Courtside Chat with the Founders 🎙️

Leagues & ladders are here.

The biggest launch in Pickleheads history. You're seeing it before it goes live.

Watch the Replay

Date

Friday, March 20

Time

10AM PT / 1PM ET

Hosts

Max & Brandon

Why today matters

This has been on the roadmap
since day one.

Leagues and ladders have always been the vision. Today you're the first people to see what we actually built — before we announce it to anyone else.

We'll walk you through both formats live, answer every question you have, and make sure you're ready to run your first league or ladder the moment this call ends.

Leagues Multi-week seasons with automated standings, weekly scheduling, and a playoff bracket to crown a champion.

Ladders Always-on, skill-based competitive play. No end date. No season. Players show up when they can.

Built for you Every decision was made for community organizers running real pickleball, not copied from tennis software.

Pickleball Leagues

This is what leagues
should look like.

Set it up once. Standings update automatically. Weekly invites go out on their own. And at the end of the season, a playoff bracket to crown a champion.

Everything that used to be manual is now automatic. No exporting, no reseeding, no texting standings to the group.

Built on 11 formats you already know. DUPR, payments, late arrivals — everything from your existing sessions carries over.

Players see their standings live in the app. Match history, win/loss record, real-time updates after every session.

2 hrs

per week spent manually seeding players and tracking standings with spreadsheets. This is what we hear over and over again. We built this to save you that 2 hours per week.

"Set it up once and it runs itself from there."

League Demo

Let's get into leagues.

During the demo, we'll cover three things:

The finished product. Live standings, session schedule, and playoff bracket — before we touch creation.

How it's set up. Creation form, roster, format selection, automated invites.

What your players see. The live standings, match history, and how it looks from their side.

Leagues — Recap

That's leagues
on autopilot.

✓

One setup, full season. Dates, roster, format — set it once and every session is built automatically.

✓

Standings update after every session. Players see them live in the app. No spreadsheet, no group text.

✓

Ends with a playoff bracket. Up to 32 teams. Custom seeding. A champion at the end of every season.

✓

Already started your spring league? Link existing round robin sessions now. You don't have to wait until fall.

Pickleball Ladders

Ladders work.
Now the software
does too.

Ladders have been around forever. The problem was never the format — it was that running one well meant spreadsheets, manual seeding, and hours of work every week. Most organizers eventually gave up.

"You get the competitive matchups of a league with the flexibility of open play."

Skill-based matchups every week. No DUPR, no self-reported ratings, no organizer judgment calls. The step system handles placement automatically.

No commitment pressure. Players skip a week, their step holds. No season to fall behind on, no spots to fill when someone cancels.

No end date. It just keeps going. 90 days of sessions auto-generated, extending automatically. Invites go out on their own.

The stickiest format we've built. Players don't need to commit to a season. They just keep coming back because the games are always good.

Ladder Demo

Now let's dig into ladders.

Two things to watch for this time:

The step system in action. How players move up and down, and how the app seeds each session automatically.

What it feels like week to week. No end date, no playoffs, no pressure — just great games every time.

Ladders — Recap

Set it up once.
The ladder runs itself.

✓

Seed once on night one. After that, tap Sort by Standings. The app handles placement automatically every week.

✓

Players skip any week without losing their spot. Never scramble for subs or manage cancellations again.

✓

New players integrate automatically. The system places them based on who they finish alongside. Self-corrects within a session or two.

✓

Almost any group would benefit. You need roughly three courts worth of players. That's it.

Getting started

Getting your players in.

Two paths. Pick the one that fits your group.

Path 1

You collect signups on Pickleheads

Use Groups and Lists to invite people to sign up for your league sessions directly on Pickleheads.

You can also add players to league events yourself via Reserve a Slot.

Path 2

You collect signups externally

We highly recommend the QR code method.

Day of: print a QR code from your session page. Players scan it when they arrive. It adds them to the session and serves as check-in.

Already started your spring league? Link your existing round robin sessions now. You don't have to wait until fall.

Coming Soon

Fixed partner leagues
are two weeks out.

We want to make sure it's right before it's live — so here's where things stand and what to do in the meantime.

Why we're holding it. We're making changes to ensure players sign up with the same team every week, and that organizers can clean up any instances where someone signed up with a different team. We don't want to release it until it's ready for primetime.

If you're already running fixed partner sessions, keep going. Continue creating those sessions as normal. The moment the league product is ready, you can pull them in, link them to your league, and players will be able to see the standings.

Pricing

Two ways to access leagues and ladders.

Players chip in

Free for you. $1/month per player.

✓Require Pickleheads Plus to join your sessions

✓Players subscribe to Plus for $1/month

✓You get unlimited leagues, ladders, and all premium tools at no cost

✓Players can see live standings and schedule

+Players get advanced stats and other Plus features

How to Plus-Power

You cover it

Free for players. $74.99/month for the organizer.

✓You subscribe to Pickleheads Ultra

✓Players do not need a subscription

✓You get unlimited leagues, ladders, and all premium tools

✓Players can see live standings and schedule

Learn More About Ultra

Note: Leagues and ladders are not included on the Pro plan. The Plus-power path is the best route forward for most of you — your players get real value, and you get every premium tool at no cost.