Sydney Steinaker’s Bassline Sports events combine pickleball with DJs, UV lighting and rave culture. The spectacle attracts attention, but the more important innovation is quieter: she has designed an entry point for people who might never join a club, enter a tournament or place their paddle in an unfamiliar rack.
Key takeaways
- Bassline Sports allows people to enter a social event before deciding whether they want to become pickleball players.
- The model reduces the uncertainty that can make conventional open play intimidating for beginners.
- Its most transferable lesson for clubs concerns social accessibility, not blacklights, DJs or rave aesthetics.
The first version cost Sydney Steinaker about $40.
As she recalled during an interview on 99% Pickleball, there was no sophisticated production company, established event series or grand commercial plan. Steinaker found a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles, added blacklights and music, and invited people to play pickleball in an environment that felt closer to a night out than an organised sports session.
The concept has since developed into Bassline Sports, a series of events built around DJs, lasers, illuminated courts and the freedom to participate without first proving where you belong.
Steinaker says a recent Pickleball Xscape event attracted approximately 600 people. Other projects have moved into larger entertainment venues, with temporary courts sharing space with arcade games, custom cars and installations designed to be experienced rather than merely watched.
“Pickleball rave” is the phrase that travels. It is visual, immediate and made for social media.
It is not, however, the most interesting part of the model.
Steinaker has recognised that many potential players do not reject pickleball because they dislike the game. They reject the social negotiations that can precede it: finding a group, understanding the paddle rack, knowing whether a court is open, declaring a rating and risking the impression that everyone else has arrived with more knowledge than they have.
Bassline changes the order. People enter an event first and become players afterwards.
The problem traditional participation misses
Pickleball is frequently described as accessible because its basic strokes can be learned quickly. That is true, but technical accessibility and social accessibility are not the same thing.
A beginner may be capable of rallying within minutes and still feel uncomfortable arriving alone at a public court. A club can offer coaching, organised sessions and clearly divided levels, yet the structure itself can suggest that a new player must choose the correct category before taking part.
Steinaker has built her events around the opposite assumption. People can arrive to listen to the music, meet friends or watch before deciding whether to play. The court is present without becoming an entrance examination.
The rave environment helps because it redistributes attention. Under UV lights, with a DJ playing and several things happening around the venue, nobody feels as though an entire session is waiting for them to miss a return.
In her interview with 99% Pickleball, Steinaker described the events as deliberately welcoming to people who have never played. An experienced player should be able to bring a friend without forcing that friend immediately into a conventional open-play system.
Tiered tickets, including offers intended to encourage people to bring somebody new, support the same objective. The regular player is not merely purchasing admission. They are helping Bassline acquire its next beginner.
From lifestyle content to event design
Steinaker’s route into the sport helps explain why she approaches it differently.
She spent several years working in Southern California law firms before moving into cybersecurity. During the pandemic, she began creating lifestyle videos around Orange County, developing an audience through reviews and local content rather than elite sport.
Pickleball entered that work almost casually. Steinaker says a video of her playing attracted enough attention to produce a relationship with Franklin Sports within a month. Her value was not based upon tournament results. She understood how to translate the awkward, familiar details of recreational pickleball into content people wanted to share.
The paddle-rack politics, unexplained customs and anxiety of entering an established group became part of her material because she noticed something the industry often overlooks: the sport may be easy to learn without being easy to enter.
That observation carried into Bassline.
The business does not begin by asking how a tournament can be made more entertaining. It asks what kind of evening people already want, then gives pickleball a role within it.
A sports event that does not behave like one
The events include the recognisable elements of rave culture: electronic music, neon clothing, lasers, blacklights and DJs. Steinaker also draws upon PLUR, the electronic-music community’s shorthand for peace, love, unity and respect.
The language may sit awkwardly inside a traditional sports-club prospectus. In this environment, it establishes behavioural expectations without requiring a laminated list of court rules. People should mix. Beginners should not be treated as inconveniences. The evening should remain welcoming even when the standard of play varies.
The culture does some of the organisational work.
Traditional competitions sell access to matches. Clubs sell court time, coaching or membership. Bassline sells the atmosphere around play, which allows the evening to retain value even when somebody is not holding a paddle.
A participant can play, stop, talk, watch the DJ and return later. A friend with no interest in committing to a league can still buy a ticket because the sport is not the only promised experience.
This also widens the range of possible venues. A conventional tournament requires enough courts to justify its size. An experiential event can install a temporary court inside a broader entertainment environment and allow other attractions to carry part of the audience.
Steinaker has discussed projects involving Dave & Buster’s in Orange, California, where pickleball could sit alongside arcade games, music, cars and interactive installations. She has also spoken about extending the sports-rave idea into tennis, padel and golf.
Those ambitions remain prospective. Bassline has demonstrated demand for individual events, not yet a universally repeatable model.
The first warehouse may have cost $40. Scale will not.
The commercial argument requires evidence
It would be premature to look at one reported 600-person event and declare the youth-participation problem solved.
Attendance does not establish profitability, repeat custom or the number of first-time players who subsequently enter the sport. Bassline’s strongest claims currently concern attention and atmosphere rather than measured retention.
Even so, the model has identified a useful commercial principle. Pickleball does not always need to be sold as exercise, competition or technical improvement. For some audiences, it can be the activity that makes a social event easier.
Younger adults have abundant choices for their discretionary time. Pickleball is not competing only with tennis, padel and the gym. It is competing with concerts, bars, gaming venues, festivals and the option of staying home.
Adding a DJ to open play will not resolve that contest. Designing an evening in which the sport, music and social environment depend upon one another might.
What clubs can learn without buying lasers
The obvious lesson from Bassline would be the wrong one.
A local club does not need blacklights, a fog machine and an EDM booking to attract younger players. Copying the surface of Steinaker’s events without understanding their purpose would produce expensive decoration.
The transferable idea is that newcomers need permission to participate imperfectly.
That can mean allowing people to watch before joining, creating sessions where ratings are irrelevant, making equipment immediately available and giving experienced players a reason to bring somebody new. It can mean building social time into an event rather than treating conversation as the gap between matches.
Most importantly, it means recognising that the first objective is not always to create a committed player. Sometimes it is simply to make somebody want to return.
Steinaker’s events are loud, brightly coloured and deliberately theatrical. Beneath that presentation sits a restrained piece of product design. She has taken the moments when beginners feel most conspicuous and constructed an environment in which almost nobody is watching them.
The pickleball rave may become a lasting category or a transitional format whose strongest ideas are absorbed elsewhere. Either way, Bassline has asked a better question than how to persuade more young adults to book a court.
It has asked what would make them choose pickleball for their night out.
Further Reading
- Latest pickleball news from around the world
- Tournament coverage and results
- Rankings and player profiles
- Regional pickleball coverage
Chris Beaumont
Founder and Editor-in-ChiefChris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine. Chris follows the global game closely, reporting on the latest news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball Podcast, interviewing people at…
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