Ace Pickleball Club

The vendor opportunity at Ace Pickleball Club

Ace Pickleball Club is a small, fitness-focused franchise system headquartered in Georgia with 11 total units—8 franchised and 3 company-owned—according to its 2025 Franchise Disclosure Document. The system is independently owned, with no parent company on file, and the executive team is compact: Joseph Sexton (President), Vincent Barrios (Chief Development Officer), Brianne Carter (Chief Operations Officer), Jeffrey Jabbour (Controller), and Conor Hawks (Vice President of Franchise Development). For software vendors, the opportunity is narrow but direct. The entire system runs on a single mandated platform, pickleballsoftware.com, meaning any ancillary tool must integrate with or complement that core stack. The royalty rate is 7.0%, and the initial franchise term is 10 years. Average unit volume is not disclosed in the most recent FDD, so vendors should size the opportunity based on the unit count and the centralized procurement dynamic.

Who controls software purchasing

Software purchasing decisions at Ace Pickleball Club are made at headquarters. The FDD lists no multi-unit operators or franchisee associations with independent buying power, and the operator footprint is not mapped in our corpus, reinforcing a top-down model. The most relevant buyer for a SaaS vendor is likely Brianne Carter, Chief Operations Officer, who oversees day-to-day operations, or Joseph Sexton, President, who holds ultimate authority. With only 11 units, the decision-making chain is short, and a direct pitch to the C-suite is feasible. There is no CIO or CTO on file, so operational leaders double as technology evaluators.

Mandated and current tech stack

The 2025 FDD mandates one named system: pickleballsoftware.com. This platform appears to serve as the operational backbone for the franchise, likely covering scheduling, membership, and court management. No other mandated POS, CRM, or ERP vendors are disclosed. For software vendors, this creates a clear integration target—tools that plug into or enhance pickleballsoftware.com will face fewer adoption barriers. However, the absence of additional mandated systems also means the tech stack is thin, leaving room for vendors in areas like marketing automation, financial reporting, or staff management, provided they can demonstrate compatibility.

Procurement, renewals, and timing

The FDD does not extract a specific Item 8 procurement signal, so the formal supplier designation model—whether designated, approved, or open—is not publicly known. Renewal terms, outlined in Item 17, require franchisees to give notice, not be in default, sign the then-current franchise agreement (which may contain materially different terms), remodel the club, pay a renewal fee, and sign a release. The renewal term is 10 years. With no year-over-year unit growth data available and a small current footprint, contract windows are likely tied to individual franchise expiration cycles rather than rapid expansion. Vendors should monitor new franchise sales led by Vincent Barrios and Conor Hawks for signals of system growth.

How to read the Ace Pickleball Club FDD

The 2025 FDD is embedded below for full review. It was filed with state franchise regulators and contains the legal and operational disclosures required under the Franchise Rule. Key sections for software vendors include Item 11 (mandated systems), Item 8 (procurement restrictions), and Item 17 (renewal and transfer conditions). Because the system is small and privately held, the FDD is the most reliable source of data on technology mandates and decision-making structure. For a ranked target list of franchise systems aligned with your software category, FranCloud can help.