A Failed Dev Shop. An 18-Month Setback. Then $148K in New Revenue.
After a prior team spent 18 months failing to crack the core algorithm, Vertice Labs built a multi-tenant tournament and league management platform now processing thousands of players.
A Tournament Operator Who Knew Exactly What the Software Needed to Do
Tony Spurlin has been running pickleball tournaments since 2021, when he was recruited from the PGA golf world into a sport that was exploding in popularity. His first event had over 1,200 players. He had never played in a tournament before, let alone directed one.
That trial by fire shaped everything that followed. Tony built Excel Pickleball into one of the most respected tournament organizations in Las Vegas, known for smooth operations, on-time starts, and a player experience that keeps people coming back. Players fly in from Hawaii and Florida specifically to play his events.
Pickleball Ventures is the parent company Tony built to house both Excel Pickleball and PB Focus, the software platform. The vision was always bigger than his own tournaments. He wanted to build the tool he wished had existed from day one.
Tony engaged a development team he met at one of his own events. They worked on the platform for 18 months. They got parts of the front end built, but when it came to the league scheduling algorithm — the core logic that assigns players to courts, rotates partners, and manages substitutions — they couldn’t get it done. That wasn’t a minor gap. The algorithm is the product.
The pickleball tournament software market is broken. The tools were built from a developer’s perspective, not around how tournaments actually run.
Software That Fought the Operator
Creating a tournament was painful. Managing registrations was painful. Processing a last-minute withdrawal on tournament morning meant stopping everything for 30 minutes while the system caught up. Players showed up frustrated before they even stepped on court.
A Prior Dev Team That Couldn’t Deliver
18 months with a prior development team. Parts of the front end built. But the league scheduling algorithm — the core of the product — remained unsolved. Without it, nothing else mattered.
Vendor Lock-In, Mid-Season
Tony’s existing software vendor discovered he was building his own platform and cut off access to his account. Mid-season. With active leagues and tournaments running. Thousands of player records locked behind a platform he could no longer reach.
The prior dev team’s engagement — eighteen months, a partial front end, and the core algorithm still unsolved. Tony’s exact take when he came to us: “People always promise you the moon and they can’t deliver.”
When Tony came to Vertice Labs, he had already been burned. He was skeptical. We started where the risk was highest.
Solve the Hard Problem First
Tony had watched a previous team spend 18 months failing to crack the league scheduling algorithm. He was clear: solve this first. If we couldn’t crack the matching logic, nothing else was worth building. We focused the first sprint entirely on the algorithm before writing a single line of registration or tournament management code.
An Honest Conversation About Scope
Tony came in wanting everything — every feature, every workflow, every edge case — in a compressed timeline. That led to a hard conversation about what was realistic. We reset around a focused MVP: the minimum functionality needed to actually run a tournament. That reset was a turning point.
Emergency League Migration
When Tony’s previous vendor cut off platform access mid-season, we turned around a league registration system in two weeks so his active leagues could keep running without interruption.
Built Around How Tournaments Actually Run
Every workflow was designed around how Tony’s team actually operates on tournament day — not how a developer thinks they should. Registration, check-in, bracket management, live scoring, and day-of logistics all flow through a single interface designed for the people running the event.
PB Focus: Tournament & League Management
A multi-tenant SaaS platform that manages the full lifecycle of pickleball tournaments and leagues — from event creation and player registration through bracket management, live court operations, and results.
League Scheduling Engine
16 players across four courts in individual round robin. No repeated partners until every player has been paired. No repeated opponents more than twice. No same court more than twice. Handles substitutions and no-shows. Full play day calculated in under five seconds.
Constraint Optimization
Custom algorithm paired with Google OR-Tools. Hard constraints (partner pairings, bye rotations) modeled as strict rules. Softer constraints (opponent variety, court distribution) as optimization targets.
Tournament Operations
Registration, check-in, bracket management, and live scoring in a single interface. A last-minute withdrawal that used to take 30 minutes now takes one click.
Player Experience
Clean registration. Built-in communication. Straightforward day-of logistics. Tony’s philosophy — player experience above everything — is embedded in every workflow.
Multi-Tenant Architecture
Built for other tournament directors and league organizers to use. Each organization runs independently on the same platform with their own branding and configuration.
Revenue Processing
Registration fees that used to go to a third-party vendor now stay in the operator’s pocket. Stripe integration handles all payment processing.
PB Focus is the first tournament management platform built by someone who runs 250-450 player tournaments every month. The software reflects how events actually operate, not how a developer imagines they do.
Emergency League Registration System
When Tony’s previous vendor cut off platform access mid-season with active leagues running, we turned around a league registration system in two weeks to keep operations running without interruption.
Vendor access revoked mid-season. Thousands of player records locked. Active leagues and tournaments at risk of disruption.
Replacement registration system live in two weeks. Active leagues continued without interruption. Player data migrated to a system Tony owns.
Registration management went from a 30-minute scramble to a single click. Tournament mornings are calm. Operations are predictable.
First outside organization evaluated PB Focus and the tournament director said after a 10-minute walkthrough: “I spent way too much time learning the other system. This is so much easier.”
Tony’s desk operations manager saw the system for the first time on tournament morning, got a 10-minute overview, and said: “This is great.”
PB Focus is now going to market as a standalone SaaS product for other tournament directors and league organizers. Tony owns the platform and keeps registration fees as a direct revenue stream.
In Robert's Words
“We had to go through the bad experience to know how good it was to have a different group put it together for us — one that knows what they’re doing.”
“People always promise you the moon and they can’t deliver.”
“This is so much different than last year. This just runs so smoothly.”
“I spent way too much time learning the other system. This is so much easier.”
“This is great.”
Domain Expertise Meets Senior Engineering.
We help operators turn deep industry knowledge into software that works in the real world. Fixed fee. Senior team. Shipped in weeks.