How Smarter Energy Decisions Are the Next Competitive Advantage in Pickleball
By David Anderson • June 3, 2026 • 8 min read
The Cost of Comfort
At 1:00 p.m. on a July afternoon, the courts are full.
Players rotate through open play. League matches stretch across multiple courts. Ceiling fans spin overhead. Rooftop HVAC units work relentlessly against the summer heat while bright court lighting remains fully illuminated across thousands of square feet.
From the player’s perspective, everything feels exactly as it should. The building is comfortable. The air feels cool. The lighting is consistent. The experience works.
What most players never see is the electrical meter.
While rallies unfold inside, energy costs are accumulating minute by minute. Every degree of cooling, every fan operating beyond necessity, every lighting fixture, every rooftop unit, and every operational decision being made throughout the facility quietly influences profitability.
For many pickleball facility owners, that reality is becoming impossible to ignore.
As indoor pickleball expands worldwide, operators are discovering that one of the largest opportunities for financial growth may not come from adding courts, increasing memberships, or expanding programming.
It may come from understanding the building itself.
The global pickleball conversation often centers around tournaments, facility growth, investment, and player participation. Yet behind every successful indoor facility, another game is being played—one that never appears on a scoreboard.
A Facility’s Largest Hidden Opponent
For indoor pickleball facilities, customer comfort is non-negotiable. Players expect bright courts, consistent temperatures, healthy air quality, and comfortable playing conditions regardless of the weather outside. If a facility feels too hot, too humid, too dark, or uncomfortable, players notice immediately. The challenge is that comfort often comes with a significant price tag.
Heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, and building-support systems represent some of the largest operating expenses a facility faces each month. While owners often focus heavily on memberships, programming, tournaments, and revenue generation, utility bills quietly continue consuming profits in the background. Many facilities inherit existing equipment when converting warehouses, retail spaces, or industrial buildings into pickleball venues. Others move quickly through construction phases focused primarily on opening doors and attracting players.
Only later do operators begin asking an important question: “How efficiently is this building actually operating?” That question may determine long-term profitability more than many realize.
Understanding What Drives Utility Costs
Most facility owners look at utility bills and see only the final number. What many do not fully understand is how utility companies calculate those costs. Energy consumption represents one portion of the equation. Every kilowatt-hour used by lighting systems, HVAC equipment, and other building loads contributes to monthly expenses. Demand charges often become an even larger factor.
Demand reflects the highest amount of power a facility requires at any single point during a billing cycle. That peak might occur on a hot summer afternoon when every rooftop unit is operating at maximum cooling capacity while all court lighting and support systems are running simultaneously.
One short period of excessive demand can influence utility costs for an entire month.
Understanding that distinction allows operators to move beyond simply reducing energy use and begin strategically managing when and how energy is consumed.
Small Decisions Create Large Costs
Many of the most expensive energy mistakes are surprisingly simple:
- Fans running continuously during occupied hours, even when no cooling is required
- HVAC schedules extending well beyond actual operating hours
- Cooling setpoints pushed unnecessarily low
- Heating setpoints raised unnecessarily high
- Equipment overrides left active for days or weeks
- Outside-air economizer settings introducing excessive heat and humidity into the building
These operational choices often occur without anyone realizing their financial impact.
In some facilities, equipment may even be operating incorrectly due to installation shortcuts, control modifications, or contractor adjustments made years earlier.
The result is the same: increased operating costs without any improvement in customer experience.
The Facilities That Win Long-Term
As indoor pickleball becomes more competitive, successful facilities are increasingly learning that operational efficiency creates flexibility. Lower energy costs allow owners to reinvest in programming, staffing, amenities, technology, player development, and customer experiences. Energy savings become business-growth opportunities.
The most effective operators begin with visibility.
They inventory equipment. They analyze utility bills. They monitor HVAC performance. They understand where energy is being consumed and when.
Only then can meaningful improvements occur. Many facilities discover immediate opportunities through occupancy-based scheduling, improved control strategies, lighting optimization, motion-sensing technologies, and better HVAC management.
Others uncover equipment operating around the clock despite being needed only during limited portions of the day. What begins as an energy review often becomes a roadmap toward stronger financial performance.
Technology Creates a Global Opportunity
One of the most exciting aspects of modern facility management is that these principles apply virtually anywhere pickleball is growing.
Whether a facility operates in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, or emerging international markets, the fundamentals remain remarkably similar.
Players want comfort. Owners want profitability. Technology now allows operators to achieve both.
Advanced building analytics, remote monitoring platforms, intelligent control systems, utility tracking software, and performance-based HVAC optimization tools provide facility owners with insights that were largely unavailable only a decade ago. Facilities no longer need to guess where energy is being wasted. Data can reveal it.
As pickleball continues expanding internationally, the ability to operate efficiently while maintaining exceptional player environments will become increasingly important for facilities seeking long-term success.
Education Is Driving the Industry Forward
As pickleball facilities become larger, more sophisticated, and more operationally complex, the industry is beginning to recognize that long-term success requires far more than court construction alone. One of the strongest themes I have observed over the last year while working with and speaking to pickleball facility owners across the industry is that education plays a major role in this market transformation.
Many owners are discovering that operating a successful facility involves far more than memberships, leagues, and programming. It requires understanding building performance, technology, operational efficiency, customer experience, and long-term business sustainability. That is one of the reasons I admire the mission of the CourtReserve World Pickleball Conference.
The conference continues to bring together facility operators, investors, technology leaders, manufacturers, coaches, tournament organizers, and industry innovators from around the world to share ideas, experiences, and expertise that help advance the sport both on and off the court.
As the sport evolves into a truly global industry, conversations about sustainability, operational excellence, business performance, and long-term facility success become increasingly important. The conference serves as a platform where those ideas can be exchanged across borders, across industries, and across generations of leadership helping shape the future of the sport.
A Shared Mission Beyond the Court
That same spirit of collaboration is also reflected through the World Pickleball Conference’s support of the Veterans Pickleball Association and initiatives such as the Paddle Battle of the Branches.
The event brings together veterans, adaptive athletes, business leaders, first responders, and members of the broader pickleball community through competition, camaraderie, and service. Those efforts reinforce something that continues to define pickleball’s growth worldwide. The sport is about far more than competition. It is about creating environments where people thrive.
In many ways, that same principle applies to the facilities helping drive pickleball’s global growth. The most successful venues are not simply creating places to play. They are creating experiences, communities, and environments players want to return to repeatedly.
That philosophy sits at the center of both operational excellence and long-term facility sustainability.
The Future Beyond the Court
The next generation of successful pickleball facilities will not be defined solely by court counts or square footage. They will be defined by how effectively they balance player experience, operational excellence, technology, and financial sustainability.
Comfort and efficiency are no longer opposing goals.
When facilities understand their buildings, manage energy strategically, and leverage modern technology, both can improve simultaneously. As pickleball continues its extraordinary global rise, owners who learn to control operating costs may discover something powerful: a competitive advantage.
In a rapidly evolving industry, that advantage may prove just as valuable as any winning shot on the court.
About David Anderson
David Anderson is the Founder of Energie Consulting & Controls and Energie Multisport, where he helps pickleball and multisport facilities improve performance through smarter HVAC, lighting, and energy strategies. With more than 30 years of experience in building automation, he works with operators to reduce operating costs, enhance player comfort, and create scalable, efficient facility operations.
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