The World Pickleball Convention took over the Palm Beach County Convention Center last weekend, with 8k plus players and industry folks projected. The show floor was Waiting Season in building form.
The star was Tenniix, a training robot that returns shots and adjusts as you play. The Pickle Pro costs $1,299, and the vision module that makes it smart ships separately, in 3 to 4 weeks. JOOLA showed POWER FX, its first full foam paddle. A paddle called KinetIQ drew crowds as a claimed world's first intelligent paddle, though nobody outside the company's own release has seen one work.
The exception on the floor was Dropshot's automatic scoreboard, $249 and actually shipping. Palm Beach County liked the show enough to lock it in as the convention's home for five years.
Why it matters: The expo is where the industry sells next season to this season's crowd, and nearly everything on that floor came with a ship date instead of a price you could act on. The robot sums it up: hardware ready, brains in 3 to 4 weeks. The demo line is the third wait of the season.