Though only a year old, the Paddle Up Pickleball Club in St. Charles County has made an unmistakable impact on pickleball in the greater St. Louis area. Their strategy is simple: catering to new players and going all in on programming events.
Matt Landolt is one of the owners at Paddle Up and heads the club’s programming endeavors. Five years ago, he noticed that many pickleball clubs in Saint Louis needed assistance organizing and running their tournaments, leagues, and other events. So, he started a business focused solely on programming pickleball events. Four years later, he met with his current business partners, Jon and Kelly Richert, and started Paddle Up. Paddle Up now sports 9 premier indoor courts complete with outdoor surfacing, professional nets, court dividers, and more.
Landolt says, “We’re really big on programming,” and the folks at Paddle Up prove their devotion to quality programming by hosting a vast range of exciting pickleball events. They host everything: round-robins, leagues, clinics, open play, and even monthly tournaments. Most of these events are geared towards having fun and building relationships: “The main goal for us is for people to come out there, meet other people, and make new friends.”
Paddle Up’s love for community and quality programming shows in another unique way: they program and oversee numerous leagues and events for other clubs. Landolt says, “We have tons and tons of league offerings that happen all around town and not just at facilities that we own.” Paddle Up can do this partly because of Landolt’s seasoned experience in programming and his familiarity with organizing software. Paddle Up has a solid membership base of 450 members, but it also has an extensive network of over 10,000 pickleball contacts thanks to its wide-reaching programming service.
When it comes to successful pickleball programming, the bottom line is putting together “events that people like to play in.”
Paddle Up also holds an annual club championship. Players attend the club’s monthly tournaments, earn points by winning, and compete to become the club’s champion for the year. Each monthly tournament is a chance to jump up in the club rankings and become the club champion.
Tournaments are a big part of Paddle Up’s culture, but Landolt says they are “a bit different” than most traditional tournaments. Pickleball tournaments tend to be opportunities for high-competition, high-stakes gameplay; but the tournaments at Padde Up are more welcoming, inviting, and communal than your average tournament. Landolt says, “Our goal in tournaments is to make them less intimidating for newer players to want to come out and compete.” One way they achieve this goal is by doing away with the typical double-elimination format. Each tournament at Paddle Up is a variation of the round-robin format with a playoff to cap it off: “We like that format because you get the chance to play as many people as possible and meet those people.”
Paddle Up’s concern for new players is real: 80% of their players are new to the game. “A lot of the programming that we have to offer is for novice pickleball players.” According to Landolt, the vast majority of people in the pickleball world are new players without much experience; thus, the key to success is reaching these players. He says, “Everything you do has to be designed to get those people out because they’re 95% of the population. That’s going to be the determining factor behind whether or not your club is a financial success.”
Paddle Up has made a splash into the St. Louis pickleball world with their outstanding programming system and their ability to cater to new players, and they would encourage other clubs to do the same in their own towns: “If you can put together programs that are not so focussed on your club and your membership but are aimed at getting people into your network, then that goes a long way towards growing the numbers.”
