CourtsApp acts like Expedia, OpenTable, and Airbnb, but for Tennis Courts

Hey hey, this is Sean with the Award Winning Go Tennis Podcast powered by Signature Tennis.

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And now let's get into our recent conversation with Darren Hornick.

And most of you would recognize is that Darren owns the Port Washington Tennis Academy

on Long Island, where John and Patrick McEnroe grew up playing.

Port Washington currently hosts the John McEnroe Tennis Academy.

Darren is also founder and CEO of Courts app, which is the priceline.com of Courts rental

for Racket Sports facilities.

Have a listen and let us know what you think.

Who are you and why do we care?

I don't know, but I'll tell you who I am.

I'm Darren Hornick.

My background is predominantly in real estate.

I own a bunch of real estate and develop a bunch of real estate throughout the country.

I had the fortunate opportunity to buy the Port Washington Tennis Academy, which is a

renowned tennis academy in Port Washington.

The reason it's renowned is where both McEnroe brothers play.

It's the first academy in the United States.

So it's where the McEnroe brothers were trained, played with Tracy Austin, Beatrice Gerald

Wright.

I bought it from the original owners.

And when I bought it, I had the vision of enhancing it and improving it.

And we did a very big job, I believe, in doing that.

It was 17 tennis courts.

Now it's 13 tennis to 12 pickable.

Because you can't grow with a pickable, which we're all aware of.

But one thing I noticed when I bought it is the overall sophistication level and technological

levels and marketing that court operators have are not up to par with the rest of the

industries out there, particularly real estate where every square inch is counted and every

dollar is maximized.

I didn't say the same sophistication level with racquet sports.

And I created courts app to bridge that gap and help racquet sport owners fill their

courts and help players find courts easily and book courts easily and get out there and

play is really the name of the game.

That also leans in a little bit to the why are you unique question because this isn't court

management.

It's not what I would use when I run my club.

It's not what Bobby uses to run his club.

This is a layer within that helps me do more with what I have, right?

That's exactly right, Sean.

So we have relationships and partnerships with the biggest court management companies out

there that will be announcing shortly.

But the names you know, what they do, they manage the inside four walls.

So they know the courts, they know the court availability, they have personnel, they have

accounting, they have credit card processing, they run your pro shop, they run court maintenance.

We don't do any of that.

What we do is we take the available court inventory and put that on the market.

The same way Expedia takes room availability from a hotel and puts that on a market on

a macro basis.

But what's most unique is you have price and discovery and location on our app to find

out where you want to play and then discover the pricing differential.

So if I went on XYZ court and price was $50 an hour and I wanted to book there, you know,

that's great.

But maybe down the block, the same court is now $40 an hour.

Why not save $10 on that court booking?

So where the only one to do that, the same way we've all used, you know, Expedia, open

table, Airbnb, we are able to compare contrast to different.

So we'll bring it to the market for both the racquet clubs and the consumer.

Kick it to Bobby because I've done a bunch of due diligence on this.

So I already know my thoughts and Bobby likes to hear this firsthand and give us an initial

reaction.

What's your what's your knee jerk reaction on this one, Bobby?

knee jerk.

Obviously Atlanta or Choea driven, so we don't have the incentive of money.

I think from the tennis club perspective, I've been saying it for, you know, five, six

years now, it's the future and I love the idea of that.

And I love the idea that the clubs are accepting it if they're accepting it.

I mean, because I think the clubs, you know, a tennis specific club in order to survive

down here needs to open it up.

You know, hey, I got a couple hours available.

Come on in and fill it.

So I, you know, I've been screaming for this since my days involvement with courts with

the K, you know, when we were trying to break into the market.

Yeah.

No, I mean, the court owners love it.

I mean, I'd say 90% of the conversations end.

This is a no brainer, right?

Because it's a win-win, no, no court out there is used 100% of the time, right?

It's just impossible to fill all 16 hours of the day, especially with multiple courts, right?

If you have 10 courts at 16 hours a day, that's 160 hours, right?

So maybe you're filled 80, 90% in peak, we only 10 to 20% in off peak.

So we're taking your available courts, you know, you still do your job, we're not competing

with you.

We're going to help you fill your off courts because there's two, there's two numbers.

One people think that these clubs are membership club only, right?

So it's gated there, and then the other one is it's painful to find a way to book the

court, right?

You have to make a phone call, you have to become a guest account, you know, you just come

on courts at and you can search and discover in three clicks and book one click in your

app.

So we're really making it easier.

So I'm happy you agree with Bobby, we didn't get it to her right now.

Hey, question for you, because I'd love to see it go one step.

And as Sean said, I don't know, we might already.

One thing I pushed was for an open concept where you could like for the, not just the

courts, the club, but if the club had a drill that they wanted to get filled, because I

think that would explode down here.

I think the opportunity for people to see more than what is just in their neighborhood.

There's a, you know, I had people driving 45 minutes because they've learned about our

drills.

They did it once, enjoyed it and start.

So I, you know, it was just a financial thing they couldn't get there yet.

But I would love to see that.

And I think that's a home run as well.

Yeah.

So the one is court booking and the idea around that is we need the product and we need

the inventory to show people, right?

So the same way when DoorDash started, they started in certain geographic areas, just

like Uber started in San Francisco, it didn't, it didn't pay to go out there and not have

cars who could drive people in a given market.

So we're focused on the Northeast right now when we're rolling out throughout the country

up pretty rapidly.

But from a product standpoint, it's court bookings, then it's going to be open play and open

match.

Then it's going to be tournaments, lessons, clinics, well, I've getaways.

So we'll have a whole robust suite of different e-commerce capabilities on the racket court.

But the whole thing is we're making it easy, we're making it easy, we're making digestible.

That is typically used.

You have a map view.

All right.

You can see how far you are, right, because people, keep your care about price, obviously

the sport.

So not only do we do tennis, we do tennis, pick them all, paddle, squash, ping pong and

badminton, time of day, right, price and distance.

Like you have those four factors, you can make the decision very easily.

We display that in an easy-used interface, you know, that just makes it really a lot simpler

than having to go through all the hurdles of booking the court these days.

Say something about the term perishable inventory, Darren, because our audience, especially

if it's mostly tennis types, we don't think always in those types of terms of it actually

being a product that has value that is then gone.

We just think we always have a tennis court.

You used that phrase recently, and I think you've posted about that as well.

I wouldn't mind giving you a second to tell us about that, because I think that's something

tennis types, specifically, with bracket sports types, need to really understand about

their facility.

One hundred percent.

This was really the crux of this business model is court time is a perishable command, right?

The same way an airline ticket is a perishable commodity.

The same way a hotel room is a perishable commodity.

The difference is court time becomes perishable every hour or every half hour, right?

So right now we're approaching two o'clock, you know, Eastern Seaboard, come to fifteen,

there's millions of dollars of courts that went unused.

So why wouldn't you sell that inventory?

And this is what we're helping also with dynamic pricing, right?

Consumer behavior reacts based on pricing availability, right?

So why do hotels discount their rooms the day of?

Because they know they're never going to make that money back.

So they'd rather get 75 or 80 cents on the dollar than zero cents on the dollar.

That's just pure economics.

So we're approaching it the same way and giving the facilities tools to discounts their

courts closer to that perishable time, right?

Because I know right now it's one fifty, right?

There are millions of dollars of courts that went wasted between one and two o'clock,

PM, right?

The average utilization between 12 and four is less than 20%.

So 80% of the courts being wasted.

So why wouldn't you take those 80% of courts and just 50%, you have to have 50 cents on

the dollar than zero cents on the dollar.

So that's a big part of what we're bringing in is just business rationale that we just

don't think has been thought out and really focused on how to operate a business in an

efficient manner the same way a hotel operator does and the same way an airline does.

And a consumer package good, you know, as long as it doesn't spoil it, it could sit on

the shelf for weeks.

School of clocked reservation is only setting that for an hour, you know, use it or lose

it.

And that's what we're trying to help do.

Bobby, I'm glad he said it because I'm going to crop that out and I'm going to send

it to everybody we know.

And it goes back to what we were talking about yesterday strong.

This is the discussion I would give up my Friday morning to go listen to because this

is what tennis needs more across the board of getting a perspective outside that people

don't think like this.

And you know, five years ago when we started when I started with the other 90% of facilities

didn't even have a reservation system.

They were still taking it over the phone and it was pencil and paper.

So it's great to see that we're coming.

But thankfully for COVID, everybody got a lot more receptive to the idea of doing it

this way.

And it's time.

It's been time for some time.

So it's interesting and it's great and hopefully again, I hope the clubs take advantage

of it.

Well, they are first, you know, I started the company exactly a year ago, you know, it

took us about six months to build the demo.

We started first selling to clubs mid July.

And as of this morning, we have 174 clubs, 1800 courts on the app already.

And you know, we just launched live, you know, last month.

So we're new, right?

We're, you know, where we want to be.

We want to be national.

And then, you know, we'll go into national ultimately, particularly the Asian and European

markets of booming.

But it's a learning curve for the facilities.

Like when we talk to them and explain it, and they look at us and shake that head and

like, you're right.

I get it.

I keep saying, this is a no brainer.

Like why let the court on go?

You're already paying for your real estate cost.

You're paying the taxes.

You're paying your insurance.

The only way you make money is renting courts.

So we're going to bring more people in and not only bring more people in on Mac, even

hour, it gives you a chance to upsell them and let them become a member.

I mean, that's part of the beauty of what we're creating.

The same way of expedient brings me to a Hilton hotel.

It has a chance to make me a member because it's a better experience than I have at Marriotta.

So a lot of the business principles that have been well utilized in sophisticated analytical

businesses, we're bringing it to the table to the racket sports and tennis industry.

So we're really excited about it.

In Bobby, I'm happy when I first talked to Darren about kind of how the business integrates

into the racket sports world, it's a relatively non-competitive conversation that he gets

to have with everybody that's in the industry and it's similar to what we do with GoTennis,

similar to what we do with the American Racket Sports Association, that we're not out

there saying, okay, well, yeah, we compete with this company and that company, but we do

it better.

It really is a nice system that doesn't have much competition if any in this industry

and works well with what's already established.

Is that well put, Darren?

I think that's dead on.

I look at it, we want to grow the games, right?

I love tennis, I love pick a ball from starting to like paddle, just a little bit more challenging,

but it's about growing the game, right?

And I use this phrase often, all boats rise in a rising tide.

So if we're helping more people get on the court because it is less expensive, they're

going to play more.

And we all know how beautiful the game of tennis is than pick a ball and other sports.

If you like the game, you're going to play more often, you're going to buy more goods,

you're going to have more friends, you're going to start a community.

So the whole idea is keep building the game and get people on the court, right?

The same way, think of the travel industry.

Everyone loves to travel and that's what the airlines compete.

But the more people that travel a year, you may use Delta, you may use United Airlines.

It does bring with people in and making the access easier because there's nothing more

frustrating, right?

When you make a phone call and you put on hold for five minutes and you can't get that

court, right?

Like give me a break, I just want to go on an app, find the court and I want to get out

and play.

You know, we did, we did a customer survey, we interviewed 2,000 people who play more than

10 times a year.

Their number one complaint was booking 24% of them say the most friction and the most annoying

they have is finding a booking of court.

I mean, that's silly, isn't it?

That should be the easiest thing.

You know, the hardest thing should be a two handed backhand.

That's, that's well, that's well compared.

I like that.

Oh, that's good.

The issues with a two handed backhand down the slide line, right?

Exactly.

Two handed down the line.

Return a serve.

Yeah.

That's good.

All right.

So I love, I love what's going on.

And it's a, it's a cooperative style business conversation to be able to say, we, we come

in and help together, we come in and help you.

We work together.

I love all that.

And I definitely want to hear your King of Racket Sports, we're going to zoom out for

that question next.

Darren, does you have something specific you want to talk about before we ask our last

question?

Something you want to share, any launches or anything exciting?

We have some exciting things happening and with building the products, we've just started

literally advertising yesterday.

And the response has been great.

You know, we're getting feedback, you know, we're not, we're not perfect, like no company

is perfect initially and maybe you're not perfect, you know, years from now.

But we're living and learning.

We've won feedback.

We want to get as many courts on the system and users on the system.

One other thing we're doing is a light social network, right?

We're not going to be Facebook, but we're going to enable players to find players who

want to play at the same level.

So we're calling it a close and open network.

I like to play with my dozen friends, I like those dozen people, I booked a court,

I need three, you know, John, Paul and Ringo, you guys want to play great.

If I can't find three, I'll open up to the market and say who's in proximity and wants

to play.

So we're trying to think about things a little bit differently.

We're integrating lessons, like I said, and we're integrating split fee.

So the same way you share an Uber with your friends and it's $30, you know, Bob, you

pay 10, I pay 10 and Sean pays 10, right?

We're doing the things that make practical sense to make the user experience better and

get out there and play.

So that's really what we're going and we're trying to have fun with it and we definitely

are.

It's a fun industry and great people.

Fun is important.

Bob, you got anything for Darren before I hit him with the last question.

So quick to win.

I know you said you're rolling out in phases.

And do you anticipate going beyond tri-state, you know, where's next?

So next is the East NC boarding Florida and we're already there, right?

I mean, we've tried to get a court density of at least a thousand courts in an area before

we roll it out.

So what we're trying to do is get court density of about a thousand courts.

We roll out a given market and go from there.

So we're moving down the East NC board into Florida and going from that standpoint.

So we'll be all of these coasts about the end of the end of this quarter and then we'll

go national through 2026 because I'm just interested to see how it plays out here.

I really believe that we have an aging infrastructure.

I mean, my facility is a perfect example.

We're at the point where we should be redoing courts and that costs money.

It would be unheard of because there are amenities, but I do think that the, you know,

the HOAs down here should list it because it's something that it's not going to make anybody

rich, but I think it can monetize it.

It's a great way to advertise your neighborhood and you're talking about property value more

than anything else.

So more exposure, the better off you're going to be, I do think it has a place here.

Yeah, listen, HOAs is interesting, right?

If they allow outside people in, we could register them.

We do register them online.

We could put John Jones name at the front gate and they come in and they're renting it for

$50 an hour.

You know, a tennis court, forget about a facility's tennis court is utilized.

Like I said, about 55, 60% because you take all the hours of the year.

That's, that's a really evil defeat.

No one gets much further than 60%.

East are closer to 20%.

Right?

Because just people are doing all the things and it's not like in their area.

We're also integrating backyard courts.

Think of all the backyard courts around the country that just sit there empty.

You know, people while you're sleeping their beds to Airbnb,

want them to let you play on that tennis court for $50 an hour, yeah?

I don't know, I don't know if I want Bobby coming and sleeping on my couch or

much less in my backyard on my tennis court.

You never know, you got to put filters on these things there.

Hey, that's between you and I, Bobby.

You could play.

Thank you, Dan.

Thank you.

Big second.

All right, cool.

There and I appreciate your time.

We both do and we got a couple of minutes.

I just want to ask our final question,

which I really love because it's so much fun to hear all the answers that we get.

But in your case, I'm definitely very interested.

And I'm going to zoom out to racquet sports because you're not only tennis in this case.

But the question is, if you were king of racquet sports,

whether it's the entire world or just New York or Florida,

social, professional, whatever it is, if you were king of racquet sports,

is there anything you would do or change?

If there's anything I'd do or change,

I would give you three serves, right, instead of two,

just give you like the first two you could try out, get the third one in.

And I would just make court availability and ubiquity, you know, easy, right?

And the one thing that I would do, if I was king and I had that pot of gold,

I would sprinkle the gold and improve the dilapidated courts we see around the country.

It breaks my heart driving through parts of New York City or other parts of urban markets.

They don't have nets, the nets are fading, the lines you can't see.

So it's something meaningful to us of giving back.

And if I was king, I'd sprinkle my gold around my kingdom.

And get the courts, you know, going, but that takes time,

it takes money and takes expertise.

So that's something we plan on doing also with courts app is, you know,

giving back and helping people.

So it's not all about just making money.

It's about filling courts for the facilities,

making it easier for players to get on there.

And then making it more fair for everyone to get out there and play the games we love.

Thanks fantastic.

Maybe we can connect courts app with the go tennis foundation and create an initiative

for what you guys are working on.

Do we can do a non-profit target for fixing up some tennis courts?

And maybe that's a good fit.

That would be fantastic.

I mean, listen, that's what it's about.

I say this all the time.

It's about having fun and loving what you do.

And I'm thankfully at that position of life that I could do both.

This stress that comes with it like anything else.

But it's fun.

I'm involved in a game that people love.

And the game of tennis, you say love pretty often.

Again, well, well referenced.

I appreciate it.

Well, Darren, thank you so much for your time.

Again, we appreciate you coming to tell us what courts app is doing.

We'll put all the information in the show notes and we'll make sure

we promote everything to the best of our ability.

Bobby, thank you for making the time.

Of course, and glad you're back inside a little bit.

It's cold here in the Atlanta area.

Darren, I appreciate it again.

Thank you so much, gentlemen.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you, Darren.

Great day.

Thanks a lot, guys.

Well, there you have it.

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