.
12:29But that, to me, was the opportunity that is unique long-term because a lot of people like me, which
12:35we've started to see,
12:36have started to realise there's an amazing commercial opportunity in pickleball.
12:40So how do you stand out there?
12:42But, yeah, that was the thought.
12:44As you said, I wouldn't invest personal time if I didn't think there was a huge opportunity.
12:48But like anything, you don't know exactly what the opportunity is until you start testing and iterating.
12:53And I remember the first thing we did was we actually ran a learn-to-play session in Melbourne at
12:58a place called Welcome to Thornbury.
12:59Yeah.
13:00Which is a little bar that has food trucks outside.
13:03And we convinced them through friends to move the food trucks.
13:06And we lined up this court with tape.
13:08There were about 200 people that came.
13:10And their first question was, where can we play?
13:13Yeah.
13:14And I remember, like, the answer was just so underwhelming.
13:18It was like, oh, there's a few places, but you can only play Wednesday at 5 p.m.
13:22Or Sunday at 2 p.m.
13:23Because, again, it was shared with other town halls or sports stadiums.
13:29It wasn't, you know.
13:30And then immediately you could tell, like, oh, the reaction was, like, this is, it's not a sport then if
13:35you can't just go and play it 24-7.
13:38So we switched gears where we were like, let's still explore this league or this national pickleball league.
13:44But why don't we actually try to test out whether this sport will work, you know, via property?
13:48So, but, yeah, the whole reason and impetus of looking into it was really you already had a proof point
13:54in America of success.
13:57And then we had a team of founders where I'm like, we could be marketing and operations specialists.
14:02And all the marketing that was done in Australia to date when we entered was, again, 70-year-old grainy
14:07photos, all shared property and mixed line and mixed sports venues.
14:13And so we thought, hey, if we enter as a brand that modernises the sport, maybe we'll really have a
14:19chance, you know, over the next few years to own the sport.
14:22And you created the venue, The Jar in South Melbourne, the number one in Australia, in my opinion.
14:27So you've got that going.
14:29You've got the venue.
14:30One thing that's really interesting you mentioned there, and obviously you worked in the United States of America where, you
14:34know, content is king and to be able to market and reach the consumer when there is so much competition
14:40in that market.
14:41To have been able to achieve what you've done there, obviously you can do it here, no question.
14:45So how do you reach the market?
14:47Because what I noticed with the AO pickleball slam that I did is we had a hit after the comp
14:52ended on the first night.
14:53The comp went for three days.
14:55A few of us working on it went and had a hit afterwards, and it was legitimately so much fun.
15:00It's deceptive.
15:01The 12-year-old kid inside of you just has a ball.
15:04So I feel like the minute someone actually picks up and has a go, I feel like you got them.
15:09But how do you reach them in the first place?
15:11How have you gone about creating that sort of authentic reach to the consumer?
15:15What's the tactic?
15:16Yeah, so it's a hard one.
15:17But we've actually focused probably much our first two years purely via Instagram, if I'm honest.
15:24Mainly because the type of consumer we're trying to reach is that millennial.
15:28And typically we're actually trying to go for a female millennial.
15:31And if we can get them, then for us, we think we can get everyone.
15:35Because if they're posting about it, sharing on their social media, usually it will be some sort of brand or
15:42clothing brand or merchandise or fashion or fitness.
15:48If you can get them getting excited about pickleball, it sort of does your marketing for you because they start
15:54to spread it.
15:54And so we thought that's our platform.
15:57Let's build a really premium, cool brand there.
16:00And I think this is the difficult part is to build a premium brand that doesn't alienate anyone.
16:07Because it's an inclusive sport, so you never want to lose that.
16:10Because normally if you're a luxury brand or premium brand, then you're just for a certain group of people.
16:14We want it to be that.
16:16But then it's for everyone.
16:18It's aspirational.
16:19In the jar, we have kids.
16:21We've got master's programs.
16:23Everyone, we accept everyone.
16:24But we do focus on how do we make it younger, cooler.
16:27So people are proud of it.
16:28Because one of the things we found even with tennis players coming over to pickleball, there was a stigma attached.
16:34The name doesn't sound like a proper sport.
16:36It's like a mini tennis.
16:38How do we, not overnight, but how do we slowly change that?
16:42And so for us, Instagram was that platform.
16:44And so we built it all in-house internally.
16:47We're up to now, I think, 19,000 followers from obviously zero two years ago.
16:53And really just built a content plan that could be around something that people would feel aspirational and they would
17:01share.
17:02And a lot of that is also collaborating with existing brands or events that aren't pickleball related.
17:06And I think that's an area we knew we had to do is that everyone thinks, you know, once you're
17:11in a sport, just do and put on more events that are related to that sport.
17:15We know we have to do that.
17:16That's the core of our business.
17:17But how do we get another 5,000 or 10,000 people knowing about pickleball?
17:20You've got to tap into things that already exist and brands that already have megaphones and that already have that
17:25young audience that we're looking at.
17:27So, yeah, that's how we started.
17:29We're now going to be transitioning to really pushing our website as an information hub in Australia in general for
17:36pickleball.
17:36And so I have a really good link there between our Instagram and pickleball.
17:40But funnily enough, you know, being this young brand, we haven't tapped into TikTok yet more from a resources and
17:45time point of view.
17:46But that has been how we've engaged.
17:49And then really brand partnerships as well.
17:53And things like, you know, Tennis Australia and the AO Pickleball Slam and, you know, doing things like activations of
17:59the Grand Prix, which we just did.
18:01We put two courts there.
18:02Like no one else is doing that.
18:03And I realise why.
18:04They're hard work.
18:05You turn into an events company.
18:07No one really enjoys it.
18:08But that's how you get the name out there.
18:11And so for us, that's how we talk to people is Instagram and brand collaborations.
18:16And that's only going to snowball as the sport gets bigger and more people are playing.
18:20Well, yeah, I saw online actually you blew up at the Formula 1 Grand Prix.
18:24And that's great.
18:24You know, you're giving people that ability to sample the product and then fall in love with it.
18:29So, okay.
18:30So target audience is the female millennial.
18:32Yeah.
18:33So how much – how would you describe the way that you're selling the culture?
18:37How would you describe it?
18:38In the sense that, you know, like with Nike – I drove past an ad on the way here actually
18:41for Nike.
18:42Like how many people are buying Nike for the shoes and how many are buying for the culture?
18:47Just do it.
18:47The aspirational, the cool, the chic, Michael Jordan and everyone that's endorsed it ever since.
18:52So how much about pickleball is selling it for the actual physical sport and how much is that culture?
18:58And within that, how would you summarise the culture?
19:01Yeah.
19:01What is it?
19:02Well, it's funny.
19:05I think there's good parts of the culture, if I'm honest, and I think there's some more negative parts of
19:10the culture as well, having been in the industry now, you know, for two, three years, three and a half
19:16years.
19:17But the underlying culture of pickleball is that, you know, it's this amazing community sport.
19:24Like I've met so many – like this is what you hear from people.
19:26I meet so many people playing pickleball.
19:28I've made so many new friends.
19:30I am more active than I've ever been.
19:32That is the – that's the core of the culture that everyone taps into, which is true.
19:35And that is still the core of what we're trying to do as well.
19:39Then there's this other underlying core, which is an interesting one for us to work through, which is that people
19:43who – like the sport was – you know, people were playing the sport in Australia in 2012.
19:47Very small amount of people.
19:48Yeah.
19:48People in America 30, 40 years ago, there's almost like this protective nature of people that were there first, which
19:55happens especially with, let's call it niche or new sports, where it's like, you know, we've sort of had to
20:00deal with this.
20:00We're coming in.
20:01We want to modernise.
20:03We want to bring all these people into the game.
20:04People say they love that, but then some of their actions and opinions are like, no, we sort of loved
20:09it when it was just us.
20:11And so just working through that and being like, cool, well, we respect that, and we are never going to,
20:15you know, ignore, you know, who came first and all of those things.
20:19But we do want to bring millions of people into the sport, and we're not, you know, ashamed of that.
20:24Then for us, to working, you know, when you mention Nike is such an aspirational thing for us.
20:29We're, you know, years, potentially decades away from that.
20:32But you've got that core of being wellbeing community friendly.
20:36How do we add to that with, oh, it's also cool and can associate with cool events, and it's something
20:43that I might replace the bar, going to the bar and catching up with, you know, my friends with, or
20:48I might do my birthday party there, or my brand should do a product launch with a pickleball cord, or
20:55I should, you know, do all it.
20:57Like, that's where NPL is trying to be different, is everyone's tapping into, as we are, that community focus, the
21:03wellbeing focus, the friends and everyone can play focus.
21:06And then we're going, like, and then how do you make it that next level of special, where it can
21:10actually compete with other social parts of your life that you're really proud of.
21:15Next level of special.
21:16I like that, Rom.
21:1799.15.
21:19It doesn't mean much, yeah.
21:20Oh, my.
21:21Well, impressive.
21:22Top 1%.
21:23It's funny you say that about, like, replacing the bar, potentially.
21:28A friend of mine works, he's got a significant role working alcohol in Australia, essentially.
21:32And he said the amount of people under 25 that are not consuming alcohol is very worrying for his business.
21:37That is a big thing.
21:39Younger people are more about whether it's mental, spiritual, physical wellbeing.
21:44If you can tap into young people that don't want to go to a bar and drink, but they can
21:47play pickleball and have that social inclusion, that friendship, a societal thing.
21:51I mean, that sounds like an audience that's ripe.
21:55Absolutely.
21:55And that's, you know, and we're not trying to go head on or anything with the bar, but we have
21:59liquor license at our venue and we've done, you know, we've got South Ave, which is a Zelta brand, is
22:05our official Zelta and RTD Vodka.
22:07We've got Squealing Pig Wines as a sponsor.
22:10But we sort of tap it into, it can be that fun social thing where you do have a few
22:14drinks.
22:15And we've done, like I said, these brand collaborations that have involved drinks.
22:19We do corporate stuff that is off the chains.
22:22Like we've run 630 corporate events in two years at the JAR.
22:26And that ranges from 10 people through to 120 people.
22:29We have companies coming back for their 15th time.
22:32Different departments.
22:33It's all word of mouth as well because you've got an event where people who really don't like sport or
22:37don't like being forced to play sport can actually enjoy it.
22:40And then have a champagne or have a Zelta or have a, you know, alcohol-free drink.
22:45And, yeah, I think for us it's more giving that option.
22:50It's more like not, you know, we don't even advertise like publicly that we're a bar or anything.
22:55We just happen to have drinks.
22:56Yeah.
22:57But it's sort of that, like as in we are happy to try find that intersection there between socializing and
23:04playing sport that might involve, you know, a couple of beverages and might involve music and might involve different events.
23:11And we feel if you can do that, eventually you can create a bit of a movement where, you know,
23:16I do see in the future pickleball courts are just at events, whether they are at the Grand Prix or
23:21they are at music festivals.
23:23They're just like an easy, the easiest possible engagement tool that doesn't need to relate directly to what the event
23:29is.
23:29They might be at weddings, engagement plays.
23:32We've had people ask to set them up at, you know, their 30th, 40th, et cetera.
23:36I see that being more of a trend than, you know, even household pickleball courts as the sport grows.
23:41And, I mean, the numbers are astronomical.
23:44You alluded to it before, about 900 million participants throughout Asia.
23:49Yeah.
23:49As you say, 50 million in America, 20 million of those playing weekly.
23:53Yeah.
23:53I mean, it's basically the population of Australia playing it weekly.
23:56In Australia, about 35,000 registered members, and those numbers could be well increasing since I did the research because
24:02it is growing rapidly, about 100,000 players.
24:06The sport globally valued at about $2.5 billion US and expected to reach about $6 billion by 2030.
24:12So growing at 15% annually.
24:14So really good growth there.
24:16How do you take it now?
24:17So what's your strategy in terms of where you are right now, Ron, over the next five to 10 years?
24:22In terms of putting some meat on the bones, where do you take it and how do you get there?
24:27Yeah.
24:27So, look, Australia is a different beast in that we just don't have the population or the ability to move
24:31as quickly as places like Asia and the US.
24:33But, yeah, the latest numbers are about 150,000 participants.
24:38And our aim has been pretty public that we want to get to a million as soon as possible because
24:41then that really does turn it into – that's the same as tennis players and other sort of key sports.
24:46But how you get there is very flipped on the head from traditional sport.
24:50It is all about the bottom of the funnel.
24:52So we are going to continue to invest.
24:54We've got our league running for the first time for a full-length season this year and it's our fifth
24:58iteration of the league.
24:59But we're very realistic in that it is improving.
25:02There are more people watching.
25:04But to actually get people interested in the league, it's not about the league jumping from being what it is
25:10to the best thing since sliced bread.
25:11It's how do you just get way more people playing the sport?
25:14Because when they do, they love it.
25:16And then it's just how many percentage of those people actually enjoy the sport enough to watch it professionally because
25:22they're so invested in it.
25:23So our vision for pickleball is focus on property as a main thing, focus on marketing the sport and growing
25:31the sport.
25:32And then, you know, we also have this separate technology sort of focus where you still need to power the
25:37sport in a way that can, again, grow it and make people excited about playing because they can track their
25:43results.
25:43And they can see how they play when they travel to Vietnam or Malaysia or America, how it compares to
25:49Australia and so on.
25:50So grow that bottom of the funnel and then worry about how many of those people care about the pro
25:56league later.
25:57It's more of an organic build as opposed to going, let's invest millions into making this huge thing where we
26:03don't think you can just grow overnight into something that's super popular.
26:07But it's proven to be this incredible participation sport.
26:11So that's how we've sort of looked at it.
26:14That's our next five to ten years is infrastructure, you know, marketing and partnerships and technology while continuing each year
26:21to improve the league and grow the league, you know, 30%, 50%.
26:24So it continues to become an aspirational product eventually for people growing up and wanting to choose what their next
26:31sport is.
26:32Bottom of the funnel sounds so smart.
26:34It's funny enough, I started watching last night, I don't know if you've seen it, the Ken Burns documentary on
26:38baseball, like the history of baseball.
26:40And it spoke about how, you know, as early as 1848, there was this quote that there was a group
26:46of kids in a park in Brooklyn playing bass.
26:49They just called it bass and what ended up becoming Major League Baseball.
26:53But it was that.
26:54It was the cultivation of a sport, the fun at the grassroots.
26:56Over 50 years, eventually, I turned into Major League Baseball and now it is what it is.
27:00So it sounds like you're absolutely on the right track in terms of that.
27:03From a tech point of view, tell us a little bit about the tech build out and what you're working
27:07on there.
27:08Yeah.
27:08So we, as we got into the sport, we started to do so many different aspects of it.
27:13So we weren't just running our, you know, tournaments, which were traditional.
27:17We started to create the new format for our league, which is the team's league that had never been done
27:22before.
27:22Then we started to run corporate events and we started to run these activations.
27:26And we were trying all the software that was out there and we just weren't, I mean, the opposite of
27:31blown away.
27:32It was quite archaic software in the racket sport world.
27:35It's not customisable.
27:37It was built 10, 15 years ago.
27:38And we just thought that it's just so far behind what is such a rapidly growing sport.
27:44There were some aspects of some softwares which were good and some bad, but you couldn't customise it.
27:48And with these sports like pickleball and paddle, they are growing really quickly and there's different formats that come out
27:55each day and there's different ways to play it.
27:57And so we thought, how do we maybe tap into the fact that we are the ultimate end user?
28:03And why don't we just build something for us?
28:05And at the very worst, we've solved an operational burden of being able to run our league and tournaments on
28:11it.
28:11But at the very best case, we could turn this into a tech platform that people would, you know, want
28:18to buy and to have themselves.
28:20Because essentially, we're trying to solve the same problems that all these pickleball venues and operators and organisers are around
28:28the world.
28:28They want to run sessions ranging from just beginner doubles, round robins, or king and queen of the court, moving
28:34up and down through to a team's social league where you've come up with a new format that has 10
28:39people in it and singles and doubles and mixed.
28:42And then you just want to run a 500-person tournament or you want to then, yeah, run another session
28:47the next day or whatever it is.
28:48And we thought, hey, we are in a place where we could potentially build something like that.
28:53It's not the core of our business, so we can build it properly.
28:56And then we have NPL to leverage, who is, you know, now one of the bigger organisations in the world
29:02of pickleball.
29:03We joined this global pickleball alliance in October last year that has Vietnam, America, England, India, et cetera.
29:10And so we actually have a voice now and then this Tennis Australia partnership.
29:13And so it went from, hey, we raised some of the money that we raised, went to property, went to
29:19the league and some to tech, to then we actually spun off the tech business in July last year.
29:23Now it's its own entity, largely still owned by NPL, but its own investor group, its own company.
29:29And that's actually going live, a soft launch next week.
29:32So we're going to start taking international customers on a slow basis to begin.
29:37But over the next few months, we're really going to ramp it up and we're going to go head to
29:40head and toe to toe with some of the bigger platforms that are running in racket sports.
29:45And it won't just be for pickleball.
29:46It will be for paddle as well and eventually for tennis.
29:49And we're going to try to take over the racket sports industry here in Australia as well with our partnership
29:55with Tennis Australia.
29:57Tell us about that.
29:58Rob O'Gorman does a wonderful job at Tennis Australia.
30:01And I just find it such a beautiful thing because actually at that pickleball slam over the back of where
30:06we were, they were running a paddle competition as well at the AO25.
30:10So I think the idea of like broad church, bring everyone together and be able to have that extrapolation across
30:17those three sports is huge.
30:18Tell us about what you're doing with Tennis Australia.
30:21Yeah, so look, that was two years in the making.
30:24I think Tennis Australia had like a lot of, you know, internal politics, let's call it, to work out how
30:28they're going to weave in pickleball when they already, you know, tennis is clear number one.
30:34They did take over paddle as the governing body a few years ago.
30:37And, you know, pickleball was seen as a bit of a threat.
30:40But I think they realised really over the last year that, you know, they ran the Australian Pickleball Slam, which
30:45you were involved with, which was really their first big dip into that water.
30:50And that, hey, if they don't involve themselves in this sport, it's going to take over courts and do it
30:56anyway, maybe without their control, without them understanding the participation in the data.
31:01So they thought, why don't we actually get involved in a way where we still prioritise tennis, but we do
31:07have some skin in the game in pickleball and we are trying to make it work within the existing sort
31:12of venues.
31:13And that's where our conversations finally got to over the last two years to culminating in us being announced as
31:19the official pickleball growth partner for Tennis Australia.
31:22And really that was, there was a framework around leagues and tournaments, property, events and marketing and tech.
31:28Like, where are they going to play? Where are we going to play? Where are we going to play together?
31:31And that's the whole partnership. And it's great because we get to, you know, leverage that we are working with
31:37the largest racket sports company in Australia and use that credibility.
31:41And they get to leverage the fact that we're doing all, a lot of the grunt work to go pickleball.
31:45And it is like a bit of a mutual thing like that. And that's how we're working together.
31:49And in a way, we're working on some of their existing properties and things like that, where they're like, hey,
31:55no, this is tennis only.
31:56But yeah, these ones could really add pickleball to it and expand because there's some unused tennis courts.
32:02We might create a community series together. There's a bunch of things that we'll look to do.
32:06But it's going to be, I think, a really fruitful partnership.
32:08And it also taps us into their AO Startups sort of incubator as well, which, you know, has a lot
32:14of crossover with the tech stuff that we're doing that we just spoke about.
32:18So we're excited. It's only, you know, a few months into that partnership.
32:21And hopefully that's, you know, pretty much just a long-term locked-in thing where we're working side-by-side
32:26instead of, you know, having too many friction points.
32:29And, mate, it's such a huge win for you to get that partnership and to be elevated as the premier
32:35pickleball option in this country.
32:37And it is interesting because you are at that embryonic stage of your sport.
32:40And even you look at American football, how, I mean, now the two conferences, the NFC and the AFC, originally
32:46they were two separate leagues of American football, the NFL and the AFL.
32:50Same with Aussie Rules football.
32:52The VFA then spun off into the VFL when the big clubs like Collingwood and Essendon came together.
32:58Essendon winning the first of those VFL premierships in 1897.
33:01First time they didn't play a grand final that year, actually.
33:04It was just whoever finished on top of the ladder back in 1897.
33:06In any case, the point being that, you know, there's a lot of competition when there's a new sport to
33:11become the premier product of that sport.
33:13The fact that you've now essentially got that mantle with the partnership with Tennis Australia, how much validation did that
33:20give you?
33:20Because, I mean, as I said, I mean, it is important to point out you are a high achiever and
33:24it's something to bloody proud of.
33:25So, obviously, if you're going to dedicate yourself at, you know, you've gone from sports betting, which is a guaranteed
33:30winner, to something where it's not a guarantee when you came in at pickleball.
33:33So, to invest in it, to throw everything, all your IP, not to mention your coin into it as well,
33:39and to get that recognition by Tennis Australia as the premier product, it must feel amazing.
33:44It does, yeah.
33:45Look, and there's no silver bullet.
33:47There's a long way to go to achieve what we want to do.
33:49But you've got to get these credibility touch points along the way.
33:53Because otherwise, you know, you're just the only one saying how good you are, you know.
33:58And that's great, and we always believed in the product, but you need to have other people sort of backing
34:03that up, whether that is through partnerships and sponsorships or strategic partners like Tennis Australia or this global pickleball alliance.
34:10You do need those things.
34:12Whether they're vanity or not, it doesn't matter because they are treated in a way that's like, oh, cool, well,
34:18that makes sense now, all the stuff that you've been doing, and it's leading towards this.
34:22And it's not just you guys working completely separate to everyone and hoping for the best, which is how every
34:28start-up is to begin.
34:30Now, there's still a long way to go here in Australia because the sports, as you said, it's in the
34:34embryonic phase.
34:35There isn't the clear pathways from junior into the coaching and sort of sport that's chosen by, you know, a
34:4212-year-old or a 14-year-old yet to play.
34:44But that will come.
34:45That's going to take years and years.
34:47That will need government involvement.
34:48That will need a proper governing body and then investment in the school and education system.
34:54And we want to be helpful and involved in that.
34:56But a lot of these things are good starting points.
34:59And so the Tennis Australia one was a massive achievement for us.
35:02But for us, it's just like, well, now it goes, how do we actually maximise that?
35:06Because it is a great partnership, but we don't want to just sit on our hands.
35:09They've got such a big network of venues and players to talk to and coaches.
35:14How do we actually get them, you know, not thinking that we're coming in and trying to steal their courts
35:18or whatever, but more like, hey, we actually want to work collaboratively here.
35:21And I think we can grow the whole racket sports pie together.
35:24And the thing is, from an accessibility point of view, I think there's such a beautiful story to be told
35:29in that.
35:30And I mentioned before, a dear friend of mine, Corey Moshram, based in Brisbane, played wheelchair rugby league for a
35:36long time.
35:36And wheelchair rugby league is an amazing inclusive sport in the sense that you have people with a disability and
35:40without a disability played together on the same team.
35:43And he was 10 times representative for Queensland in the state of origin of rugby league.
35:49Just recently, he took up pickleball.
35:51And I encourage everyone to check out the wheelchair pickleballer on Instagram, Corey Moshram.
35:56So he's playing that and he's playing doubles with a partner who's able-bodied.
35:59And so you have that situation where so often in para, you know, we just had the Paralympics for Winter
36:05Olympics.
36:06And that's amazing.
36:07I mean, bloody amazing.
36:08But often with para sport, people who are able-bodied sit and watch.
36:11And then with able-bodied sport, people with a disability sit and watch.
36:15Well, the beautiful thing about pickleball, no one has to sit and watch.
36:17Everyone can play.
36:18Absolutely.
36:19Tell us about that in terms of the forward trajectory with that.
36:22The NDIS is one of the biggest drivers of the Australian economy at the minute.
36:25So from a moral sort of spiritual point of view, but then also from an economic point of view, I
36:30dare say when it comes to accessibility, that's a huge path forward.
36:34It is.
36:34But it's funny.
36:36It's still going to take years for everyone to catch up to that.
36:39And you'd probably know this better than most.
36:41But, you know, Australia is one of the greatest countries in the world to live in because of so many
36:48things that make it so easy to live in.
36:50And on the flip side, though, one of the reasons it's so easy to live in is because we're not
36:56on the cutting edge of adoption of pretty much anything.
36:59And so convincing people in Australia, whether it's council members, whether it is, it's not a quick process.
37:06You know, America is a capitalist-driven country.
37:09Asia just doesn't have as much red tape.
37:11I'm generalising both of those countries.
37:13But Australia has red tape.
37:15Australia believes in we'll get to it at some point.
37:19You know, it's not our highest priority.
37:20We've got netball.
37:21We've got all of these things.
37:23So we've still got this massive job where it's so obvious to us because we're so involved in it.
37:28And there's plenty of other advocates.
37:29But we're still convincing so many people about this new sport and how good it is for the community and
37:35how many people can play it in its wheelchair and it's older.
37:38But it's not, again, an overnight thing.
37:40And I do find that frustrating in Australia where Asia, again, I'm generalising the whole massive place, but they decided
37:48about a year and a half ago that pickleball was the next big thing.
37:51And then the movement from there was like crazy.
37:54It doesn't happen like that in Australia.
37:56You know, we've been grinding and grinding for three years and then you get that Tennis Australia thing.
38:02And we still don't have a governing body.
38:04And then, you know, you've got properties, but they take – like even we're about to open a second property.
38:08It's been a six-month permit process.
38:10We're adding this incredible value to an area that doesn't have that much wellness.
38:14And we've got to go through six months of rigmarole.
38:18So I guess my answer to that question is it will come and in five years everyone will look back
38:22and be like, oh, this was so obvious.
38:24But it's just not there yet.
38:27And that's why it's at $150,000 and not at a million.
38:30And that's why we don't still have enough courts and stuff like that.
38:33But once the penny drops – and it will drop over the next couple of years – it will be,
38:38in my opinion, government and council will be like, this is incredible.
38:42This is how I – you know.
38:44And that's the other thing we have to deal with with state and federal is there's an election coming up.
38:49There's this and that.
38:50But I think if you are trying to win a seat, you're trying to win an election or whatever, the
38:54pickleball and putting in pickleball courts will be one of the strongest things you can actually do to win public
39:00sentiment.
39:01Yeah.
39:01And it's so good for the community.
39:04It's just there's no downside to the sport because of its accessibility.
39:09So when you put in something, you're not actually alienating anyone, which is the whole point of it, because of
39:13any age, any skill level.
39:16So, yeah, it's going to come.
39:17It's just not 100% there yet.
39:19But when it does, I think it's going to be this amazing, powerful tool.
39:22And that's why it's growing so quickly in some of these other countries.
39:25And it will be used for, you know, extending people's longevity and health and things like that.
39:31So, well, all of those things.
39:34And it's interesting.
39:34Every other day I read an article about loneliness, people feeling left out of society, particularly younger people that have
39:41grown up in a smartphone generation where everything's at their fingertips, but they don't leave the house at times.
39:46So if you sort of can solve a multitude of things, like to be able to have a sport where
39:51you don't have to be six foot nine or ten or you don't have to have a tremendous beep test
39:59regimen.
40:00And, like, to be able to have a sport where anyone can participate and have that social involvement, as you
40:05say, like, there's literally no one that you're alienating and being able to do that.
40:11Okay.
40:11So in terms of our friends with Daily Motion.
40:15Yes.
40:15How do you create content that's going to captivate people on there?
40:19What's the strategy?
40:20That's the million-dollar question, isn't it?
40:23Look, the answer is, and I think this is a really honest answer, is no one's figured it out yet
40:28for Pickleball.
40:30It's not – it doesn't have the wow factor of other sports.
40:33That's the hardest thing.
40:35The most popular version of the sport is doubles, which is objectively, unless you're obsessed with it, quite boring to
40:42watch.
40:44And I say that as someone, you know, running it.
40:47I'm not saying that – I'm saying that especially more like from a casual fan perspective.
40:51Once you get into it, you probably understand it a bit more and you enjoy it.
40:53But we are competing with low attention spans with I'm going to flick between the footy and maybe check this
40:59or whatever.
41:00And then you're watching something that doesn't look as athletically gifted or requiring the same athletic gifts and feats as
41:09other sports.
41:10So when you think about that, that's a challenge.
41:12How do we solve for that?
41:14And there's a few ways, and I don't think we've solved for it even in America yet or in Asia.
41:18There is decent audiences in Asia because there's so many people playing the sport, which is the same to that
41:23bottom of the funnel.
41:24Once you get enough people playing, you can create enough of a professional and a broadcast product.
41:30But my opinion or our opinion at the NPL is that it actually probably needs to take a less of
41:37a compete with other racket sports and tennis.
41:39It's never going to be that level of prestige in my opinion.
41:43Then take what I think the best sports marketing use case in our lifetime is UFC.
41:50It's an entertainment product at the end of the day.
41:53It's still a professional sport, and it's one of the most impressive ones for me.
41:58But in the end, no one was watching combat sports in the 90s.
42:03What Dana White did to turn it into where celebrities go, where women go, like women would never go to
42:08watch two men beat each other up or two women's.
42:11But now they go in droves.
42:13Like it's because it was turned into, you know, UFC 1 now, UFC 500.
42:18It's in a product by product thing.
42:20I think that has to be one of the things that's explored with pickleball.
42:24It's like don't take ourselves necessarily too seriously.
42:28Make it more about how do you elevate something from an entertainment standpoint and then play around with formats, which
42:34is like what we do.
42:34We changed our format again slightly again for this year.
42:37We're playing around with quicker formats as well.
42:39You know, like a lot of the sports have, you know, T20 format for cricket and things like that.
42:45Like that is the way of the future, especially for something that doesn't have a longstanding, you know, viewership or
42:52longstanding loyalty or fan base.
42:55So that is and then we're trying something at the NPL that we'll be pushing on daily motion with JB,
43:00which is called the Green Zone, which, to be honest, is a direct replica of Red Zone NFL in Australia.
43:07I love America.
43:08I loved when I was living in the US that I could watch Red Zone on the Sunday and bounce
43:13between eight games at once.
43:15We've got six games playing around the country and we're doing the same thing.
43:17Now, we have millions less viewers than the Red Zone, but like we're trying something because in my mind, again,
43:23pickleball, like diehards will watch a full game, but I'm trying to solve for someone flicking for 10 minutes.
43:29Can a green zone product like that make it more exciting?
43:33And then medium term, we are looking to how do you make it more entertaining where it's a one day
43:38or two day thing, but it's more of a focus on the event.
43:41And you run four of those, sort of like a Grand Slam, but without necessarily that build up of the
43:47tournament prestige, but much more around that sort of UFC model.
43:51So, look, it's interesting.
43:52Again, we're going to iterate.
43:54And the beauty of like there's going to be millions and millions of participants and a lot less viewers of
43:59the professional sport over the next five, 10 years and we'll grow.
44:02But the beauty of that is once you, when you don't have this huge base, no one cares that much
44:07when you play around with things for now.
44:09Like when AFL rule changes happen, everyone is up in arms, but pickleball doesn't have that full identity yet.
44:15It does for the diehards, but it doesn't.
44:17And, you know, and that's why it's like, well, try, try and try and try until you find something that
44:22might, oh, I'll watch that.
44:24Even though I don't really care too much about the sport, that looks like a really interesting thing.
44:29So, that's where we're trying to go to, but you don't want to lose as well.
44:32Like we will always run the traditional tournaments and leagues.
44:35You don't want to lose the fabric of the sport, but maybe how you actually get a lot more people
44:41interested is going away a bit from the traditional sense.
44:45So, we'll see what happens.
44:46Okay, Ron.
44:47So, people listening, watching this, how do they, if they sort of go, you know what, Ron sounds fantastic.
44:51How do I get involved?
44:53A few different levels, just purely to play.
44:55Yeah.
44:56So, yeah, first thing you do is, well, if you're in Melbourne, you go down to the jar, but go
45:00to the NPL Pickleball website and just go to Where to Play.
45:03We've got not only our venues, but partner venues across all of Australia.
45:06Some of them we're owners, operators, some of them we're not.
45:09But we've just got this massive network of dedicated courts, so you'll find somewhere close to that.
45:14That's the first part.
45:15And when you go to one of those venues, you've got so many ways as a new player to engage.
45:19Most of them run a learn-to-play session a couple of times a week.
45:22Like, you can go and book a casual court with your friends, or you can go to a beginner session,
45:27or you can schedule a coaching session.
45:29There's probably four ways to get in.
45:30Or what a lot of people are finding are doing is we run ladies' night on Thursday.
45:34We won Pickleball and Prosecco on Friday and Saturday.
45:37A lot of people use that as their first entry point because it just feels a lot less intense and
45:42more social.
45:43Yeah.
45:43Prosecco will do that.
45:44Yeah, it will do that.
45:45Right, so you see people coming in and barely playing that much, or, you know, we have half the people
45:49being new players, half the people being existing players.
45:52But that's how you start.
45:53I like it.
45:53Then people get the bug, and they go into the intermediate sessions.
45:56Then they start to join tournaments, amateur tournaments, but there's all these different skill levels, and then they keep going
46:02down the funnel there.
46:03But you can get all that information now on the nplpickleball.com.au website.
46:07Yeah, nplpickleball.com.au.
46:10And then also from people watching and listening who think, well, there might be a fellow startup that want to
46:16come to you.
46:17Maybe they've got an idea to partner or something.
46:19Yeah, absolutely.
46:19And then also from corporates who think, you know, I want to be involved in this.
46:22How should they best reach you?
46:23Well, I think directly is the thing.
46:26Like I'm probably the best person still to speak to, whether you go through our website or directly, you know,
46:31LinkedIn or my email.
46:33But we're open to every conversation, small or big, and I've always been a big advocate for that, is that
46:38you're, you know, you're not anything until you're very much something.
46:44And we're never going to see that point, at least while, you know, we're in the weeds.
46:51You have to be very understanding.
46:53And, you know, I believe in the sport.
46:56I believe in pickleball.
46:57But I'm also very honest about where certain things are out in the sport.
47:01And when we talk about our sponsorships, for example, we don't oversell the league.
47:05And so, for example, AHM is our, the health insurance brand.
47:09They're our official sponsor.
47:10And they're for three years.
47:12They have branding on our broadcast.
47:14They have branding on our league.
47:15But they realise that that's almost just one part of it.
47:19Where they get all the value is being associated with this community that's growing, with having a membership for their
47:25member holders in their perks section on their website,
47:29for doing content that shows that they're a health insurance company worried about wellness and health.
47:35And so, I guess that's where we are really unique, you know, and I've come from both sides of partnerships
47:40and things.
47:41It's like we're never going to oversell where we're at in certain points.
47:45Where we are different to a traditional sport is we can offer you property, an in-house marketing team, access
47:51to activations and events,
47:52and associate you with a pro league that will grow.
47:55And you get all of those things in a membership database now we have of over 30,000 and it
48:00just continues to grow.
48:01And you can integrate at a much lower price point, you know, to then existing sort of big sports, but
48:07maybe get a lot more cut through.
48:09Because you're not competing against everyone and you're going directly to the source rather than just being on TV or
48:14whatnot.
48:14And I remember probably a good anecdote is AHM, when they were deciding whether they partnered with us or not,
48:19it was a six-month process.
48:21You know, they're a big company.
48:22There's a lot of red tape and Medibank.
48:24It came down to, I remember I sat down with one of the executives and she goes,
48:27the decision for us is whether we spend the six figures that they have with us or they spend it
48:34on TV,
48:34which they know will deliver a certain, you know, cost per acquisition.
48:39That's it.
48:40It was so simple.
48:40They go, we could go and probably get more direct customers from a known channel like TV, which we've done
48:46and will continue to do.
48:47Or we take some of that money and spend it with you and it's a very different type of sponsorship.
48:51But that's all we're presenting to our executive team.
48:53And that's how you've got to look at new emerging sports.
48:56You can't put them as a pedestal against other things that are super high converting.
49:00It's in a different way.
49:02It's like a brand play first that then converts later.
49:05So, yeah.
49:05And I think just to finish on, I think that's another strength to you, Beau, with regards to pickleball is
49:11to reach that younger demographic.
49:13I mean, it's interesting.
49:13With traditional TV, the average audience is nearly 70 years of age.
49:16Chances are they've probably already got A, H&M or what have you.
49:20And it is such a fractured marketplace, so fragmented.
49:23So to be able to find a young audience and to cultivate them and bring them in and to reach
49:27them,
49:27if I'm a brand trying to reach an audience, you know, to be able to find where an audience all
49:31sits in one place, very hard these days.
49:33Forty years ago, people watched Channel 7 or Channel 9 or Channel 10.
49:36There were three options.
49:37Now there's a trillion options online.
49:39So I think pickleball, as an aggregator of eyeballs, for you to have that product and then be able to
49:44sell it,
49:45so much upside, mate, which is no doubt why you invested in it.
49:48Well, yeah, it's hard work, but I agree, yeah.
49:49All right, very, very cool.
49:50Ron, thanks so much for your time, mate.
49:52Thank you for coming in.
49:53This is the first time we've actually been here in the Cremorne Digital Hub studio.
49:56Yeah, it's beautiful.
49:57Darren, our producer, done a beautiful job, Daz.
49:59Thank you, Daz.
50:01And, yeah, Cremorne Digital Hub, I highly recommend these studios to anyone.
50:04Ron, thank you so much for your time, mate.
50:06Appreciate it.
50:06Absolute honour.
50:07Ron Schell from the National Pickleball League, nplpickleball.com.au.
50:11Thank you very much for your company.
50:16Beautiful.
50:30Beautiful.
50:31You
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