Why the Business of Pickleball Is Booming With Chris Clark From Toss and Spin

#WeGotGoals by aSweatLife

If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank or pitched your own business, you’re familiar with the concept of addressable market, or total addressable market (TAM). It’s an ever important metric to determine whether the thing you’re talking about has room for growth or - to put it simply - a way to quantify how many people care or could care about the thing you’re selling.

I told you that to tell you this: Pickleball is booming.

A couple of facts point us in that direction, but most importantly, market size. According to Marketwatch, The global pickleball Paddle market - that’s just paddles - was valued at $126.5 million in 2019 and is expected to reach $218.2 million by the end of 2026.

People are making pickleball a business and business is booming. But outside of that, regular humans are loving the game: according to the Sport and Fitness Industry Association, it’s the fastest growing sport in the US. How big is it? 4.8 million people played it in 2021.

There’s even a major league of pickleball, which - get this, wants to bring the number of people playing pickleball in the US up to 30 million by 2030.

Investors in Major league pickleball include Naomi Osaka, Kevin Durant, Patrick Mahomes, Lebron James, Tom Brady, Heidi Klum, and Budweiser just to name a few. By the way, pro Pickleball is going to be interesting - there’s going to be relegation and promotion - if you’ve watched Ted Lasso (or European football in general), you’re familiar with the drama of that.

So, on this week's episode of the podcast, we dig in. We talk about how we found the game, Chris shares what led him to build a business in the racket sports space, and we generally just have a fantastic time.

References:

• Toss and Spin
• Toss and Spin on Instagram
• Chris on aSweatLife, Why is everyone you know playing Pickleball
• The New York Times, Pickleball Wars
• From aSweatLife, A workout to prepare to play pickleball
• From market watch, Pickleball paddle market size
• The Wall Street Journal, Pickleball investments
• NPR, Inside America’s Fastest Growing Sport
• Kevin Durant and pickleball
• Forbes, celebrity Pickleball investments
• Bloomberg Business of Sports Podcast, Celebrity investors in Pickleball (ft. Jason Kelly who has also been on this podcast)
• A Global overview of the Pickleball Market Size
• Breakpoint on NetFlix
• Tennis player, Nick Kyrgios
• Tyson McGuffin, Pro pickleball player sponsored by Sketcher
• Kelly’s thing she loves Flora Hemp Spirits
• Jeana’s thing she loves, The State of Fitness