№ 008 · Case study
PicklePlay unified players, clubs, and facilities on one platform for discovery, bookings, and community. Vermillion ran the mobile engineering function for four years. Blake Renaud and her team drove the business to acquisition by UTR Sports in December 2024. We owned the iOS and Android apps, the release cadence, and the platform architecture across the full arc.
15 minutes. No pitch.
✦ Acquired by UTR Sports (Dec 2024)
✦ Four years embedded
✦ Due diligence ready
✦ Native iOS and Android
The pickleball community was fragmented. Players struggled to find courts, clubs could not manage reservations cleanly, and there was no single place for the community to operate day to day.
PicklePlay needed one platform for three audiences: players finding courts and partners, clubs running facilities and memberships, and sites handling reservations and events.
It had to work on mobile and web, support live reservations, and stay maintainable while the category grew fast.
We pressure-tested journeys for players, clubs, and sites with the PicklePlay team, sequenced features, and aligned the product to how real facilities were already operating.
We prototyped mobile and web flows with a direct UI that had to work for a wide age range and uneven network conditions in the field.
We shipped native iOS and Android with profiles, search, and bookings, plus club and reservation systems with availability that matched how leagues and sites actually run.
We exercised the stack with pilot clubs and players, tightened stability and privacy-sensitive paths, and iterated on operational tools as adoption grew.
Unified accounts, court discovery, social tools for finding partners, and notifications for reservations and events.
Tools for managers to run events, memberships, announcements, and leagues, shipped as a web surface clubs could adopt without retraining their staff.
Real-time availability, booking confirmations, and alignment with club operations so front desk workflows stayed coherent.
Vermillion ran the mobile engineering function for PicklePlay for four years. We owned the iOS and Android apps, the release cadence, and the platform architecture across the full arc. Blake Renaud and her team drove the business; we ran the engineering.
Clubs moved bookings and event sign-ups into digital workflows that matched how staff already worked, reducing manual coordination.
We stayed in the codebase through growth and transaction, not a handoff after a single milestone.
Acquired by UTR Sports, December 4, 2024. Platform continues to operate under UTR Sports.
Vermillion was the partner we needed to take PicklePlay further. The team understood the vision and shipped mobile apps, reservations, and club tooling that matched how players and operators actually work.
Next case
Artfare →