Find a Court Anytime Anywhere with CourtsApp

Summary

Daren Hornig — founder and CEO of CourtsApp, and owner of the Port Washington Tennis Academy (now John McEnroe Tennis Academy, Port Washington) — joins Lisa Stone for a Season 15 episode introducing CourtsApp: an app for discovering and booking racket sport courts across the US and Canada. Hornig describes CourtsApp as the “OpenTable or Expedia of racket sports,” positioning it as a single-interface solution to the fragmented problem of finding available court time. The episode covers the core product, the business model for facility onboarding, the traveling junior tennis use case, and planned expansion into lessons, tournaments, leagues, and pro shop integration. At recording, CourtsApp has 1,800 courts and 175 facilities onboarded, with targets of 10,000–15,000 courts across all racket sports by end of 2026.

Guest Background

Daren Hornig grew up in Belmore on Long Island’s South Shore and was introduced to tennis by his parents, both regular league players (his 83-year-old mother still plays five times per week). He attended US Open matches in the late 1970s and early 1980s during the McEnroe-Borg-Connors era. Before founding CourtsApp, he owned the Port Washington Tennis Academy, now operating as the John McEnroe Tennis Academy in Port Washington, New York — giving him direct experience with both the club-ownership challenges and the player-facing discovery problem CourtsApp is designed to solve. He is also connected to the Johnny McProject, a not-for-profit dedicated to getting underprivileged kids on court, which receives a portion of CourtsApp revenue.

Key Findings

1. Finding and Booking Courts Is the Number One Complaint Among Racket Sport Players

Before building CourtsApp, Hornig surveyed 2,000 tennis, pickleball, and paddle players. Their top complaint about the sport was not cost, facilities quality, or instruction availability — it was finding and booking courts. Despite courts being generally available, the friction of calling multiple clubs, navigating different booking systems, not knowing which facilities allow non-members, and comparing pricing across options was sufficient to discourage casual and competitive play alike. CourtsApp solves this by providing a single interface: input location, date, time, sport, and desired duration; press search; see all available courts on a map or list with pricing and ratings.

2. CourtsApp Is the OpenTable / Expedia Model Applied to Racket Sports

Hornig’s framing for the product is explicit: CourtsApp functions the way OpenTable works for restaurants (choose Italian at 7pm Saturday and see all options) or Expedia for travel (book flights, hotel, car in one place). The app shows courts by map or list, allows filtering by surface type (hard or clay), indoor vs. outdoor, and time window. Booking and payment are completed in-app. At recording: available on Apple App Store and Google Play Store; free to download; no membership required; 1,800 courts across 175 facilities onboarded; US and Canada only. Projected 10,000–15,000 courts by end of 2026, covering tennis, pickleball, paddle, squash, racquetball, ping-pong, and badminton.

3. The Facility Business Model: Free Software, Commission on Bookings, New Customer Traffic

CourtsApp onboards facilities at zero cost — the software is free, takes approximately 20 minutes to set up, and connects to the facility’s existing reservation API (or Google Calendar if no system exists). CourtsApp earns a commission when a booking occurs through the platform. The value proposition to club owners: even a successful facility is only booked 60% of the time, and court time is a perishable commodity — an empty court at 2pm today cannot generate revenue tomorrow. Getting 75–80 cents on the dollar from a CourtsApp booking is strictly better than zero from an empty court. Added benefit: CourtsApp brings non-member traffic into the facility, creating upsell opportunities for memberships, lessons, and pro shop purchases.

4. Traveling Junior Tennis Families Are a Core Target User

Hornig and Stone identify junior tournament travel as one of the highest-value use cases: a family driving or flying to a tournament wants warm-up court time on the same surface type as the tournament, without having to call six different clubs, Google Maps the area for tennis facilities, or hope the court is available when they arrive. CourtsApp allows a family in New York planning to play in Boca Raton next weekend to search, find, and pre-book a clay court the day before matches begin. The filters for surface type and the map-based interface are both specifically valuable for this use case — booking a hard court when the tournament is clay is a problem CourtsApp eliminates.

5. Dynamic Pricing for Off-Peak Hours Could Expand Daytime Court Access

Hornig introduces a dynamic pricing concept for off-peak court time: as a court slot approaches its unused “expiration,” clubs should discount it rather than lose the revenue entirely. He draws the parallel to airlines and hotels (perishable inventory logic). This creates a purchasing behavior shift — players with schedule flexibility (including virtual-schooled junior players, whose numbers have grown significantly since COVID) can access discounted court time during the day when most traditional booking systems report high availability but low visibility. Hornig plans to offer packaged court bundles (e.g., buy 10 courts, use them at any participating facility) as a long-term feature.

6. Planned Expansion Beyond Court Booking Into a Full Racket Sports Marketplace

CourtsApp’s current product is court discovery and booking. Hornig describes the roadmap as an Expedia-style all-in-one marketplace: tournaments (listed and bookable), leagues, lessons and clinics (with both closed-club coaches and third-party coaches bookable through the platform), and pro shop integration (usage data triggers relevant purchasing recommendations — e.g., after 20 plays, a restringing offer). The platform is built to be a single destination for all racket sport needs. At the time of recording, the coaching/lesson product was approximately 60 days from launch.

Actionable Advice for Families

• Download CourtsApp (Apple App Store or Google Play, free) and use it when traveling to tournaments to pre-book warm-up court time on the same surface type as the tournament — book the day before, not the morning of
• Use the surface-type filter to ensure you’re not accidentally booking a hard court before a clay court tournament
• If your club has empty courts during off-peak hours, mention CourtsApp to the facility manager — it costs the club nothing to onboard and may create discounted access for families with flexible schedules

INTENNSE Relevance

• Facility sourcing: INTENNSE’s event production will require reliable court access at facilities across markets for training sessions, pre-match warm-up, and potentially team practices; CourtsApp’s growing network (targeting 10,000–15,000 courts by end of 2026) could streamline facility sourcing for operational needs as the league scales
• Player logistics: INTENNSE players traveling between markets will face the exact same court-discovery problem CourtsApp solves; making CourtsApp part of the standard player onboarding resource kit reduces friction in players’ ability to maintain training routines on the road
• Partnership opportunity: CourtsApp is planning tournament sponsorships and ambassador partnerships — a relationship between INTENNSE and CourtsApp could provide co-branding value (INTENNSE as a prestige racket sport product aligning with a practical infrastructure tool) while giving CourtsApp access to the serious tennis player and junior family demographic
• Dynamic pricing as a model: Hornig’s dynamic pricing concept for off-peak court time is structurally similar to how INTENNSE might think about match ticket pricing — peak demand windows priced at premium, off-peak or late-release inventory discounted to fill seats and broaden audience exposure

Notable Quotes

“We look at ourselves as the OpenTable or Expedia of racket sports — you come to one app, one website, and find all court availability. Three clicks and you find a court.”

“Before we started the company, we did a survey of 2,000 players. The number one complaint they had about the sport at large was finding and booking courts.”

“A court is a perishable commodity. Once that time passes, you can never sell it again. What would you rather have — 75, 80 cents on the dollar or 0 cents on the dollar?”

“Dynamic pricing, digital media, algorithms, and AI are going their way, changing how tennis is perceived and played. We need to change the way you thought the business worked when it was pen and paper.”

“We have 1,800 courts, about 175 different facilities signed up. I think by the end of 2026 we’ll have 10,000 courts — all tennis, pickleball, paddle, et cetera.”