Round robin ladders for pickleball groups

The idea

Every rec centre and club now has a weekly pickleball ladder, and behind each one an organiser wrangling 20-60 adults with a whiteboard, a reply-all email chain, and a Sunday evening spent hand-building courts around whoever actually RSVPed. The sport’s tooling went straight to tournaments and pro-style ratings (DUPR, bracket software) and skipped the humble weekly ladder, which is where most actual play happens.

The wedge is the RSVP-to-courts pipeline. Players tap a link (no app, no account), the organiser taps Generate, and balanced courts of four appear with byes rotated fairly and the standard up-a-court-down-a-court movement rules applied automatically. Live standings on a public page replace the whiteboard photo in the group chat.

Who pays

The organiser, GBP 12 a month per group, either absorbed into the club fees they already collect or passed through at a pound or two per player per session. Pickleball remains the fastest-growing sport in the US and every new venue mints new organisers with the same whiteboard problem. Distribution: pickleball Facebook groups (enormous and hyperactive), rec centre coordinators, paddle brand community managers, and word of mouth between organisers, who all know each other locally.

MVP scope

• Group and player management with no-login personal links
• Session RSVP flow with automatic reminder to non-responders
• One-tap balanced round-robin court generation with fair bye rotation
• Phone score entry with opposing-pair confirmation, live standings
• Configurable court movement rules with the standard default, Stripe subscription
• Skip for v1: DUPR integration, tournament brackets, court booking/payments collection, and singles ladders

Build PaddleLadder, a web app for organisers of weekly recreational pickleball ladders. Stack: Next.js (App Router), Supabase (Postgres + magic-link auth for organisers), Stripe.

Core flow: organiser creates a group, adds players (name, phone/email, starting rating band), and schedules sessions. Before each session the app sends every player an RSVP link — no account or login, the link is the identity. At RSVP close, the organiser taps Generate and the app builds balanced round-robin courts of four from the confirmed list, grouping by current ladder position, and handles awkward counts (byes rotate fairly; a court of 5 rotates players through sit-outs). Players enter scores from their phones via the same personal link; standings update live.

Pages: organiser dashboard, session view (RSVP status, generated courts, score entry state), public standings page per group (shareable, no login), player link page (RSVP + score entry), and group settings.

Implementation details: movement rules are configurable but ship a default — winners of each court move up one court next session, last place moves down one — because rec ladders live on this pattern and no incumbent implements it. Score entry needs dual confirmation: one player from the match enters, one from the opposing pair confirms with a tap, else the organiser resolves.

Pricing: GBP 12/month per group via Stripe, unlimited players and sessions, first month free. Organiser pays; typical groups pass through GBP 1-2 per player per session in their existing club fees.