Jason-picklemall

Q1) You’re a creative-strat-comms guy. What do you see in Pickleball that a sports person wouldn’t? Do you see an audience, Content, community, sponsorship?

Jason: Let me start by saying that although I'm in creative-marketing-strategy and all that, I'm very much a sports guy. I've been doing sports marketing my whole life. I used to be the digital content creation lead for ONE Championship, the MMA company. And built their social media and digital media platforms to what you see today. So I've been very embedded in the world of sports. But from a marketing-media angle, what I'm always looking for is a gap. The obvious things in Pickleball are there i.e. courts, communities etc. I saw a gap in malls and in spaces that I felt were suitable for Pickleball. Gaps are opportunities and…you just need to be brave enough to go out there and make it happen.

Q2) Convincing a Pickleball player that PickleMall (Pickleball in a mall) is a good idea is easy. How did you convince a mall owner that giving up prime atrium space for people hitting a plastic ball was good for business?

J: You’d think convincing Pickleball players to come and play in a mall is a no-brainer, but a lot of them had the impression that PickleMall is a pop-up…it won’t be around for long, the court would be so-so etc. But we spared no expense in putting up a premium, competition court thanks to Joola. We were sure once people played on our court, they’d come back for more.

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PickleMall was launched at Sengkang Grand Mall, the first of 4 malls.

With regards to the malls, their first comment was, “that's our revenue generating space, we can't give it away just like that.” And that’s the essence of business, right? You can have a hairbrain idea but it has to be a win-win with a real value proposition.

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Q1) You’re a creative-strat-comms guy. What do you see in Pickleball that a sports person wouldn’t? Do you see an audience, Content, community, sponsorship?

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PickleMall was launched at Sengkang Grand Mall, the first of 4 malls.

A lot of malls have seen a drop in footfall, some even struggling. But no mall is going to tell you that. So I had to go in with the assumption that I had a solution to bring people to the mall to spend time AND money. I had to speak their language to get the conversation through. And I was very fortunate coz I got linked up with Capitaland through a friend’s recommendation. They said, "Okay, we'll give you the premium space for a limited time to prove the concept". Next question was, “Which malls do you want?”

I looked at the space available in the malls, even went down to measure the space myself (for example, Funan is a sports mall and would have been great but the flooring was uneven and had weird angles). We eventually ended up with 4 malls and…I hope I’ve proven that our concept works!

Q3) What did the blue-chip sponsors see in PickleMall? What were they buying? Eyeballs? Participation? Community? Cool factor?

J: The same win-win rule with the mall applied to other sponsors. BUT one of the mall stipulations was that we cannot do any retail (sell stuff) as that would be cannibalising their tenants. But every brand that hears ‘mall atrium’ thinks they can sell things without mall rental etc. So our value proposition to sponsors had to be different (cannot also create a ‘pasar malam’ right?.

I looked for sponsors that were looking for market expansion. Brands that wanted awareness...to educate people about their presence and products.

As you know in the sponsorship world, you speak to 30 brands, maybe 3 will come in IF you are lucky. We got Leapmotor as they were not about selling cars but more about getting their brand out there. They were already doing a phenomenal job with Pickleball by sponsoring PPA Asia and other closed door Pickleball events. Now they get to be in the middle of a mall getting eyeballs! But can you get the same eyeballs and engagement without a car like at Junction8 (the atrium is on the 2nd floor, can’t drive a car up there)? That why we created Leapshot, a fun game where people try to hit Pickle balls into holes for prizes and interact with the brand. We'd say it's been a hit!

The other major sponsor was Joola who are arguably the market leader in terms of paddle sales and recognition. They have their sights set on Asia so for them PickleMall wasn’t about setting up a booth to sell paddles but getting a paddle in people’s hands for the very first time. And people were curious. “What is this sport? What are you guys doing? What is a Pickleball paddle?” And thanks to Joola, who took the time to train all of us, we could answer all the questions which educated people without any hardsell.

Same with Zeiss, who came in with contact lenses. Again, they wanted people to understand why their contact lenses were different. They drove people to nearby optical shops to buy based on what they learnt at our event. So yeah, like I said, a different win-win proposition for brands.

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Jason with Justin the Mutton and Isaac, MD of Leapmotor.

Q4) Once brands discover a growing sport like Pickleball, everybody wants a piece of it. At what point, does commercialising Pickleball start damaging the very authenticity and community that made it attractive to brands in the first place?

J: Without commercialization, a sport cannot sustain itself. Without the exchange of dollars and cents for either a product or service, a sport cannot survive. No money, no game. But will commercialisation damage the sport?

It will if the sport is not built from the ground up i.e. the grassroots. You see the communities being built in Pickleball…they need to remain as communities. If the community leaders try to make too much money from their communities THEN commercialisation will kill Pickleball. That’s why I’m working closely with Reclub...coz communities ensure a sport’s longevity.

Look at football. More people in SG play football than there are businesses interested in investing in football. You have a problem. The reverse is true for MMA. More businesses want to be part of MMA but there aren’t enough people who practice MMA. There was no focus in building a MMA community. Who’s growing the next generation of fighters? Nobody.

So there has to be a balance between community and commercialization. Which is why with Pickleball, it’s good that we were players before we became Pickleball entrepreneurs. We understand both parts and the need to grow them in tandem.

We need people like Rizza and partners like Adrian so we can show brands that they can sink their advertising dollars and sponsorship money in the community.

Q5) Back to PickleMall, what has been the learnings from mall to mall?

J: I did a lot of thinking and actually have a huge session with my team tomorrow on how we can improve/what can we do etc. Gone are the days where you plan a beautiful story line and just go and execute it. These days, you have to tweak the product, the space and the programming for a better experience. Two events in, we have had 1,400 people play on our courts. With hindsight, I would have gone bigger and bolder from the start.

As a businessman, you're always walking on the freaking edge of complete destruction. I was like, how big do I dare to go? How much cash would the sponsors really give me? How many weeks will Capitaland give me? So, you ask gingerly. You ask for too much and they'd likely go, "Forget it”.

My biggest learning is that we need more time in each mall coz by the time people realize you’re in a mall, you’re already packing up. People who wanted to book the court were like, "Huh, you're gone this week”. So my biggest learning is that I want to be in the malls longer…which is what I’m planning to do in 2027 (like a month). Let me stay there longer. It’d be higher value to the brands, higher value to the players, higher value to you the mall.

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Dr Vivian and Prof Elmie popped by PickleMall. You gotta spend your salary increase somewhere. 😜

There was massive traffic in Sengkang Grand Mall. Junction8 had many people watching from the higher floors. I think Aperia Mall is going to be different coz it’s a commercial-office space. And GENEO will be even better coz we’d have space for TWO courts!

Q6) Looking ahead, do you see yourself pivoting within Pickleball or what does the future hold?

J: This is coming to my 10th year as an entrepreneur. And I tell you...a lot of people throw the word ‘pivot’ around very lightly. But to actually pivot is not easy coz you invest a lot of time, effort, money and hard work into building whatever IP that you are building. And anything can kill you. Like the advent of AI. Like how social media killed many media players. (I was in SPH before I joined ONE Championship so I’ve seen the dangers.)

Business cycles move in much shorter phases now. Previously, you can have a good 20-year runway to grow a business like a Toshiba or Hitachi. Today, you have to think about pivoting every few years. PickleMall as an IP is something I believe will last for at least the next 3 to 5 years. While I can't see beyond that, I'm more than prepared to pivot the way we do it, pivot how we do it, pivot the brand. But not pivot away from the sport. As long as Pickleball is here, I want to make sure that I'm still investing in it. If not, what's the point of building all these communities and brands only to jump at the next shiny thing that comes along? Every business I set up, I think of a 10-15 year runway, minimally. That is what I hope for with Pickleball.

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As Jason says, introducing yourself and paddle tapping before a game is what makes Pickleball so simple and social.

Q7) You’re a comms man and an avid Pickleball player. Take off your ideas/strategy hats and answer this purely as a Pickleball player…what part of Pickleball should never be compromised?

J: To answer that, you must first understand me a little. I'm a very socially-driven individual. An extrovert by nature who loves meeting people. And Pickleball checks all the boxes for me. There hasn't been a sport where I can interact with so many new people all the time. I play with friends but also meet new people at each game...the whole culture of walking onto the court with a complete stranger, tapping paddles and introducing yourself is awesome. For a person who loves talking and meeting people, it’s a dream come true. So I hold the social aspect of the game very dear. I really do.

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