The ecosystem
PaddleStack isn't one screen — it's the whole venue. The phone in your pocket, the tablet at the door, the panel at each court, and the big board on the wall are all the same system, showing the same truth at the same moment.
The player app
Where you live as a player. Everything from finding a game to walking off the court.
- Find and RSVP to events
- Check in and join the queue
- Party up with friends
- Get told the moment your court is ready
Host controls
Hosting isn't a separate product. The tools appear in your app when you run an event.
- Create events and courts
- Check players in
- Build a game or swap a no-show
- Announce to everyone at once
Check-in kiosk
A tablet the venue leaves out so arrivals check themselves in without queuing at a desk.
- Scan-to-check-in
- Handles walk-ups and guests
- Runs unattended all session
Court panel
A TV or tablet at the net showing who owns this court right now.
- The four players, with photos
- Live match timer
- Big court number when it's free
- End the match courtside
The big board
The room's shared source of truth — readable from across the building.
- Every court and who's on it
- Who's up next, in order
- Pages through big venues automatically
- Speaks callouts out loud
The web
The front door for people who don't have the app yet.
- Browse public events
- Share links open the event in-app
- Everyone else lands on a details page
All of these read the same live state, and it updates the instant something changes — a court freeing up moves the queue on every phone in the building and every screen on the wall at the same moment. Nobody refreshes anything, and no two screens disagree about who is playing on court 3.
The screens are optional. A host can run an entire session from one phone. Panels and boards are there for the players standing around waiting — the more of them a venue puts up, the fewer people have to ask "am I next?"
Getting started
The app is free for players. From download to standing on a court is about two minutes, and you never need a partner, a reservation, or a paddle on a stack.
Download PaddleStack
Free on the App Store and Google Play. One app covers everything — playing, hosting, and running the courtside screens.
Sign in with your phone number
There are no passwords. Enter your number, type the 6-digit code we text you, and you're in. Verifying by phone is also what keeps rosters accountable — every player at a session is a real, reachable person.
Find a session
Browse what's happening near you by venue, day, and format. Public events are open to anyone; private ones open from a share link or an invite. Every event page shows the times, the courts, the format, who's already going, and the fee if there is one.
RSVP — or just show up
Tap Going to claim a spot, Maybe to signal interest without holding one, or Can't go to release it. If the event is already full you land on the waitlist and get promoted automatically when someone drops. Plenty of open play is walk-up-friendly and needs no RSVP at all.
Bring people with you. Sharing an event sends a link that opens straight to that event in the app — and to a web page with the details for anyone who hasn't installed it yet.
Checking in
Check-in is the moment you go from "signed up" to "here and ready to play." It's what puts you in front of the queue, so nothing on the court side happens until you do it.
Scan the QR code
Every session has a check-in code — posted at the door, on the host's phone, or on a kiosk tablet. Scan it and you're in.
Walk-up check-in
At venues that have turned it on, the app notices you have arrived and lets you check in on the spot without hunting for a code.
Kiosk check-in
A host can run a shared tablet at the front desk and check players in as they arrive — handy for big drop-in nights and for guests without the app.
Walking up and checking in is your admission, even at events that normally require an invite or approval — being there with the host's code is proof enough. Capacity still applies, so a full session will put you on the waitlist instead.
Checking in does one more quiet thing: it creates your party — a group of one, with you in it. That's the unit the queue actually deals with, which is what the next section is about.
Playing with friends
A party is 1–4 players who want to stay together. The party — not the individual — is what enters the queue, so a party of four gets placed onto one court, together, in one move.
Two ways to group up
Both directions need someone to say yes — there's no party code and no silent join. An invite goes from a member out to a player, and only that player can accept it. A join request goes the other way, and any current member can accept or decline it. You can cancel anything you sent while it's still pending, and you can hold up to five outstanding invites and requests at a time.
You're only ever in one party. Accepting an invite quietly pulls you out of your old one — and if that leaves people behind, they're told, so nobody is left staring at a group that silently shrank.
What changes once you're queued
| If this happens… | Then |
|---|---|
| Anyone taps "Join queue" | The entire party is queued together, and the others get a heads-up that you did it. |
| Anyone taps "Leave queue" | The entire party leaves together. Same rule in reverse — one action, one unit. |
| Someone leaves the party mid-queue | Allowed. The rest of you keep your place in line — the spot they vacated just reopens for someone else. The leaver gets a fresh party of one and can re-queue immediately. |
| You try to add someone mid-queue | Blocked. A queued party can shrink but never grow — otherwise a party of two could hold a place in line and quietly become four. |
| Your group has already been given a court | Leaving is blocked. At that point the game is real and people are walking on. |
There's no party leader. Any member can invite, accept a request, leave, or remove anyone else — the party is a peer group, not a hierarchy.
The queue system
This is the engine. Instead of a paddle stack that falls over and a whiteboard someone erases, PaddleStack keeps a live queue of forming games and puts them on courts as courts free up.
Match groups: the thing you actually join
A match group is a game being built — four seats for doubles, two for singles. Parties claim seats in it. When the last seat fills, the group is ready, and the moment a court opens the next ready group walks on.
Seats are claimed for real, instantly, and there are no takebacks. Two people tapping the same last seat at the same moment can't both get it — one lands it, the other is told it's gone and picks again, immediately. Leaving a group frees your seat the same instant. Think of it as the paddle-board rule, enforced properly: your spot is yours while you hold it, and available the second you don't.
The four ways a venue can run its queue
Flex Queue
Default for open playThe best of both. Tap Join Queue and you're dropped into the first game with room for your party — no thinking required, and it essentially always succeeds. Or browse the forming games and pick a specific one if you'd rather choose your court or your company.
Slots
Pick your gameFully manual. You see every game forming and choose which one to sit in. Popular where players like to self-organize by level or by who they want to play with.
King of the Court
Winners stayWinners hold the court and the next pair in line challenges them. A host can set a win cap — after that many straight wins the kings step off and the court opens up clean, so one hot pair can't camp all night. Losers leave the court and tap Join to get back in line.
Beat the Pro
Challenge formatA designated pro (or pair) holds the court and challengers queue up to take a shot at them. The pros aren't part of the queue — they're slotted in as each challenger group is called. Hosts can set it to auto-start the next match the moment a group fills.
Fairness and eligibility
Some events are filtered rather than open: a skill band, or a category like mixed doubles, men's, or women's. Those rules are checked when you join — whether you auto-placed or picked a game by hand — so a game can't quietly end up ineligible. Filters decide which games you can join; they never move you ahead of people already waiting.
Between games: when your match wraps, one tap puts you back in the queue. The rotation keeps moving on its own — nobody has to run the board.
Courts & matches
Everything above exists to produce one moment: your name on a court. Here's what happens around it.
Your group gets a court
As soon as a court frees up, the next ready group claims it. You're told immediately — loudly, and in several ways at once (see the next section).
The match runs
A timer runs from the moment the game starts, visible in the app and on any courtside screen. Everyone can see which courts are hot and roughly how long the wait is.
The match ends
Anyone on the court can close it out from their phone, or a host can end it from the courtside tablet. Scores are optional for casual open play and expected in tournaments.
Back in the queue
One tap re-enters you — as a party, if you're still together. Your seat in the next forming game is claimed the same way it was the first time.
When real life interferes
Somebody vanishes
A host can swap a no-show for another checked-in player without tearing down the game. The other three never leave the court.
The host needs a specific game
Hosts can hand-pick up to four checked-in players and start them on a chosen court, stepping outside the queue order when there is a good reason to.
A court goes down
Courts can be closed mid-session — rain, a repair, a booking that runs long. The queue simply routes around them and keeps building games for the courts still in play.
Alerts, sound & haptics
The whole point of a queue app is that you can put your phone in your bag and trust it. So "your court is ready" is announced in every channel at once — you should never miss your game because you were looking the other way.
What you'll feel and hear
On your lock screen
On iPhone, PaddleStack runs a Live Activity while you're in a queue or a match: your place in line, your court, and your match timer, updating on the lock screen and in the Dynamic Island. You can check where you stand without unlocking anything.
Staying in control of the noise
Notifications are grouped into categories you can switch off individually — event chatter, social activity, reminders, and so on. A small set stays on no matter what, because turning it off would break something you're relying on: your court being ready, a payment, being removed from an event. It's the same logic as a receipt email you can't unsubscribe from.
Everything the app sends you is also kept in the in-app notification center — including anything that was muted or that arrived while your phone was off. Nothing is lost just because you didn't see the banner.
Displays & the big board
The screens around the venue are part of the product, not a separate purchase. They're web pages — point a TV, stick PC, or spare tablet at a URL once, and it runs itself from then on.
The big board
A wall panel showing the whole session at a glance: who's on every court, how long they've been on, and who's up next. With more courts than fit on one screen it pages through them automatically, a few at a time, sized to be read from across the room rather than crammed. Three views are available — All, Queues, and Courts — and a venue can boot a panel straight into the one it wants.
Spoken callouts
Turn audio on and the board says it: "Court 4 is ready — Ana, Ben, Cara and Dev."It works on a TV with nobody logged in, which is the whole trick — the panel figures out what changed on its own rather than waiting to be told, so it keeps announcing through a flaky network and after a mid-session reboot. It also won't shout the entire building at once when a panel is switched on halfway through the evening.
Per-court screens
A tablet or TV mounted at a single court shows just that court: the four players with their photos, the match timer, and a big court number when it's free so it reads from a distance. Staff can end a match right there without finding the host. It figures out the current session by itself, so the same screen keeps working tomorrow with no one touching it.
| Screen | What to open |
|---|---|
| Venue board Whole venue, session picked automatically | /d/{venue} |
| Court panel One court, addressed by name | /d/{venue}/{court} |
| Big board Pinned to one specific session | /display/big-board/{session} |
Because these are plain URLs, a venue burns them into a TV's start-up setting once and never revisits it — the URLs are built to stay valid as sessions come and go, so nothing has to be re-typed into nine panels when tomorrow's schedule loads.
Tournaments
The same app runs structured events — divisions, brackets, standings, and scoring — with the bracket kept durable rather than living in someone's notebook.
Formats
| Format | How it plays |
|---|---|
| Round robin | Pools where everyone plays everyone. Standings rank by record, then point differential. |
| Single elimination | Straight knockout bracket. Optional third-place match. |
| Double elimination | Winners and losers brackets — one bad game doesn't end your day. |
| Round robin → bracket | Pool play seeds a single- or double-elimination bracket. The most common competitive shape. |
| Rotate partners | The Americano-style mixer: enter solo, get re-paired with a new partner every round, and get ranked as an individual. |
| MLP | Team format with the MLP structure. |
Divisions & partners
An event can run several divisions at once — men's, women's, mixed, open, singles or doubles, each with its own format, skill band, and fee. Depending on the division you register solo or with a partner; partner invitations are sent and accepted in the app, and a host can pair people up afterwards where the format allows it. Rotate-partners divisions are solo entry only, since the whole idea is that the pairings change every round.
On the day
Check-in
Players check in per division, so a host can see exactly who has actually shown up before locking a bracket.
Live bracket
Results propagate the moment a score lands — brackets advance, pool standings recompute, and everyone sees the same board.
Go to court
Players are notified when their match is called, with the court and the opponent. No shouting names across a facility.
Results & DUPR
Finished matches can be submitted to DUPR so competitive play counts toward players' ratings.
Hosting & venues
Anyone can host. The wizard asks a handful of questions and creates the event, its courts, and its queue in one shot — you don't assemble it from parts.
Create the event
Pick open play or tournament, set the venue, time, capacity, and format. Open play gets a ready-to-go queue; tournaments get a starter bracket you tune. If your venue isn't listed yet you can add it as you go, and you become its admin.
Set up courts
Venues with courts on file get them attached automatically. Everyone else just says how many courts they have and gets them created on the spot.
Decide who can come
Open to anyone, invite-only, or approval-based where players request and you accept. Add a fee if you're charging, set capacity, and let the waitlist absorb the overflow.
Run it
On the day you mostly watch. Check people in, and step in only when you want to — hand-build a specific game, swap a no-show, close a court, or end the session.
What hosts get
Screens included
Court panels and the big board come with the platform. No extra hardware beyond a TV or tablet and a browser.
Paid events
Charge for entry and take payment in-app, with slots held while payment is pending and released if it never lands.
Announcements
Push a message to everyone at the session — it lands on phones and can be spoken aloud on the big board.
Real-time everything
Courts, queues, and rosters stay current across every phone and screen at the venue without anyone refreshing.
Co-hosts
Share the load. Co-hosts can check players in and run the courts without owning the event.
Reach
Public events show up in the app for players nearby, and share links open the event whether or not someone has installed the app.
Account, DUPR & safety
Your profile is small on purpose — enough to be recognized at a court, and nothing you didn't choose to share.
Phone-verified identity
Sign-in is your phone number and a texted code. No passwords, and everyone on a roster is a verified, reachable person.
DUPR
Link your DUPR account to show your rating and enter rated events. Competitive results can be submitted back to DUPR. It's optional — plenty of open play doesn't use it, and it never gates casual games.
Blocking & reporting
Block a player and you won't be matched into games with them. Reports go to the people who can act on them.
Seven languages
English, Spanish, Filipino, Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese — switchable in the app, independent of your phone.
Guest players
Someone showed up without the app? A host can add them as a guest for that session so they can play today and sort out an account later.
Delete anytime
Account deletion is in the app, and it actually removes your personal data rather than just hiding it.
Common questions
For open play, no. Walk in during a session, check in on your phone, and join the queue. Some events do ask you to RSVP ahead of time — the event page tells you which, and if it is full you can join the waitlist and get promoted automatically when a spot frees up.
Games are built from the live queue in order. Your party claims spots in a forming match group; when the group fills and a court frees up, that group goes on. Skill and match category (mixed doubles, for example) can filter which groups you are eligible for, but they never jump you ahead of people who were waiting.
Yes. Form a party of up to 4 and the whole party enters the queue as one unit — you get placed into the same match group and walk onto the same court together. Everyone in the party sees the same queue status.
The app announces it several ways at once: a push notification, a triple-ping sound, a haptic buzz, a live banner in the app, and on iOS a Live Activity on your lock screen. Venues running a big board also show and speak the callout on the TV. If you still miss it, a host can swap in another checked-in player without tearing down the game.
The app is free for players on iOS and Android. Some events charge their own entry fee set by the host, which you pay in-app; anything the host charges is theirs, not a PaddleStack subscription.
No. The court panels and the big board are web pages. A venue points a TV, stick PC, or tablet browser at a URL once and leaves it — the board keeps itself up to date and never needs anyone to log in or press anything.
No. A host can run a whole session from a phone. Screens are optional polish: a tablet at each court, a big board on the wall, or nothing at all.
English, Spanish, Filipino, Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese. You can switch language in the app at any time — it does not have to match your phone.
Stop running the board. Just play.
Free for players on iOS and Android. Check in, join the queue, and let the courts sort themselves out.