Centre Court Pickleball League
We ran PR and social media for the league’s first Bengaluru season, and pitched it to the city as a Saturday night out.
- Client
- Centre Court Sports and Entertainment
- Our role
- PR and social media
- When
- The 2026 season
- Led by
- Aakanksha Singh Devi
The brief
Centre Court had launched its franchise league in Hyderabad and was bringing it to Bengaluru: six teams, ten players each and a player auction, with matches at Chamara Vajra.
Almost nobody in the city had heard of it. The season opened while the IPL and the ISL, the country’s biggest cricket and football leagues, were both on, and in the middle of the monsoon. We were hired for the PR and the social.
What we saw
We spent the first two weekends at the venue before settling on a story. Matches started at 4.30 in the afternoon and ran until 11 at night, and people stayed for all of it.
Families came, and so did dogs. Someone would arrive to watch a friend play and still be there three hours later, at a food stall or learning the scoring from a stranger. When a storm postponed a match weekend, people complained about it on Instagram.
Most of the crowd had not come for the result. A plan built on fixtures, rivalries and winners would have missed most of what was happening at the venue.
What we did
Changed what we pitched
We stopped offering editors a new sports league and offered them a city finding a new way to spend its weekends. Fixtures and results still went out in every release.
Wrote and placed the press
Releases went out through PTI, the national news wire, and directly to news desks through the season. Each carried a quote from the founders, taken on the night.
Covered the sidelines on social
The league’s social media followed what people were already photographing: the food partners, the music and comedy between games, the regulars and their dogs.
Took our cues from outside sport
We studied how nightlife, running clubs and food culture speak to their regulars, and borrowed from those more than from sports marketing.
Where it ran
- LBBPickleball, Pizza, Music, Cocktails & Coffee: Weekend Plans Sorted, Bengaluru(opens in a new tab)
- Deccan HeraldFormer tennis players find second wind in pickleball(opens in a new tab)
- PTISouthern Primes crowned champions as Centre Court Pickleball League ends in grand style(opens in a new tab)
- The Wire, PTI releasePlay-off clashes, finals, great food, better crowds: Centre Court BLR heads into its biggest weekend yet(opens in a new tab)
What came of it
Attendance and partner numbers are the league’s own. Our work was the coverage above and the social media around it.
“Last night was exactly what we hoped this league would become: competitive on court, but just as alive off it.”