How to Monetize the PodPlay Pro Monitors

When club owners experience PodPlay’s integrated digital scoreboards and replays they immediately see why their customers would love it.

The cool factor differentiates a club with tech-enabled courts from competitors that just offer courts. A differentiated customer experience is becoming increasingly important as the supply of indoor pickleball courts increases to meet growing demand.

The logical next question is how to turn that cool factor into a return on the investment required to install PodPlay Pro courts.

In How to Bend the Pickleball Club Revenue Equation we made the case that tech-enabled courts are one of a handful of techniques that can positively impact both court utilization AND average hourly rate by opening up new revenue opportunities for club owners.

In this blog we will lay out how clubs’ can monetize PodPlay Pro Tier Monitors with:

• Premium Court Pricing

• Quick Replays

• Organic Quick Replays as a Substitute for Paid Social

• Custom Replays

• Replay Packages for Private Events

• Sponsorships & Ads

And provide a framework for thinking about the magnitude of each revenue opportunity.

Clubs can charge more per hour for technology-enabled courts. We've seen clubs deploy a strategy of offering premium technology-enabled courts alongside standard courts, with differential pricing. If a club charges a $1 premium per hour for tech-enabled courts, the breakeven on the $150 per month Pro court cost is 5 hours per day. If a club charges a $5 premium, the breakeven is 1 hour a day.

A club that charges a $5 premium per hour for a tech-enabled court that is utilized on average 6 hours per day will generate an additional $800 of revenue per court per month. Some clubs have Pro courts for their entire facility and monetize through either higher hourly rates across the board, higher membership prices, or a combination of both.

The chart below shows incremental monthly revenue a PodPlay Pro Court can drive at different per hour pricing premiums and levels of utilization.

Quick replays are an enormously popular feature. Customers love to see themselves on the big screen and share replays of magical moments on social media. In Why User-Generated Replays Matter we described how the PodPlay replay system is uniquely calibrated to allow players to capture and share authentic moments, while keeping the focus squarely on the game. PodPlay client PingPod did almost 12,000 replays in the month of August, which pencils out to an average of 6 replays per court per day.

Most clubs monetize quick replays on a per use basis. Some clubs will give customers the first few for free to give them a taste of the technology. Others will add replay credits to membership packages and charge an incrementally higher membership price to reflect the value delivered. However the club chooses to price replays, we can work out the revenue per replay by dividing total incremental replay revenue by the number of replays.

The chart below shows incremental monthly revenue a PodPlay Pro Court can drive at different per replay pricing and numbers of replays per court per day.

In addition to generating incremental revenue, quick replays can substitute for marketing spend that might otherwise go to paid social. As one PodPlay customer put it, “The PodPlay system stands out as an unparalleled tool for organic marketing, possibly the only one that actually PAYS venue operators for organic impressions and reach.”

This recent PingPod replay has 2.8 million impressions on Instagram:

How much are 2.8 million organic impressions on Instagram worth? According to one source, the average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) on Meta was $7.95 in August 2024. At that CPM, a post that gets 2.8 million impressions would be worth $22,260. That is a single post producing an 8.9x return on the $2,500 one time cost to set up a court on the PodPlay Pro Tier.

Quick replays are the killer use case for most customers who want to see their top plays or share magic moments with their friends. A smaller subset of customers who are more serious about continuous improvement of their game will also use custom replay functionality. A custom replay is a longer clip of up to 60 minutes that a customer orders within 48 hours of the reservation. The customer can choose the start time and the length of the clip desired and will be charged accordingly. Most clubs charge per minute. Three common use cases we see for custom replays are:

• A Customer has an epic match and wants to record for posterity and/or share it with friends and family.

• A Customer has a coaching session and wants to be able to revisit the lessons learned and view their technique and that of their coach.

• A Customer has a match that they want to send to a coach asynchronously to provide pointers and feedback.

Clubs charge for custom replays on a per minute basis, generally in 5-minute increments. At 20 cents per minute, an hour long custom replay costs $12; at 50 cents per minute, an hour long custom replay costs $30. The chart below shows incremental monthly revenue a PodPlay Pro Court can drive at different per minute pricing and number of minutes per court per day.

In the future, PodPlay will add the option to order custom analytics - game stats, shot heat maps, etc. - as an add-on to custom replays.

For any event created in PodPlay, admins have the ability to turn on or off quick and custom replays. Many clubs will offer unlimited replays for private events as an add-on. A ten court club that charges a $50 add-on fee for unlimited replays at private events and hosts 20 events over the course of a month will generate $1,000 of incremental revenue per month. If we distribute that over those 10 courts, that pencils out to $100 per court.

The chart below shows incremental monthly revenue a PodPlay Pro Court can drive at different levels of replay package add-on pricing and number of events per month. Per court yield is based on a ten court club.

PodPlay Pro monitors are valuable digital real estate for sponsors and advertisers. The monitors are better than billboards because they have extraordinarily high engagement. Players are actively looking at them throughout a session, and, in the case of an instant replay, likely riding the high of a great point when they do. The audience is also very targeted, allowing advertisers to reach individuals with specific geographic and economic profiles that are highly social and active.

While a PodPlay Pro monitor will not see as many eyeballs as an ad in the subway, it will arguably be far more effective in delivering brand messages. Imagine “Instant Replay Presented by [Your Brand]!” right as you look up at the PodPlay Pro Monitor to see your tweaner ATP.

The key selling points of PodPlay Pro monitors to potential sponsors and advertisers are:

• High engagement

• Positive association

• Targeted audience

In addition to digital real estate on PodPlay Pro Monitors, clubs will be able to add sponsor logos as a watermark on replays. As the replays rack up impressions on social media, the sponsor logo is getting eyeballs at social media scale, without incurring the cost of paid social ads.

This functionality is still in the process of being fully built out, so it is too early for us to provide meaningful data on what digital ads / sponsorships can be sold for, but we can get a sense of what is possible by looking at comparable advertising deals. Billboard advertising generally costs $1,000 to $10,000 per month based on location and expected impressions. We have seen pickleball clubs do broad sponsorship / brand deals for more than $25,000 annually.

The chart below shows incremental monthly revenue a PodPlay Pro Court can drive at different levels of sponsorship pricing and number of sponsorships per month. Per court yield is based on a ten court club. The sponsorship pricing assumptions range from $3,000 annually ($250 per month) to $15,000 annually ($1,250 per month).

Over time, as the effectiveness of sponsorships / advertisements on PodPlay Pro Monitors is proven out, we think this has a good chance to be the largest source of incremental revenue from the PodPlay Pro Monitors.

The PodPlay Pro setup will be evaluated over time based on the return a club will get on the investment required to provide tech-enabled courts rather than a simple booking system. The table below provides a framework for thinking about the return on investment. We have chosen what we think are conservative assumptions from each of the categories described above and excluded any cost savings that may be achieved by using organic social as a substitute for paid social marketing spend.

PodPlay Pro Monitors deliver high return on investment and a short payback period, even on these conservative assumptions, all while differentiating your club from competitors by offering features that delight customers.

*Originally published by Ben Borton, Sept 26th, 2024. The article is on PodPlay's blog.