Can pickleball save the ‘dead mall’ in your community?
- A startup company hopes pickleball can replace America’s dead malls
- Nearly 70% of Americans live within an hour of a dead mall
- Pickleball has been exploding in popularity
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(NewsNation) — It’s a pretty simple idea: Americans aren’t going to malls as much anymore. They are, however, playing pickleball — and a lot of it.
Enter Picklemall.
The startup will open its first U.S. location next month in Tempe, Arizona, with 24 courts in what was once a shopping mall.
“Malls across the country have a problem. They need to get more creative and they need entertainment spaces. They need people coming from different trade areas to come into the malls. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re going nationwide with pickleball courts in malls,” said Picklemall founder and CEO West Shaw.
Nearly 70% of Americans live within an hour of a dead mall — also known as a ghost mall, zombie mall, or abandoned mall. About 20% of Americans live near at least two.
As to why Shaw is so confident pickleball will catch on, he believes it already has.
“I’ve never met anybody that goes in and then quits,” he said. “Once you go in, you play. And then four of your other friends play. And that’s why the growth rate of pickleball has been well over 30% year over year.”
