Bringing the Heat (and Stars) to the Pickleball Court

Jul 23, 2025

Background

If you haven’t joined the pickleball craze, then it might be time to grab a paddle. Pickleball continues to be the fastest-growing sport across the country, and Pivot Agency recognized an opportunity to go bigger than just the game. This led to them pioneering their own first-of-its-kind event – the Celebrity Pickleball Bash (CPB).

CPB is an event that blends pickleball, music, and entertainment along with the top pro pickleball players and big league stars across the sports and entertainment world, including tennis, soccer, and football. Some celebrities included NFL Hall of Famer Terrell Owens (T.O.), tennis legend and all-time ace leader John Isner, and World Cup champion and Olympic Gold Medalist Brandi Chastain. Other celebrities included TV host Mario Lopez, NBA Hall of Famer Chris Mullin, and MLB All-Star Hunter Pence. As avid fans of pickleball ourselves, we literally jumped at the chance to partner with Pivot Agency.

“It’s a mixture of playing pickleball and excitement, and bringing a little flair to the game. Pickleball is my newfound love so get your pickleball ready.” - T.O., NFL Hall of Famer

UFC Hall of Famer Urijah Faber swinging a drive on the pickleball court

Approach

CPB isn’t just a one-off event – it’s part of a larger vision to bring the energy and excitement of the game to cities across the U.S. Since the very first Bash was taking place in our hometown of San Francisco, we knew this was a unique opportunity to help shape the visual identity of the brand from the ground up. For our strategy, we thought that creating a cinematic, energy-filled sizzle would be a great way to promote the event. Along with the sizzle, we also planned out some playful and punchy social cuts together with TV host Treasure Wilson pickleball influencer Tara Bernstein (and yes, that’s a thing) and other celebrities like T.O. and UFC Hall of Famer Urijah Faber. The social clips allowed us to feature different kinds of content, such as celeb interviews, crowd interviews, and behind-the-scenes content with hosts.

“Pickleball is inescapable; it’s a hobby that has definitely taken over the Bay Area. It was exciting to work with some big-name celebrities and the top pickleball pros and to use our creative expertise to help grow this first-of-its-kind event into something that could one day rival the scale of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ — but with paddles.” - Darissa Hicks, Production Coordinator at Slow Clap

Quick BTS interview with NFL Hall of Famer T.O.

Filming live sports content is a whole different ballgame compared to our usual corporate and documentary-style video work. We dove into research, scanning the Internet for various sports content and event videos for inspiration and to learn the trends. We studied all things sports and festival event video content – from sports social reels to concert sizzle videos – to find the right tone and pace for our own content. We were inspired by promo videos created for Coachella and Outsidelands and wanted our sizzle to do the same— encapsulate the energy and pzazz of the event while also providing a solid summary of what goes on there, as well as build anticipation for the next one.

For the sizzle, we created a game plan with a detailed list of shots that we wanted to capture for a captivating video. This was how we could construct a compilation of stunning, cinematic shots capturing the best highlights of action plays, crowd, and celebrity backstage moments. We also developed several content buckets/content categories for the social videos from quick interviews with celebrities and the crowd, and some day-in-the-life content with the influencer hosts. To maximize capturing all the content within the two-day event, we chose to have one camera operator focused purely on the sizzle content while having another camera operator capture all the social media content. This helped save time for set-ups between switching from filming horizontally for the sizzle versus vertically for social. Using our shot list as a guide, we made sure we were in on all the action, whether it was backstage, on stage, or in the crowd, to ensure we’d make a captivating sizzle and varied social content.

Behind-the-scenes with Director of Photography Jake Richard and Creative Director Dan Lichtenberg

Results

The final results are a fast-paced, polished sizzle reel (see below) that now lives on the Celebrity Pickleball Bash website and serves as a key promotional tool for future events. On social, one of our behind-the-scenes videos scored over 5,500 views.

“Working with the Slow Clap team was a total pleasure—creative, collaborative, and completely buttoned up from start to finish. The sizzle video exceeded expectations and captured the energy and essence of our event perfectly. We’ve received incredible feedback from internal stakeholders and partners alike for the visual storytelling. Truly outstanding work.” - Jonathan Pinkerton, Director of Digital and Social Media at Pivot Agency

From sports legends to surprise matchups and off-court fun, the Celebrity Pickleball Bash gave us a chance to stretch our skills and showcase what happens when star power and storytelling collide. We're proud to have played a role in bringing this vision to life, and we're already pumped for the next match.