Volley recently announced a new partnership with the American Platform Tennis Association, the non-profit organization that governs platform tennis.
Volley began as a tennis ball machine propped on painter sticks. The racket sports training system that uses vision algorithms and machine learning to simulate practice programs was founded by CEO John Weinlader, who crafted the original contraption to refine his platform tennis game – but quickly grew frustrated with the device’s rigidity. tennis ball throwing machine
“It was good for certain things. But platform tennis, you’ve got to be able to throw a lob 50 degrees high up in the air,” Weinlader told SBJ. “No tennis machine does that.”
After three years of development and eight prototypes, Volley went to market with its high-tech Trainer in 2023 and now has machines at around 45 platform tennis courts – mostly country clubs in the northeast and Chicagoland area. Its latest expansion comes via a partnership with the American Platform Tennis Association (APTA), which boasts 32,000 members and hosts more than 250 annual tournaments. The partnership will make Volley the presenting sponsor for the APTA’s match livestreams. Volley will also demo its Trainer system at the association’s events circuit.
The Trainer is more dynamic than your typical ball machine. Powered by a rechargeable battery with three-and-a-half hours of life, its height is adjustable up to 87 inches high, and its tilt between 56 degrees up, -38 degrees down and 34 degrees left/right, to simulate a wide array of shot angles for players to train against. It is equipped with multiple stereo cameras and an NVIDIA computer vision system to track player and ball movements, plus an LED screen and speaker to guide workouts. Through the company’s mobile app, players can program the Trainer to execute its desired practice program, watch film, or review play time statistics (i.e. balls hit, time on court).
“We have this model that we’ve built in the cloud of what the platform tennis court should be, where people are positioned, what all the shots might be. And we’ve analyzed through match play based on people at different levels a schema of what they would see at that level. You’re not going to go out there as a beginner and get a 120 mile per hour serve thrown at you,” Weinlader said. “You would go out there as a beginner, and we already have a profile built up, from watching match play, of what beginners typically would hit…. That’s the first part of the AI side of this.”
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The vision system can also track shots hit towards it, which, in a development coming “very, very shortly,” according to Weinlader, will allow users to play out entire points against the Trainer, with the machine’s return shots timed precisely to when a human on the other side of the net would strike the ball.
The company does not charge clubs anything upfront to carry its Trainer. Users instead can use the system once ($30) or purchase a monthly ($40 per month) or yearly subscription ($300), which is revenue-shared with client clubs.
“It’s all cell phone controlled,” Weinlader said. “The machine lends itself very well to an account-based model. This is a bit of a shift from typical ball machines.
“We give the machine away to the club and then members subscribe to it. In subscribing, they get their own account and that tracks their number of workouts that they did, it tracks their history, it tracks their video clips that they can then share with their pro for virtual coaching.”
As of now, Volley is available for platform tennis and padel, with pickleball coming soon. Weinlader hopes partnerships like the latest with the APTA will raise their profile even more.
“We’re looking to get some experience with customers, interfacing the machine that way, to help build our awareness,” Weinlader said.
On this week's edition, Christopher (Mad Dog) Russo is the guest host, joining Andrew Marchand. Marchand and Russo go into full detail about McAfee, Aaron Rodgers and Norby Williamson. They also dissect ESPN's reaction to McAfee calling Williamson, one of the top executives at the company, a "rat." Marchand and Russo look at the Peacock playoff game that will be exclusively streamed, pitting the Chiefs and the Dolphins. Sports Business Journal's Austin Karp joins the show to discuss how ESPN presented McAfee's ratings and to play the old Mike & the Mad Dog game of guessing the ratings. Plus, Russo goes into First Take and Stephen A. Smith's impact on his career. Plus, Russo joins Marchand in offering his "Who's up" and "Who's Down" with a classic Mad Dog spin on it.
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