Quick answer: Two separate Chapter 11 filings have hit The Picklr in the space of a fortnight — one by the franchisee group that runs the Burlington, Danvers and Westbrook clubs, and one by the franchise company itself. Chapter 11 is a reorganisation, not a shutdown. As of 13 October the three New England clubs are open, and the Westbrook club has publicly said it will stay that way. If you are a member, the practical answer right now is: keep playing, but read the next section before you buy a long membership or enter a tournament far out.
The 30-second version
- 24 September: 3 Strand Holdings LLC and 12 related entities filed Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida. The group includes Burlington PB LLC, Danvers PB LLC and Westbrook PB LLC, along with Exton PB and Newark PB. These are the franchisees — the operators who hold the local clubs.
- 9 October: Picklr, Inc. — the franchisor, the company behind the brand — filed its own Chapter 11 in the Northern District of Texas.
- Clubs are open. The court authorised the debtors to keep operating and to pay pre-bankruptcy employee wages. Local reporting in Maine confirmed the Westbrook club intends to remain open.
- A hearing was set for 20 October covering asset sales and termination notices. That is the date to watch.
What actually happened
It is worth separating the two filings, because most of the coverage has blurred them and they mean different things for a player in New England.
The first filing, on 24 September, came from the operator group. 3 Strand Holdings LLC filed alongside twelve related entities, five of which are the clubs themselves: Burlington PB LLC, Danvers PB LLC, Exton PB LLC, Newark PB LLC and Westbrook PB LLC. Reporting ties the group to brothers Jeff and James Maguire. In plain terms: the company that signed the leases and runs the day-to-day business at your local club asked a court for protection while it restructures.
The second filing, on 9 October, is the bigger one in brand terms. Picklr, Inc. — the franchisor that sells and supports the franchises — filed its own Chapter 11 in Texas. Reported figures put roughly $915,000 in assets against about $2.39 million in liabilities, and the company announced a financing commitment of around $4.5 million, led by one of its own franchisees and subject to court approval.
Founder Jorge Barragan has been publicly direct about the cause. The company had taken on guarantor status on lease payments across roughly 40 franchise sites. When a franchisor guarantees the rent on dozens of large-format buildings it does not itself operate, a handful of underperforming locations stop being a local problem and become a balance-sheet problem for the whole system. That is what appears to have happened here.
What Chapter 11 does and does not mean
This is where most of the panic comes from, so it is worth being precise.
Chapter 11 is reorganisation. A business continues trading under court supervision while it restructures debt, renegotiates or rejects leases, and tries to emerge solvent. It is not Chapter 7, which is liquidation — selling everything and closing the doors. Airlines, retailers and gyms go through Chapter 11 and come out the other side regularly.
What it does allow is the rejection of unprofitable leases. That is usually the whole point of the exercise, and it is the mechanism by which individual locations can close during a reorganisation even while the business survives. The 20 October hearing is listed as covering asset sales and termination notices, which is precisely the machinery for deciding which sites continue and which do not.
So the honest position on 13 October is: the three New England clubs are open, nobody has announced a closure, and the court process that would determine any closures has not concluded.
What this means if you play in New England
Three clubs sit inside our coverage area: Burlington, Massachusetts, Danvers, Massachusetts and Westbrook, Maine. Between them they represent a meaningful share of the dedicated indoor capacity north and west of Boston and in southern Maine — which matters most from November to March, when outdoor play in New England effectively stops.
If you are a member: keep playing. Your club is open. What is worth doing is checking how your membership is billed. Month-to-month leaves you exposed to very little. A prepaid annual plan is an unsecured claim if anything changes, and unsecured claims are the ones that fare worst in a reorganisation. That is not a prediction about these clubs — it is simply how the process works, and it is the reason to think twice before prepaying anything long during a live Chapter 11.
If you were about to join: there is no reason to avoid the club. There is good reason to pay monthly rather than annually until the court process is further along.
If you run leagues or a tournament there: have a backup venue in mind for anything scheduled beyond the next couple of months. Not because a closure is expected, but because the cost of having a contingency is near zero and the cost of not having one in January is a cancelled season.
If you are a facility owner reading this: the lesson is in the cause rather than the outcome. The failure point was guaranteed rent on big-box space, signed at a pace that assumed demand would arrive on schedule. Pickleball demand in New England is real and still growing. The risk was never the sport — it was the lease structure wrapped around it.
The wider picture for New England courts
It would be easy to read this as pickleball cooling off. The evidence here does not support that. Nothing in either filing points to collapsing participation; both point at property obligations taken on during a landgrab phase.
The useful read for players is that the dedicated indoor franchise model is under real pressure, while the rest of the New England court landscape is not. Municipal courts keep getting built. School and community-centre gym time keeps getting converted in winter. Independent clubs with owned buildings or modest leases are not exposed to this at all.
If the indoor franchise sector consolidates, the practical effect for most players is that winter court time gets scarcer in the specific towns affected, and that the independents and municipal programmes pick up the demand. Knowing where those are is the difference between playing through the winter and waiting for April.
We maintain a directory of courts across all six New England states, including indoor options in Maine. If one of these clubs is your winter home, it is worth knowing your alternatives now rather than in February.
What we are watching
- The 20 October hearing on asset sales and termination notices — the first real signal on which locations continue.
- Whether the $4.5 million financing is approved by the court. That is the difference between a reorganisation with a plan and one without.
- Any change to membership terms at the three New England clubs. A shift in billing or a pause on new memberships is usually the earliest visible sign.
We will update this page as the court process moves. If you are a member at Burlington, Danvers or Westbrook and you see something change on the ground before it reaches the news, we would like to hear about it.
Frequently asked questions
Are the Picklr clubs in Burlington, Danvers and Westbrook closed?
No. As of 13 October 2026 all three are open. The bankruptcy court authorised the operators to continue trading and to pay employee wages, and the Westbrook club has publicly stated it intends to remain open.
Did The Picklr itself go bankrupt, or just the local owners?
Both. The franchisee group that runs the three New England clubs, 3 Strand Holdings LLC and twelve related entities, filed Chapter 11 on 24 September in Florida. The franchisor, Picklr, Inc., filed its own Chapter 11 on 9 October in Texas. They are separate cases in different courts.
Will I lose my membership?
Nothing announced so far changes memberships. The risk worth understanding is that a prepaid long-term membership is an unsecured claim if a location does close, whereas a month-to-month membership carries almost no exposure. That is a reason to prefer monthly billing during the process, not a reason to cancel.
What caused this?
Lease guarantees. Founder Jorge Barragan has publicly acknowledged that the company guaranteed rent across roughly 40 franchise sites, and that the accumulated obligations became unsustainable at the corporate level. The filings point at property commitments rather than at falling demand for pickleball.
Does this mean pickleball is slowing down in New England?
There is no evidence of that in either filing. Municipal court building continues, winter gym conversions continue, and independent clubs are unaffected. What is under pressure is one specific model: large leased buildings taken on quickly with guaranteed rent.
What happens on 20 October?
A bankruptcy court hearing is scheduled covering asset sales and termination notices. It is the first point at which the court addresses which locations and agreements continue, so it is the date most likely to produce concrete news.