Helping a struggling club after they had already been open for 6 months
It bet its growth on the least glamorous product on the schedule — the beginner class — and now out-earns a rival ten minutes away by more than two to one.
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StackEleven · Client Case Study
Helping an already established club that had never advertised
This club opened strong in January 2025 — which is the hardest place to add growth from. The work was not fixing a struggling club; it was turning a busy one into a machine for making new players. Beginner intake is up five-fold and revenue up 24% year on year.
- Client
- Established club, Gulf Coast FL
- Club opened
- January 2025
- Engagement start
- June 2025
- Data through
- 31 Jul 2026
+24%Revenue growth, H1 2026 vs H1 2025Six full months, like for like
5.1×Beginner intake per month42 before the engagement, 214 now
25.5×Beginner-programme return on ad spendLifetime revenue from 755 students
$3.34Cost per lead3,738 leads to date
Monthly revenue, 2025 vs 2026
Indexed so January 2025 = 100. Dollar values withheld. Every month shown is complete.
20252026
Where the change actually shows
Revenue moved 24%. The beginner funnel moved five hundred percent — and that is the part that compounds.
Beginner registrations per month
101 and 102 clinics, Newbie/Beginner structured play, Foundations camps. Excludes “advanced beginner” leagues.
01
Put beginners on the schedule
101 and 102 clinics, Foundations camps and structured newbie play became a standing part of the timetable rather than an occasional one-off.
02
Advertise the easy yes
Paid media led with the beginner offer — the cheapest, least intimidating thing a curious local can say yes to — at $3.34 a lead.
03
Follow up automatically
Every newcomer lands in a tracked pipeline. 93% of the 755 beginner students have gone on to spend money at the club.
A club that is already full has only one direction left to grow: it has to make more players than it loses.
The 755 people who have come through the club's beginner programming have spent $317,701 between them — an average of $421 each, and 93% of them have spent something. Against all paid media on the account that is a 25.5× return, and it is still accruing: the newest students have barely started.
The building is busier
Check-ins are a separate feed from revenue and a cleaner read on habit. The club ran 2,520 in January 2025 and 4,477 in July 2026 — a 78% increase in visits through the door. More people, coming more often, is what a beginner funnel looks like eighteen months in.
How these figures were calculated
Beginner intake counts 101 and 102 clinics, Newbie and Beginner structured or supervised open play, and Beginner Foundations camps. It excludes every “advanced beginner” and “novice/advanced” ladder, league and skill session — those are players who have already progressed — and non-pickleball programming that happens to share a name. Registration history was backfilled directly from the club's booking platform in August 2026 and is complete and de-duplicated from the club's opening onward.
- Revenue is settled order and registration value synced from the booking platform, excluding membership mirror rows and coaching income. It is presented as an index to January 2025; absolute dollar figures are withheld by request.
- The 25.5× return divides the lifetime spend of everyone who has taken beginner programming by all paid media spend on the account ($12,470). It credits paid media with every beginner student, including those who arrived by word of mouth, so it describes the return on the beginner programme rather than a strictly attributed figure. It excludes StackEleven fees.
- Small pre-opening revenue appears in November and December 2024 with almost no check-ins. These are advance sales ahead of the January 2025 opening, not trading.
- Every month charted is a complete calendar month; August 2026 is in progress and is excluded throughout.