21 Courts. Now You Have to Fill Them.

What Vaughan Can Teach Us About the Next Phase of Indoor Pickleball

The Backyard Club recently opened 21 dedicated indoor pickleball courts in Vaughan, Ontario.

That's an extraordinary number.

In a sport that has spent years complaining about court shortages, 21 courts under one roof sounds like the answer to everything.

But look at those courts from an operator's perspective.

Open 14 hours a day, 21 courts can create as many as 294 available court-hours every day—more than 2,000 every week.

And every one of those court-hours is perishable.

If a court sits empty from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, that hour can never be sold Wednesday.

But there is an equally important second lesson:

Filling the court isn't enough.

An occupied court can be highly productive, poorly monetized or somewhere in between.

That means the next phase of indoor pickleball isn't simply about building courts—or even filling them.

It's about making available court-hours economically productive while delivering the games and experiences players actually want.

And Vaughan may be becoming one of the best places in Canada to watch that challenge unfold.

From Court Shortage to Court Competition

We've watched this market develop from the beginning.

Before dedicated indoor facilities became common, York Region Pickleball was helping build the player market those facilities now serve.

One of our original major venues was Trio Sportsplex, where we played on basketball floors using temporary pop-up nets.

It wasn't ideal.

But it worked.

Our weekday programs were packed. We introduced players to pickleball, taught them the game, organized leagues and drop-ins and, most importantly, built a community around the sport.

York Region Pickleball eventually built a network of more than 3,000 players, helping thousands find games, programs and a way into the sport.

In many respects, organizations like ours seeded the market.

Then the dedicated courts arrived.

HiSports opened 11 dedicated courts in Vaughan in March 2025 and now operates as Vaughan Pickleball.

A large group from the York Region Pickleball community moved there together.

It made sense.

We already had the community. Now we needed the dedicated courts.

But competition followed quickly.

Pickleplex Vaughan opened eight courts.

Pickleplex Promenade followed with six.

Other operators and concepts entered different parts of the market.

And now The Backyard Club has added another 21 courts.

In a remarkably short period, Vaughan has gone from a shortage of dedicated indoor pickleball to roughly 50 courts and growing.

That's a major change in market economics.

When courts are scarce, the challenge is providing access.

When courts become plentiful, the challenge becomes:

Utilization. Monetization. Differentiation.

The Court-Hour Is the Inventory

This is where we believe private pickleball operators need to start thinking differently.

Operators naturally measure memberships, court utilization, league participation and open-play attendance.

All are important.

But the fundamental inventory inside a pickleball facility is the available court-hour.

And that inventory expires every hour of every day.

Recent industry work from Pickleball Development & Investments has helped formalize this concept through Revenue per Available Court-Hour, or RevPACH.

The principle is straightforward.

Court utilization alone doesn't tell an operator enough.

Revenue per available court-hour can be thought about through three components:

Occupancy × Player Density × Yield per Player-Hour

In other words:

How often is the court occupied?

How many paying players are being served?

And what economic yield is being generated by those players?

This creates an important distinction.

A court can be:

Empty and generating nothing.

Occupied but poorly monetized.

Or:

Occupied and economically productive.

So the objective isn't maximum utilization at any cost.

The objective is productive utilization.

A full facility can still have weak economics if its occupied court-hours aren't generating enough contribution to support the facility's cost structure.

Prime Time Isn't the Whole Business

Established facilities can generally find demand for their most desirable inventory.

Tuesday at 7 p.m. isn't necessarily the problem.

Saturday morning probably isn't either.

The harder questions are:

What happens Tuesday at 1 p.m.?

Wednesday at 11 a.m.?

Friday afternoon?

The rent doesn't stop.

The utilities don't stop.

The payroll doesn't stop.

Yet that court-hour disappears whether somebody buys it or not.

This is where operators should begin treating their weekly court inventory more like a portfolio of perishable assets.

Not every court-hour has the same value.

And therefore, not every court-hour necessarily needs the same customer, price, program or distribution strategy.

Protect the yield on the court-hours that will sell themselves.

But become extremely creative with the hours that won't.

Stop Thinking Only About Members

Memberships matter.

Recurring revenue provides stability and helps build community.

But a facility doesn't necessarily need 21 courts' worth of members.

It needs customers for 21 courts' worth of inventory.

And those customers can come from many places.

Community pickleball clubs.

Seniors' organizations.

Corporate groups.

Coaches.

Schools.

Youth programs.

Tournament organizers.

Municipal programs.

Leagues.

Social groups.

They don't all need the same product.

Could a community organization consistently bring 40 players on Tuesday afternoons?

Could a seniors' group occupy six courts every weekday morning?

Could an instructor operate an academy during otherwise weak hours?

Could a company purchase a recurring block of courts for employee programming?

Could an outside league take predictable inventory every week?

The operator shouldn't necessarily ask:

Would I sell this court for that price at 7 p.m.?

The better question is:

What is the most economically productive use of this court at 1 p.m. when the alternative may be zero?

That's not simply discounting pickleball.

That's managing perishable inventory.

Courts Need Communities—and Communities Need Courts

This may be one of the biggest opportunities in the next stage of the industry.

Private facilities have something community organizations desperately need:

Court inventory.

Community organizations have something private facilities need:

Organized players.

The Richmond Hill Pickleball Club, a not-for-profit organization, has grown beyond 3,300 players.

York Region Pickleball built a network of more than 3,000.

The not-for-profit Vaughan Pickleball Club has developed a substantial community of its own.

And because the names are genuinely confusing, an important clarification:

Vaughan Pickleball Club is the not-for-profit community club.

Vaughan Pickleball is the separate for-profit private facility formerly known as HiSports.

Relationships are already developing between community organizations and private facilities.

Richmond Hill Pickleball Club has developed programming at Pickleplex Aurora.

The not-for-profit Vaughan Pickleball Club has also worked with private operators, including Pickleplex Vaughan.

This makes sense.

You can build courts much faster than you can build community.

So why should every facility try to recreate communities that already exist?

The bigger question for operators should be:

Who can help fill the hours that aren't filling themselves?

If an outside organization can bring 40 or 60 players into otherwise underutilized court inventory every week, both sides can win.

The community club gets courts.

The operator gets predictable revenue.

Players get more opportunities to play.

And the facility converts inventory that might otherwise expire unused into revenue.

Private operators shouldn't particularly care where the players came from.

They should care whether the arrangement produces economically productive court-hours.

Facilities See Competitors. Players See Options.

There's another change happening that operators shouldn't underestimate.

Players don't necessarily view the pickleball market the same way facilities do.

An operator naturally wants a player to become its customer.

But the player may think very differently.

They might play a Tuesday league at one facility, Thursday open play somewhere else, outdoors with their community club on Saturday and occasionally book another facility with friends.

The future pickleball customer may belong to a community without belonging exclusively to a facility.

Richmond Hill demonstrates this particularly well.

Thousands of players live in a community without enough dedicated pickleball infrastructure, so they travel.

They play in Vaughan, Markham, Aurora and elsewhere.

Pickleball markets don't stop at municipal boundaries.

Players will travel within reason for the right court.

More importantly, they'll travel for the right game and the right people.

That means a private facility doesn't necessarily need to “own” every player.

It needs to earn a portion of that player's pickleball activity.

That creates room for facilities, community clubs and other organizations to cooperate even while operators continue competing for customers.

Quality of Occupancy Matters Too

There is one more piece operators can't ignore.

Not all occupancy is equal from the player's perspective either.

As supply increases, finding an available court becomes easier.

Finding the right game can still be difficult.

Skill-matched open play matters.

Good programming matters.

Reliable competition matters.

Community matters.

An open-play program can fill eight courts and look fantastic on a utilization report.

But if players repeatedly have poor games because skill levels aren't managed effectively, those customers may not return.

So operators increasingly need to think about two forms of quality.

Economic quality of occupancy: Is the court-hour producing adequate revenue and contribution?

And:

Playing quality of occupancy: Are players receiving an experience that makes them want to come back?

Long-term success requires both.

Why Backyard's 21 Courts Are So Interesting

That brings us back to The Backyard Club.

Its 21 courts create a utilization challenge that few immediate competitors face at the same scale.

But they also create an enormous opportunity.

Backyard has enough inventory to accommodate competitive players, recreational players, leagues, instruction, social groups, open play, private bookings and outside organizations simultaneously.

It has room to experiment.

Room to partner.

Room to price different inventory differently.

And room to bring multiple playing communities under one roof.

The question shouldn't simply be:

How many memberships can we sell?

It should also be:

How do we make every available court-hour as economically productive as possible?

Sometimes the answer will be members.

Sometimes leagues.

Sometimes instruction.

Sometimes open play.

Sometimes an outside community organization.

And sometimes it may be a customer segment the operator hasn't even discovered yet.

That's the advantage of scale—if you know how to use it.

The Next Pickleball Battle

For years, pickleball's problem was access.

Then players demanded dedicated courts.

Now markets like Vaughan may be showing us the next stage.

The questions are becoming:

Who is your customer?

What kind of game are they looking for?

What are they willing to pay?

How do you protect prime-time yield?

How do you monetize non-prime inventory?

How many players can each occupied court-hour effectively serve?

And who already has communities that could help you fill those courts?

Facilities may see competitors.

Players increasingly see options.

Private facilities have courts.

Community organizations have players.

Coaches have students.

Leagues have participants.

Corporations have employees.

And every week, facilities have court-hours that disappear forever if nobody uses them.

Twenty-one beautiful courts don't automatically create a successful pickleball business.

But 21 courts create an extraordinary portfolio of perishable inventory that can be programmed, priced, partnered and monetized in different ways.

The next battle in indoor pickleball isn't simply about who builds the most courts.

It's about who learns how to make every available court-hour economically productive—while still delivering the games, experiences and communities players actually want.

And increasingly, the smartest answer may involve working with the pickleball communities that already exist rather than trying to build every one from scratch.

Coming Next: Which Pickleball Model Gives You the Best Value?

In our next article, we're going to turn the analysis around and look at York Region's rapidly changing pickleball market from the player's perspective.

With more private facilities, community clubs and membership models available, choosing where to play is becoming much more complicated.

And comparing advertised membership fees doesn't tell the whole story.

We'll compare the major playing options across York Region, including The Backyard Club, Vaughan Pickleball, Pickleplex Vaughan, Pickleplex Promenade, Picktopia, the not-for-profit Vaughan Pickleball Club and other relevant options.

But we're going to compare them based on how people actually play pickleball.

What is the best value if you play once a week?

What if you play three times?

Five times?

What if you're primarily looking for open play?

What if you want competitive games at your level?

What if you prefer leagues?

What if you simply want to book a court with three friends?

We'll examine membership fees, court fees, open-play costs, programming, booking access, flexibility and the ability to find the kinds of games you're actually looking for.

Because the least expensive membership isn't necessarily the best deal.

And the most expensive facility isn't necessarily the wrong deal for a highly active player.

There may not be one best pickleball club.

There may be a best model for the way you play.

That's what we'll examine next.

Stay Ahead of Where Pickleball Is Going

The pickleball industry is changing quickly.

New facilities, new business models, new programming strategies and new approaches to facility economics are emerging all the time.

At Pickleball Partners, we're bringing that knowledge together—visiting facilities, studying business models, examining what operators and community organizations are doing, identifying what works and sharing ideas that can help build a stronger and more sustainable pickleball industry.

Want to follow the conversation?

Stay Ahead of Where Pickleball Is Going

The pickleball industry is changing quickly.

New facilities are opening. New business models are emerging. Players have more choices. And operators, clubs and municipalities are learning—sometimes the hard way—what it takes to build sustainable pickleball communities and facilities.

At Pickleball Partners, we're following those changes closely—visiting facilities, studying the economics, comparing playing models and sharing what we're learning about where the game is going next.

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