Sansan opens Tokyo's first big pickleball centre in Ikebukuro, with ASICS as partner
The business-card software company Sansan has opened what it calls Tokyo's first large dedicated pickleball facility — seven courts across three floors of an Ikebukuro building — and signed ASICS as official partner, renting out the shoes so players can turn up empty-handed.
Sansan opened "Sansan Pickleball Court Ikebukuro" on 10 July, calling it Tokyo's first large dedicated pickleball facility, and named the sportswear maker ASICS its official partner. ASICS will supply rental shoes on site, the two said, so visitors can arrive empty-handed and still play a full game.
The centre takes the fourth to sixth floors of a building three minutes' walk from Higashi-Ikebukuro station, with three indoor courts and four outdoor ones — seven in all. Around them are a lounge, showers and lockers, plus meeting rooms and workspace for remote work before or after a game, a nod to Sansan's day job selling office software. The indoor courts run from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. and the outdoor courts from 9 to 9, year-round.
The facility already rented paddles and apparel; adding ASICS shoes completes the empty-handed offer, and the partnership brings an ASICS display inside the centre and joint promotional campaigns. For ASICS, better known for running and tennis-court shoes, it is a foothold in a sport whose players are still forming their gear habits.
Pickleball, the paddle sport that boomed in the United States, has been one of Japan's fastest-rising racquet games — and Sansan, a business-card software company rather than a sports group, has become an unlikely patron: it took a stake in the venture Pickleball One earlier this year and, with TBS, runs the PPA Asia Sansan Tokyo Open. For property owners, a multi-floor building given over to a single sport-plus-work format is the kind of experiential use landlords increasingly court as demand shifts under both retail and office floors; a marquee brand partner is what turns a niche court into a destination.