As pickleball has swept across the United States with astonishing speed, businesses have begun to capitalize on the sport’s rising popularity by developing commercial spaces that offer court time for both casual and competitive play. For Jarrett Gordon, a Colorado-based serial entrepreneur, the sport’s explosive growth presented a unique opportunity to develop something new — the state’s first combination sports bar/pickleball club called The Sporty Pickle in Centennial, a Denver suburb.
Recognizing the success of new interactive “eatertainment” business models such as technology-driven golfing establishments, Gordon began researching the various ways he could create an attractive space laden with fun modern technologies that engage guests and present an avenue to replication, and eventually the possibility of franchising. After a fortuitous meeting with the innovators behind the SAVI ecosystem, a family of innovative commercial AV solutions, he had a clear path to achieving his goal at Sporty Pickle.
Bringing in SAVI
Photo courtesy: SAVI
“Pickleball has taken off like a rocket ship, and that has presented a major opportunity to entrepreneurs like me who recognize the public’s hunger for new leisure spaces that cater to their interests,” Gordon says. “By combining court space with a luxury sports bar experience, The Sporty Pickle is introducing a new concept that leverages the most successful aspects of sports-based business models and adopts best practices to deliver premium entertainment for both first-time and repeat customers. SAVI plays a vital role in the Sporty Pickle experience, providing automation, instant control of our systems, and the ability to custom-tune the ambiance to maximize enjoyment for a variety of customers and events.”
The Sporty Pickle offers patrons a one-of-a-kind destination that transforms 16,000 square feet of warehouse space into an interactive high-tech attraction with three reservable pickleball courts, darts and cornhole alongside a 24-tap bar and dining area serving elevated bar fare. The technology is a main attraction, combining colored low-voltage lighting with distributed audio and 35 LG commercial displays to maximize the business’ options for automating daily setup and shutdown, accommodating special events and enabling special attractions such as laser light-style pickleball play called “cosmic pickleball.”
“Everyone understands the basics of the business revolve around the bar, the kitchen and the entertainment,” Gordon adds, “But what I learned is that through SAVI, our management team can exert immediate and powerful control over the entire property and utilize automation to eliminate time-intensive tasks while delivering a reliably excellent guest experience.”
Project Details
Gordon worked with the AV design and installation experts at iWired to select and integrate the location’s various technology systems utilizing SAVI. Now staff can normalize daily operations with conveniences such as schedules that automatically turn the audio, video, custom content and lighting systems on and off at opening and closing, requiring no manual actions.
The system also allows intuitive monitoring of more than two dozen internal and external security cameras, which provide much more than simple safety surveillance. With advanced analytics features including people counting and heat mapping, the solution enables measurement of total foot traffic, zone usage and the effects of different promotions or time slots on sales and activities.
The business can also develop immersive experiences such as “cosmic pickleball” that combines DJ-style DMX lighting with music that creates a club atmosphere for weekend nights and can be used for private events. The SAVI system is so widely applicable and adjustable that it even provides control of the outdoor sign with a color-changing rotating wiffle ball and can grow to integrate additional cameras in the future to capture and share live gameplay broadcasts to displays throughout the premises.
Simplified Operations, Enhanced Profitability
Photo courtesy: SAVI
“This project is a perfect case study of how SAVI’s platform can support modern businesses by greatly simplifying operations and offering advanced, built-in features and capabilities that can directly enhance profitability and revenue streams,” remarks Stacey Hileman, Colorado regional manager at iWired. “We’ve given The Sporty Pickle such simple, granular control over its wide-ranging entertainment systems that there is virtually no request or adjustment that cannot be achieved, which helps ensure customer satisfaction and reduces pressure on employees.”
Hileman also notes that SAVI’s high reliability and simple, accessible user interface results in fewer complications and a reduced need for service calls, which benefits the integrator, the business and its customers. “Unlike systems of the past, the reliability and user-friendly operation of SAVI’s technologies minimizes the need for emergency triage while enabling our technicians to have remote insight to quickly assist with any minor troubleshooting issues that may arise,” Hileman adds. “We want The Sporty Pickle to operate smoothly every day and deliver a superior fun-filled atmosphere, and choosing SAVI was instrumental to achieving such high performance and ensuring that operations won’t be interrupted.”
As for the sports bar itself, the SAVI system provides a web-based interface to instantly control what content is shown on each display, including the 98-inch LG webOS commercial displays that separate the distinct dining spaces, each capable of 2×2 Canvas tiling layouts. LG displays were chosen specifically for their ease of integration with SAVI, which utilizes LG’s integrated webOS software to enable SAVI Canvas decoding and eliminate the need for external content boxes at each display. At launch, content sources will include DIRECTV feeds, Roku inputs for special events, custom and web-based content, plus Rockbot streaming music and jukebox services.
Utilizing SAVI Canvas
SAVI also includes the ability to designate individual employees or roles with segmented permission sets providing custom control for managers, servers and other workers. Staff can further utilize SAVI Canvas to provide digital signage tools for displaying advertisements, customized messaging and branded content, while requiring just a single cable run to each display for simplified installation and maintenance.
Photo courtesy: SAVI
With SAVI Canvas, users can also divide displays into regions to show multiple content sources on a single display, including in-house content such as announcements for pickleball court availability or reservations.
Additionally, SAVI Show provides a media database that puts content creation, distribution and management at workers’ fingertips with a drag-and-drop interface enabling instant deployment of content to any display, any time, including menus, slideshows and more. Controlling the system is simple thanks to SAVI’s user-friendly interface available through any web browser. This enables mobile control and remote monitoring for enhanced visibility and rapid response to customer requests. The combination of these capabilities provides complete control over the guest experience and assures the reliability necessary to encourage repeat visits.
Ensuring A Positive Outcome
“The creativity and automation available at The Sporty Pickle are what has attracted so many modern hospitality businesses to the SAVI ecosystem,” says Ernie Coulter, national director of sales at SAVI Controls. “We are dedicated to simplifying everything from installation and system design to daily operations and staff efficiency. With SAVI, business owners can focus on providing superior customer service without worrying about technological challenges or requiring workers to waste time adjusting or troubleshooting the system. We’ve helped Jarrett realize his dream for this new venture and will continue to support him with replicable solutions that can be deployed at future sites to offer predictable operations and promote the feasibility of franchising in the future.”
