By Ian Lintott, Founder of Total Sport Solutions

I’ll be straight with you. I heard about pickleball nearly 20 years ago and didn’t give it much thought. A plastic ball, a funny name, courts about the size of a large dining room, it seemed destined to stay a niche curiosity, certainly nothing we’d ever see take root around here.

Then, about four years ago, it hit Ontario like a tidal wave.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about it, and before long, people were coming to us asking us to build them a court. What looked like a minor sport from a distance had quietly become a phenomenon, and now it’s taken the entire country by storm.

A few weeks ago, Canada Sports Betting published something I’ve been forwarding to anyone who will read it. They ranked the top 100 most-populated Canadian cities by pickleball engagement, court count, courts per resident, Google search interest, and called the composite a “Pickle Score.” It’s a fun piece of research. And the headline number stopped me cold.

Nine of the top 20 pickleball cities in Canada are in Ontario.

Not two. Not four. Nine. Toronto sits first overall with a score of 72.0, well ahead of anyone else on the list. Ottawa is fourth. Chatham, a city of 44,000 people, is ninth. Mississauga is tenth. Then Markham, Kingston, London, Burlington, and Orillia. I read that list and felt something I wasn’t expecting. We’ve built courts in a lot of those cities. Burlington is three minutes down the road from our shop in Oakville. We’ve had crews in Mississauga and Markham more times than we can count. These are our job sites. Which means TSS is in that Pickle Score.

I started Total Sport Solutions in Oakville more than a decade ago with a simple idea: help families turn unused backyard space into something worth stepping outside for — courts that get kids off devices and families moving and playing together.

As the projects grew, the mission never changed. Take a space nobody is using and turn it into somewhere people actually want to be. It started with basketball half-courts, expanded into multi-sport surfaces, and then pickleball found us — and what began in backyards quickly grew into facilities serving entire communities.

Today, we build courts for homes, clubs, schools, rec centres, and municipalities across Ontario. We’re the Official Court Supplier of Pickleball Ontario. This is what we do.

So I have a pretty good sense of why Ontario is winning.

It’s not just population. Chatham has 8.27 courts per 10,000 residents, ninth in the country, ahead of cities four times its size. Communities here didn’t wait for pickleball to come to them. Curling clubs converted their off-season ice. Community centres rethought their gym space. Homeowners called us because their neighbour got a court and suddenly the whole street wanted in. Ontario invested early, built the infrastructure, and the players showed up.

Ontario got here first. And if you live in London, Oakville, Mississauga, or Ottawa, there’s a decent chance we helped get you there.

The facilities that moved early on pickleball in Ontario don’t regret it. Not one. What I hear consistently is that they wish they’d added more courts sooner. The demand showed up faster than they planned for, leagues filled up before the paint was dry, and now they’re calling us back to figure out how to expand. The facilities that waited are now playing catch-up in a market where players already know where to go.

A big part of why is who pickleball actually works for. I’ve watched a 70-year-old and a 14-year-old on the same court, same game, genuinely competitive with each other. It doesn’t ask much of you to get started. You don’t need years of training or a particular body type or an expensive equipment bag. You show up, someone hands you a paddle, and within twenty minutes you’re rallying. Facilities that add pickleball don’t just attract existing athletes. They attract people who haven’t played anything in years. That’s a different kind of growth, and it’s hard to replicate with almost any other sport.

So if you’re a facility still sitting on the fence, I’ll ask the same thing I ask everyone who calls us: what are you waiting for? The communities showing up in that top 20 aren’t there by accident. They built something, and the players came. There’s still room to be part of that. But the window for being early is closing faster than most people think.

Let’s build something. Get in touch with the TSS team today.