Inside one company’s plan to become the Topgolf of pickleball

Pickleball has come a long way since it first came together in a backyard off the coast of Seattle about 60 years ago. There are almost 14,000 pickleball courts throughout the U.S. today, and many are popping up in some of the trendiest spots, from Central Park , to Life Time gyms . But one particular brand called Rally Pickleball is hoping to cut through the noise by turning pickleball into a tech-enhanced game. Rally’s mission? Become the TopGolf of pickleball, but with better tech, yummier food, and a bigger commitment to design.



Rally opened its first location in Charlotte, North Carolina last year. The 27,000-foot-venue counts 8 indoor and outdoor courts that consistently sell out, plus two restaurants, a coffee shop, co-working spaces, and private event spaces. The company already has plenty of competition, with venues like Chicken N Pickle, Smash Park, or Pickle & Chill that offer versions of the same sports and entertainment combo under one roof. But as Rally eyes new locations in Denver, Nashville, and D.C., its founders are betting they can get ahead of the curve with a patent-pending gamification technology. (The tech is currently in soft launch and will officially roll out by the end of the summer.)



[Photo: Rally]



A techified pickleball experience



Here’s how it works: When you walk into the court, you check in and type your name on a touchscreen like that of a (well-designed) mall kiosk. Where Topgolf has you take a selfie, Rally lets you can pick from 8 avatars that were designed to feel inclusive, like a strawberry or an ostrich. You can then play “standard” pickleball or take your pick between three custom games designed for more casual pickleball players.



[Photo: Rally]



Once you hit the court, the play unfolds as you’d expect, with a few charming digital touches, like your avatar doing a little dance when you win a point, or the fact that you don’t have to keep score, or argue about whether the ball was out or not since the tech does that for you. When the company eventually expands to new locations, it plans to build an ecosystem where you can play in Charlotte but compete (at least on the leaderboard) against someone in Nashville.



Megan Charity (left) and Barrett Worthington [Photo: Rally]



Rally’s roots



Rally was founded by Megan Charity—a tennis-turned-professional pickleball player who rose to no. 13 in the world—and Barrett Worthington, who spent four years at National Geographic developing games like Animal Jam and Doomsday Preppers . The two met as Charity was coaching Worthington’s father in tennis, and are now partners in both work and life.



The seeds of Rally were planted in 2017, when Charity and Worthington founded Weigo, a now defunct app that matched tennis enthusiasts with a freelance coach nearby. The team then added pickleball “kind of on a whim” and were “floored by the response,” says Worthington. A big part of the company’s success was how quickly it turned into a community-building platform. This inspired the women to pivot from an instruction model to an events model—first with a festival called Pickle Fest that combined beer trucks, live music and of course pickleball—and now, with Rally.



[Photo: Rally]



Becoming the Topgolf of pickleball



From the very beginning, the pair saw the potential of pairing a social game like pickleball with a gamification component that could bring some levity to the experience. To make this happen, they looked to Topgolf, which turned golf into a $2 billion entertainment empire with music, beer, wings, and a plethora of games facilitated by cutting-edge technology like microchipped golf balls and infrared sensors. Since Topgolf launched in 2000, its model has become so popular that various companies have used it as a benchmark for success by billing themselves as the “ Topgolf of soccer ,” the “ Topgolf of baseball ,” and now—the Topgolf of pickleball.



[Photo: Rally]



The similarities between the two companies are obvious. Like Topgolf, Rally can track your play, collect player stats and automate your score. You can also play a wide selection of custom games inspired by Charity’s years-long experience coaching tennis players, and further “gamified“ by Worthington, who added fun features like fireballs shooting across the display. These include a pickleball version of the tennis game “ King or Queen of the court ,” which Charity used to play with her students. “I think we built [Rally] for us,” she says with a laugh.



But there is one key difference between Topgolf and Rally, and that is the technology behind the game. Unlike TopGolf balls, which are outfitted with an RFID chip inside them, Rally’s balls are standard pickleballs, and you can even bring your own. Rally tracks where the ball goes thanks to four cameras equipped with a custom computer vision system and scattered around the court. (The system doesn’t use facial recognition.)



The cameras work a bit like the famous Hawk-Eye system in tennis, which uses multiple camera angles to trace the ball’s trajectory and determine if it’s in or out—albeit less sophisticated. But the real magic comes from the software. If Hawk-Eye tracks the ball; RallyTrack tracks the game : it knows actual pickleball rules, and will call you out on that “ kitchen fault ” you just made.



[Photo: Rally]



It might seem a little outrageous that Rally’s founders spent that much time developing new technology when they could’ve achieved the same level of tracking with existing technology. But the team had good reason to persevere: if the technology works with cameras only, they can license it out to country clubs without requiring them to buy custom equipment or retrofit their courts. “We wanted to be able to pick a up paddle, hop on a court, start playing,” says Worthington.  



For now, it’s all about Rally. About 40% of the company’s current revenue comes from F&B, 30% comes from corporate events, and the remaining 30% comes from actual pickleball. With that in mind, the founders believe that the custom games they designed will help them attract a wider audience, and bring more friends since some games cater to larger group sizes. After all, the more games you play, the likelier you are to stick around for one more hour, one more drink, and one more bite.