Social tennis app 'Break the Love' says it partnered with American Express to offer 10,000 free courts on its platform leading up to the U.S. Open Tennis tournament. Cheddar News speaks with 'Break the Love' CEO Trisha Goyal about how to score free play time on the app. 

Closing Bell

Social App Serves Up Free Tennis Play Time

Welcome back to closing bell on cheddar news everyone as we gear up for the biggest tennis competition in the country, the U. S. Open social sports platform announcing. Its teamed up with American Express, one of the tournament's main sponsors to expand accessibility of the sport. Break The Love is an app that allows users to discover and both group based tennis activities to either learn train or compete. Joining me now is Ceo of Break the Love trisha Goyl Tricia, thanks so much for coming on the show. I know your company removing the hassle of logistics around tennis for those who just want to get out on the court, explain how it works. Thanks for having us having us on today. So Break The Love like you already kind of mentioned is an online platform that is really creating access to these group based racket sport activities and the way it works is that a user can come online to our site Break the Love dot com, They can discover activities based off of their level and interest, geography etcetera. Um and do that book, go out and play across these public and private courts and afterwards stay connected online with the people that they want to still keep in touch with to go and continue playing um through our social network. Very cool. I see the company founded in 2019. So just before the pandemic Tricia outdoor activities. Very good. I think these past 2.5 years or so. I see here you have a partnership with Amex as well. Tell me more about that. Yes, so recently we did um just launch our partnership with American express, where we are actually able to really take our mission of accessibility to really a new level and actually give access to 10,000 reservations across the New York city area. Um now, until the end of the U. S. Open for tennis fans. And so that's a really exciting kind of partnership that we have here, where again, it's free accessible tennis thanks to american Express um for new york city tennis fans around the area. Okay, so this is mostly serving the new york city area, is that right? Yes, correct. How does the fee structure work? How are you making money on this venture? Yes, for us we do take a transaction fee on our consumer business and that's even on public courts, is that right? That is incorrect. Our public court offerings do not actually have a fee structure. There's a feature um to really again continue our mission to create further access to um the new york city tennis fan and really to consumers in urban centers. Okay, very good to know. Um now I know that there is a competitor to your company, you have Break the love, there's also play your court, which is another tennis matchmaking app. How do you compete with that company, Tricia? Yes. Um great questions. So for us, you know, the big, I think differentiator is that we have both locations for people to play at as well as people to play with um and really going back to kind of, you know what our platform is and why we started, we really are on a mission to create more access to this board and a big thing is that in order to play you need a couple of things, you, you need a place to play and you need people to play with and so we really feel that we are really on this mission to reinvent the tennis club for the consumer people to access both across a single online platform. Are you finding that tennis demand in general interest and and the ability to play tennis is increasing? We are definitely seeing an increase in just racquet sports in general as a category since we launched we now have over 100,000 users earlier this year, when we came on we had 20,000 users, so we're definitely seeing the growth here. I break the love, okay, um Serena Williams set to retire, the U. S. Open is gonna be your last official championship that she's gonna play in, her last official major here happening in august right, not too long from now in the new york area, how does the U. S. Open drum up momentum and interest in your app? It definitely is going to increase interest, you know, it's a very uh you know, sad thing I think for, you know, many fans, including myself, but that being said um you know, Serena Williams has really transformed the game. She is, has left an incredible legacy. And I think with that having her um having her, you know, have this year be her last final um you know, time on the court right here at the US Open in New york city is definitely going to drive demand. Um up as we've already seen the ticket sales for the U. S. Open for just the first week of the U. S. Open. Yeah, I think a lot of people excited to watch as serena one last time at the US Open. My final question, Tricia is, what are your expansion plans? How do you want to grow this company? Great question for us. We're really focused on geographic expansion. Um that's really for us, you know, our primary kind of goal. We since again, um you know, 2019, we are now in a few locations and looking to eagerly expand across the nation. All right, Tricia Doyle founder and Ceo of Break the Love Trisha. Thanks so much for coming on the show.