Why Pickleball Patients Are Worth Chasing

You're listening to Podiatry Marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Welcome back to this week's episode of Podiatry Marketing. With me as usual is my good friend, big Jim Mac, also known as Jim McDannald. Jimmy boy, how are you doing?

Tyson, I'm doing well. It's a it's a hot summer here, but a lot of stuff going on. The kids are out of school, so a little bit of mister mom time, but enjoying getting outside and doing some activities with the kids.

Okay. I need to laugh. What is your hot summer? What temperature are you talking about when you say hot summer? Give us Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Yeah. So in Celsius today, it was 34.

Okay. That's fair enough. That's good.

Low nineties Fahrenheit, I think.

Okay. That is pretty warm. Even for Cairns Yeah. 34 is a nice day.

Yeah.

Yeah. If you're in Tasmania, half the population died at 34 degrees. They just they wouldn't cope. Just would not cope with that at all. Yeah.

Okay. Let's dive straight in this. What are we talking about today? Oh, actually, I know what we're talking about today. This I love this topic.

Yeah. So today, we're gonna talk about pickleball and the opportunity that you have with patients that, you know, are getting injured playing the, I guess, Australia, The UK, and America's fastest growing sport.

It is. When you mentioned you're gonna be talking about this, I went, oh, I better go and because you mentioned fastest growing sport in America. And I knew in The UK, they were saying it had grown really quickly. So I checked Australia as well, and yep, booming. Absolutely booming over here.

Yeah. It's kinda crazy. You know, like I mentioned, the kids being out of school and, you know, thought, you know, at 10:00 on a Monday, I would go take them to a court and we could play a little bit. We during our spring break, we went down to California, and it was a really fun time. They had a bunch of courts, and really there was no one on the courts except for us when we were playing.

So I thought, oh, just gonna go over to the local pickleball. You know, there's, like, I think, different courts at this one place and eight at another place. Thought, oh, it's 10:00 on a Monday. Not gonna be an issue. Just go out there and start playing.

And we get to the first place, and all the courts are completely filled up. And there's about 30 people outside waiting to, like, jump onto the court to kinda who's got necks. So so disappointed with that, so we decided to drive another, like, 10 miles away and check out the place in in kind of the neighboring community. Same thing, except there's about 80 people waiting to play and chairs sitting out where it's like a retired individual, like, social event party on a Monday at 10AM. So it just kind of, like, made me think.

And I've and I've seen some podiatrists talk about this, and, obviously, I think one of the major medical equipment suppliers in The US actually helps sponsor, like, the professional pickleball league here. But it just kind of reminded me that there is an opportunity here, and, you know, there's a way to kinda, like you know? So today, we're gonna talk a little bit about what is that opportunity, what does it mean to numbers, and then what are some ways to capitalize on this kind of growing, you know, trend and this popular that's growing within the sport of pickleball.

I think it's really interesting, and I think it's it's great we've brought this up because it just reminds podiatrists to be aware of trends, things that are happening. Keep keep your eye out. Listen to your patients. What are they this is why I ask your patients questions. What are you doing on the weekend?

And you start noticing people mention pickleball and try and tap in. Tap into something that is actually a growing sport if nobody else in your area is is even thinking about it.

Absolutely. And I think it's if you if you're kinda like you know, there's certain sports that are, you know, dying or not as popular, but and this is a sport that is kinda booming. So you may have patients come into the practice with injuries. So it's important at least to kinda know some of the basics. You know, for example, if if if you're been living under a rock and you don't know what pickleball is, I've been playing it basically since I was in high school.

Like Must have been around that long. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a long long time. That is a

long time

ago. Yeah. That's like thirty five is it yeah. Around thirty five years. It's it's been around that long.

I think longer than that. And their marketing initially for pickleball was they would go to these teacher conferences, usually like physical education conferences, and they would try to show they would set up courts where these places were at and have the PE teachers and the teachers, like, learn about pickleball. So, you know, kids will learn about it, you know, playing in high school because it is a pretty easy thing to set up in a gymnasium or or you can set it at multiple courts onto a tennis court. So, yeah, basically, it's a wooden paddle where, you know, they have these carbon fiber or plastic paddles now with basically, like, what we call in The US, like, wiffle ball. Yeah.

You're playing on the same dimensions as a badminton court as opposed to a big tennis court and a little bit of a lower net than a tennis tennis net. So it is one of those things. And then you see a lot of people playing doubles as well. So it's not just not not not a lot of, like, one v one, but a lot of two v two. So it can be kind of a social opportunity and game to play.

But it's like, what we talked about, it's kind of grown in popularity to the point where I think in in 2024, the stats I read that 19,800,000 Americans played pickleball that year, and that was, like, almost a 50% jump versus 2023. And then over the last three years, they've seen a surge of, like, over 311% of of people participating, you know, making this the fastest growing sport in The US. And like you mentioned, Tyson, to me before we got on the show that it's all it's super popular in The UK and Australia as well.

Yeah. Well, it's funny when I was in The UK in February, Jonathan Small that I stayed with, he said, oh, we're playing pickleball on Friday night. Are you up for it? I said, hell, yeah. I'm up for any challenge.

Have you played before? No. And I went in with the mindset that just show me what to do, and I will pick it up pretty quick. I think we end up playing seven games. It was all doubles too.

Like you mentioned, was two on two. I think I won three we won three games, lost four games, which I was really disappointed with because I'm extremely competitive. But Jonathan's son, he his plan is to become a pickleball coach because it's one of the fastest growing sports going around. And I've got also got friends who live in Bali now, and, yeah, they're playing pickleball a couple of times a week over there.

Yeah. It's crazy how it's picked up. Like like I mentioned, I think, you know, somewhere like one in five Americans have tried pickleball. Like, you know, I think it's the number I saw was forty eight point three million adults have at least tried it once, you know, sometime in their life, so that's interesting. You know, the game is young and active.

You know, the average player, the stats I saw was 34.8 years old, and 70% of them are monthly players, are between 18 and 44. So, you know, these are kinda young, healthy people. But, you know, the these type of, you know, stop and start sports can lead to a lot of foot and ankle related stuff. So it is, you know, a huge opportunity, and the infrastructure is taking off as well. Right?

They usually play on these are hard surfaces, usually like tennis courts, sometimes on hardwood floors, like on basketball courts or, you know, that are kind of converted or badminton courts. But, you know, somewhere in The US right now, there's about 68,000 pickleball courts, and there's about a 130 new locations that are popping up every month. One of the people I used to coach at McGill for cross country, her husband has, like, an indoor pickleball business now in Montreal. So it's like, you know, this it's just a really still, it's a rapidly growing sport. So I think there's there's some huge opportunities here because it is rapidly expanding.

These are motivated, kinda relatively young athletic population. You know, this is a great demographic for, you know, marketing your services and being seen to be the expert to help people take care of whatever foot and ankle injuries they might, you know, that might occur during the matches. When you have this sheer number of people playing, you know, a small percentage of people are gonna get injured, and that's not an insignificant number of potential patients that come and come into your practice.

Well, I think it's one of those things that if you don't know anything about pickleball, you listen to us talk, you become, what is this pickleball game? Go and read up on it. Watch some videos on it. If I think if you can understand it and be able to use their terminology in the kitchen or not in the kitchen, which is still I find weird. It's I think investigate the game whether you apply it or not, but understand the game.

And therefore, as you start noticing patients coming with it, you can talk to them on their level and understand what it is they're doing because it is a lot of lot of noise play. A lot of really short stop start fast changing angles very quickly. And all of bit well, I think we played, like I said, seven games, and I was knackered by the end of it all. And yeah. And my feet, my ankles were actually sore because it was something I had not done before.

Yeah. I think that's the thing. It it is an attractive sport, but, you know, some people would jump into it gung ho. Right? And that's where you're gonna get those overuse injuries.

There's a lot of different kind of foot and ankle problems that can be caused. Right? So like you mentioned, there's kinda these, like, lateral you're kinda cutting laterally and medially, and these can lead to ankle sprains. You know, sometimes if you haven't been, you know, stretching out properly before or after the the matches, you know, it can lead to some peroneal tendon injuries

Oh,

yeah. Or or some tendonitis and those types of things. The starts and it's kinda stop start overload. Maybe, you know, you're doing more kinda sedentary stuff. This could lead to, like, plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendon issues, whether it be tendinopathy or potentially Achilles ruptures.

These hardcore surfaces, you know, can cause a lot of pounding. You know, if you're just so obsessed that you just go every day for a few weeks, maybe it could lead to stress fractures or metatarsalgia. So there's a lot of different kind of service line that you might kinda, you know, introduce or might come into your practice, whether it be turf toe or kind of metatarsophalangeal joint sprains. These are types of things that, you know, that that that the players are gonna experience, and we're the experts as podiatrists are the people that they'll come and see if they know that we treat these types of things.

Obviously, if you've ever dealt with tennis players, whatever they've had come in, just times about 10, and that's probably what you're gonna eat with pickleball. Because because that they are sharp, short, fast games as well. I'm not quite sure when you've played, but when I was playing in The UK, I think it was the first one to 11 or first one to 21 or something. So they were really they were really quick games, and there wasn't a lot of you finish that side and then you you talk amongst yourselves. It was sort of like bang.

You had to get straight on it. There wasn't a lot of time to rest. And what I noticed with the age groups that were playing, there were people that were quite younger, 17, 18, 19, that age. And then there were a lot of other people that were, yeah, fifties and sixties. It might have been a couple a little bit older or they've just had a bad life.

And and they're playing against each other because it was just a competition where they just randomly play each other. I think you're gonna see a lot more reduced probably in that older bracket, you know, even like my age group where you forget if you haven't done that type of activity for what you're going to get sore.

No. Absolutely. That's a great point. Like, when I went on Monday morning at 10AM, it was a combination of kids out of school from college and then kind of the more retired set. Right?

So, you know, those those folks maybe aren't as into warming up and the kinda, like, the stretching and the thing that will kind of what we call prehab or preventative measures to kind of stop those things from happening. So these are kind of key you know, kind of ideal patients for your practice if you're looking to kinda grow something in sports medicine.

I looked at the court and just thought, oh, yeah. It's like a small tennis court, a big table tennis table. Something that this is not going to put a lot of stress on my body. So my warm up was pretty much just to walk out there. Let's just see what happens.

There was no warm up. And majority of the other people, the other little hitting the ball to each other and just sort of warming up a little bit, but I don't think anyone I don't think a lot of people warmed up as much as what they probably needed. Yeah. But in Cairns, we've got a court here in Cairns. I think it's outdoors though.

I haven't been to the one here. It's also gotten extremely popular.

I think it'd be tricky as well because, you know, if there's people waiting on the court. Right? Like, and there's people watching and waiting for their turn and such, It doesn't lead itself to, like, a a nice slow warm up or a chance to kinda, like, ease into things. You kinda gotta get things go going in a way. So I I hear you with the lack of warm up.

Reminds me of 10 pin bowling. Like, in 10 pin bowling, you you don't get much you don't actually get a lot of time to go and practice. You turn up, here's your lane, you're gonna get started. Yeah. You have to just go out there and just get started because when you're playing, there's other people that are waiting to actually take the lane after you.

Absolutely.

It explains why they don't do Timber bowling. So how can how can people get involved?

Yeah. So I think one huge opportunity is kinda positioning your clinic as they go to, you know, treatment for pickleball injuries or a resource about how to prevent these things from happening. So you can kinda launch something on your website, whether it be a pickleball injuries webpage or a blog about ways to warm up before if you're waiting off the court, some ways to warm up to hopefully avoid some foot and ankle related issues. But whether it be some dedicated pages on the site or some blog posts, it's a great way to rank for these things. So I'm sure that when people get injured themselves, they're gonna search, you know, pickleball, foot injury, name of town or something or podiatrist, pickleball or something.

So, you know, you wanna have that kind of organic search traffic coming your way. So if you have pages built on your website or blogs written about it, that's a that's a huge opportunity. You really wanna kinda highlight your experience in sports medicine. You know, you've treated tennis players in the past or maybe you have some relationships with some of the different clubs. Just letting them know that, you know, you are kind of a known expert in that area.

You know, you can also when you're writing out these pages, like, give people a general sense of, like, you know, if you have plantar fasciitis or Achilles tinnitus, what are the kind of return to play timelines or some some things they can do maybe on their own that it's not necessarily medical advice, but just some stuff they can try over the counter before they come and see you. Sometimes you can have downloadable things. Like I said, you know, giving them a warm up routine. Maybe there's, like, some footwear lists or checklist they should be looking at. You know, maybe, you know, the best shoes for pickleball.

That might be a great way for you to kinda get your name out there and kinda be top of mind when it when people you know, even before people injure themselves to be associated with that with that group and with with that, you know, kind of top of mind awareness. When they do get injured, you're seen as a person to come to.

And I think even think knowing how many people are playing it, like I said, having information on your website because people are going to be searching for this. They've had an injury. They're going to search for it. I had a problem the other day where I wasn't sure what was going on. So I went straight to Google and just put in what my symptoms are, what was happening, and all a sudden, I got this couple of things I read through and, okay, that's the exact problem.

That's exactly what it is. Dug into a little bit deeper. So people are going to do the same thing with pickleball. But I think another idea too is if there is a pickleball group in your area, go down there, find out who's organizing it, do they have competitions, can you sponsor the club? Because if you can get your podiatry business name on the court or around the court or sponsoring the competitions that they have weekly or monthly, you will get known as the pickleball podiatrist.

It could be worse things to be called.

No. Absolutely. There's a lot worse things to be called. But I think that that that's a great point. That kinda kinda dovetails into my next point is that, you know, there's a huge opportunities for kind of community and courtside outreach and networking.

So whether it's sponsoring leagues, maybe it's, you know, working with the park district or whoever sets up these courts, maybe it's a private business, you know, showing kinda some on court, you know, advertising or, you know, having some screening days potentially for a club or or a business or, you know, talking with the local park district about, you know, trying to find ways to help them. But you can also kinda host some, you know, feet first for pickleball or some workshops at rec centers to make sure that people are aware, you know, what these injuries can be. And then like you talked about as well, you know, whether it be a club, a teaching pro, especially shoe shop, or, you know, people kinda wherever pickleball players are kinda getting information and gear and those kind of things, building strong relationships with those businesses, coaches, and clubs can lead to a significant amount of referrals and kind of building trust over time that you are that podiatrist who can help take care of those foot and ankle related injuries they may pick up when they're playing.

Do you know of any specific pickable shoes at the moment? I'm not aware. I haven't really looked into that deep.

I mean, my guts that they're kinda like, basically, like tennis shoes. I mean, I think, you know, it's been a long time. I was a huge Andre Agassi fan growing up, so I had a couple pairs of of Nike Agassi shoes. But, honestly, I haven't really looked to see what's available out there more more recently, but I'm sure someone is marketing their shoes as, like, the top shoes for pickleball. But in my based off the kind of the the services they play on, I would assume it's pretty similar to, like, regular kind of competitive tennis shoes.

Okay. So what else should everyone be doing?

Yeah. Besides the kinda like the community and, you know, courtside outreach, I think it can be really helpful to, you know, obviously sprinkle on some digital tactics to capture search and some social attention. So for example, you know, do you have pages that are gonna rank well for things like pickleball, ankle sprain, treatment, name of city. Right? Like, you need to have some pages that will help attract those people searching for terms like that.

You know, maybe you have some paid ads, you know, around, you know, specific areas that are you know, maybe has a court. Maybe you have you know, there's a there's a court in that area and maybe it's a a five mile radius or something. But if someone injures themselves and, you know, searches, you know, looking for an urgent care appointment or we treat, you know, say, pickleball injuries same day or within twenty four hours, that can be a great way to differentiate yourself from somebody well. You know, people don't wanna wait a week. They don't wanna go to ERs either necessarily.

So if you're a resource and a great way for them to be seen quickly, that can be a good good way of doing it. If you have a Facebook page or an Instagram page, you know, showing some demos or showing, you know, some of the warm ups or the the injuries, the way you treat folks. You know, paid social can also be a way to raise awareness that you do treat these injuries. There's also some great targeting that can be done on things like Facebook and Instagram. If people like a certain pickleball club or a certain pickleball player or the sport itself.

It can be a way to make sure that you're targeting those folks with those either, you know, visual ads or video ads to really show them that you are kind of top of mind when they do do have those injuries. And then also just, you know, prompting reviews, getting mentioned by patients, you know, how you get them back on the court. You know, when you do have those patients that come and have good, you know, good experiences in your clinic and can get back on court, you know, kinda hitting them up for those reviews. And if they do mention, you know, pickleball or, you know, that they had a great experience with you. Those keywords are gonna translate into better search traffic for for your website and for you and lead to more patients down the line that have these types of injuries.

Yeah. When you were mentioning about videos, I'm thinking for podiatrists, out of the forty eight million people that in America who have tried it, there has to be a couple podiatrists in there as well. Or you'd have to know somebody who plays pickleball. So I think it'd be really I think it'd be great for your website to go down there with somebody that you know and film them playing and do some close-up shots of their feet going through these certain movements, and then relating what type of injuries could connect with that movement that they just did. And one, it'd be and it'd be a lot of fun putting it all together as well.

No. I think people are really visual these days. Right? They like short form video. They like to see what's happening, and the more you can kinda show it to them and not necessarily make them read through a wall of text, they're gonna be very appreciative of that.

Well, especially, I can just I have this visual image in my head at the moment sort of, you know, somebody running up towards the net, what they're doing, and then them jutting a lateral movement, and then diagonally coming back across, but then all of a sudden, going from one side to the other side, all those different movements could relate to different injuries. You can if you can film that whole thing and then list the different types of injuries underneath as it happening or putting it on the screen if you're yeah. Wanna be a little bit more fancy. And like I said, people are going to be searching for pickleball injuries. They're gonna be searching for who treats foot injuries in your location.

And if they happen to mention pickleball, if you're the one that has written about it, then you're gonna be found.

Absolutely. You have to have that stuff on your site. You have to have that trust, whether it be in reviews or testimonials on our site, but it just gonna help you separate yourself from that generic, you know, podiatry website that's trying to treat everything that has no specifics about anything whatsoever. So, yeah, it's it's a huge opportunity, especially the way that this sport is growing kind of across at least the English speaking parts of the world seem to be really taking to it. I haven't done a lot of other global research since we mostly focus on our American, Canadian, Australian, and UK client, you know, our our our podcast listeners.

But I think it's a huge opportunity and just having some basic facts and learning about it is the first step. And then how do you take advantage and how can you show that you are that expert to take care of that is a is a huge opportunity for Eury and Ink Clinic to help grow a sports medicine type practice.

I actually feel like we're we're almost, like, inside trading here. It's almost like people listen to the stock market and we go, okay. We have a tip on a share that is going to go through the roof. You can buy it now at 50¢. It's gonna go to $3.

How much money do you wanna put it? Guaranteed it's going to happen. I feel like that's what we're telling podiatrists right now is pickleball is growing. It's only gonna grow more. It's an easy game to play at the same time.

It's a difficult game to play. It's not like golf, which is just a difficult game to play.

But I think there's a lot of opportunities for injury as well. Right? So, like, it's it's a it's a definitely something that leads to injury and and a and large you know, when these many people are playing it, it's a huge opportunity to grow a business. So I think, know, you we are we're giving them a kind of the inside scoop, the inside stuff, but I think that that the people that are listening to this would be smart to to to kind of take that information and take action.

Yeah. It will be interesting the next time I talk to Jonathan Small for him to listen to this episode and then get his feedback of what he thought because he is so involved in playing pickleball. He was one that took me to pickleball. Yeah. That yeah.

I'd love to know if he's had many patients so far because I know he he absolutely loves playing it.

It's it's it's great to having people, you know, in your corner and people you know that can can help give that feedback about it because, yeah, there's it definitely is huge. It's growing to be a huge sport, and we'll see if that that growth continues. But all it looks like it's going that way.

Okay. Well, Insider Jim, this is actually your name, Insider Jim.

Don't call that, like, the IRS or the SEC on me. I don't wanna get any insider trading charges going on.

So Yeah. When I go go go to America later on the year, they go, oh, hang on. Do you know insider Jim? Oh, I don't know the guy. No.

This has been a great topic. I've really enjoyed it.

Yeah. Me too, Tyson.

Okay. I will talk to you next week.

Alright. See you then.

Okay. See you.

Bye now. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDaniel. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.