PickleRage names Rich DeStasio CEO to fuel national growth plan

PickleRage is making its clearest bet yet on national scale: Rich DeStasio has been named chief executive officer, and the company says it wants more than 500 clubs open nationwide over the next five years. That is not a vanity hire. It is a signal that PickleRage wants to move faster, build more consistently, and turn indoor pickleball from a handful of growth markets into a real national network of places to play and train.

DeStasio arrives with more than 25 years in fitness, wellness and franchising, the kind of résumé PickleRage needs if it wants to turn signed deals into operational clubs. He had been chief marketing officer at FASTer Way to Fat Loss and chief operating officer at Austin Fitness Group, one of the largest Orangetheory Fitness platform ownership groups. He also held senior roles at Town Sports International and The Edge Fitness Clubs. PickleRage is betting that mix of brand-building and multi-unit execution can help the company keep pace with demand without losing the community feel that indoor pickleball brands like to promise.

The timing matters because PickleRage has already been moving aggressively. On October 22, 2024, it announced a 200-plus club development deal with GreenPeak Venture Partners, a plan aimed at opening 200 new locations over the next two years. By March 5, 2025, the company said it had secured nine new franchise locations in seven states. Later in 2025, it said it had signed 17 new franchise deals. Earlier releases said PickleRage had three corporate locations opening in Florida, Michigan and Maryland, with franchise sites planned for Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Mobile, Alabama. Other markets tied to the rollout have included Glen Burnie, Maryland, Jacksonville, Florida, Centerville, Ohio, Portage, Michigan, New Rochelle, New York, Union County, New Jersey and North Charleston, South Carolina.

That footprint tells the story better than the title does. PickleRage was founded in 2023, and in barely two years it went from startup status to a multi-state rollout built on corporate openings, franchise signings and outside capital. David Smith, the company’s chief operating officer, said DeStasio’s mix of operational discipline, brand-building and franchise leadership fits the company’s growth path. Eric O'Connor, another name tied to the brand’s broader leadership bench, sits inside a company now trying to convert demand into actual court inventory. With U.S. pickleball participation climbing from about 4.2 million players in 2020 to more than 24 million in 2025, and the sport still facing a shortage of court and facility capacity, the real question is no longer whether indoor pickleball has an audience. It is how quickly PickleRage can build the places that audience still cannot find.