Sansan adds a third floor to its Ikebukuro pickleball courts, and hands Japan's federation an office inside it

Sansan, the Tokyo workflow-software group behind the Sansan business-card platform and the Bill One invoicing service, said on September 30 it is adding a third floor to its pickleball venue in Ikebukuro — and handing the new floor's office space to Pickleball Japan, the sport's national governing body.

According to the announcement, posted on the company's corporate newsroom, the new floor at Sansan Pickleball Court Ikebukuro, inside the Sansogo Ikebukuro Building in Toshima-ku, will add three full-size indoor courts and one half-court. That takes the venue's total to eleven courts — six indoor, four outdoor and one half-court — once the floor opens, which Sansan said is scheduled for November 15. Reservations for November court rentals and lessons, including on the new floor, opened October 1.

Pickleball Japan — the sport's domestic federation, formally the 一般財団法人ピックルボール日本連盟 — will move its office onto the same third floor, Sansan said. The venue first opened on July 10, and Sansan calls it, by its own tally of courts per facility as of January, Tokyo's first large-scale dedicated pickleball facility; that superlative is the company's own claim, based on its internal survey, not an independently verified industry count.

Sansan frames the project around its corporate mission, which it describes as generating innovation from encounters, arguing that pickleball draws players of any age or competitive background and that simply standing on a court creates new connections. Ryosuke Koike, who heads the company's pickleball business, said the aim is to give first-time players an easy way in while giving competitive players somewhere to keep training — alongside new monthly subscription lessons starting December 1, plus pay-as-you-go taster and beginner-to-intermediate sessions.

That a business-card-data and invoicing software company is now also hosting Japan's pickleball federation is a notable pairing for a sport still building its institutions. Pickleball Japan's director-general, Rika Riordan, said in the announcement that the federation needed a venue to call its own, able to watch play on court directly while it plans tournaments, trains coaches and builds the sport's base. Pickleball still sits well outside Sansan's software business, but an expansion within months of opening, with a federation office on the premises, is more commitment than a one-floor pilot.