Pickleball’s First Simulator: Everybody Plays, You Get Paid

Playkout turns 150 square feet into pickleball anyone can play — kids, families, beginners, 4.0s — and six ways for operators to charge for it.

Not everything your visitors want from your facility requires a court.

Pickleball’s appeal has always been that anybody can play it — that’s why open play works, clinics fill, and why a family can show up on a Saturday and all get on a court together. But it’s not always that easy. Courts are booked when everybody wants them, and there’s square footage elsewhere in your building earning nothing at all.

Playkout, the first pickleball simulator on the market, was built to complement the courts on all counts. Think Top Golf for pickleball. A player picks up a real paddle, hits a real ball at an 11-foot screen and plays against a grid of 48 target zones that scores every strike automatically. More than 30 game modes run on it, and it serves everyone who comes through your doors — the 4.0 waiting on a court, a family with two kids in tow, a corporate group, somebody who has never held a paddle. The whole thing fits in about 150 square feet: a lounge corner, a former storage room, dead lobby space.

“We never wanted to compete with court time,” said co-founder Jorge Guerrero. “We wanted to create something that complements it while helping facilities generate more value from their space.”

For your players: pickleball everybody can play

Kids pop animated balloons and clear blocks. Families and groups play darts on a full-size wall or go head-to-head at Tic-Tac-Toe and Connect Four on a giant grid — real paddles, real balls, live leaderboard, plenty of trash talk.

Competitive members get the performance modes: 3D Court renders a full-court perspective with depth-scaled targets for third-shot placement and court positioning, while 2D Court gives them precision zones to hit the same shot 50 times without a partner or a court.

And for a first-timer, it’s a low-stakes place to build confidence before walking into open play. No score to keep, no partner to slow down, no serve to whiff in front of strangers — just contact with a ball and a target lighting up.

“If you’ve never picked up a paddle before, Playkout removes the intimidation,” Guerrero said. “By the third ball, most people are smiling instead of worrying about missing.”

One machine, and it holds a 7-year-old, a curious walk-in and a tournament player — at three different times of day.

For you: six ways it earns

Playkout publishes its rate ranges, which is more than most vendors will do:

Bay rentals — $20 to $50 an hour per group, multiple groups cycling through one bay.
Corporate and private events — $300 to $400 an hour for 60- to 90-minute sessions. Highest-margin line on the list.
E-tournaments — $5 to $10 per player, weekly, with leaderboards that pull players back and bring their friends.
Junior development — $100 to $200 per student for structured, game-based programs.
Fitness classes — $15 to $30 per person, sellable as a membership add-on.
Sponsorships — custom. The cabinet is a branded display with a captive audience in front of it.

Courts earn at peak and sit dark the rest of the day. A simulator bay earns from juniors at 4 p.m., leagues at 7 and a corporate group on a Tuesday morning when your courts are empty — and it converts the walk-ins who come in to try it into members.

And nobody has to run it

Players book and pay by QR code without stopping at the front desk. Playkout’s remote monitoring team watches the machines and clears most faults before an operator knows there was one.

“We designed Playkout so it wouldn’t become another headache for facility owners,” Guerrero said. “It had to be autonomous, easy to operate and remotely supported.”

The patent-pending system came out of Dallas, where former technology executives Bahigh Acuna and Guerrero built it and proved it in their own pickleball studio before selling it to anyone else. An autonomous pickleball fitness program launches early in the fourth quarter of 2026.

“We’re building more than a simulator,” Guerrero said. “We’re building another reason for players to spend time at their club.”

Playkout offers venue operators a personalized demo and revenue projection, plus an online tool that drops a full-scale simulator into your space through your phone. Contact info@letsplaykout.com or 214-699-9640.

Playkout is a sponsor of the IAPPF.