Terms of Service

Effective 2026-10-03

These Terms are an agreement between you and Paddler ("Paddler", "we", "us") for your use of paddler.gg and its apps (the "Service"). By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. Who can use Paddler

You must be at least 13 years old. If you are under 18 (or the age of majority where you live), you may use Paddler only with the permission of a parent or legal guardian, who accepts these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use.
Players under 18 have extra safety rules. An adult can send them a friend request only if they are in the same club or have joined the same session, and can send them typed messages only once they are friends. Photos are turned off in any chat that includes a player under 18. People who are not their friends can't see their age, birthday, gender, relationship status, city, clubs, the courts they play at, or their friends list.
One account per person. Give accurate information and keep it up to date.
Keep your password private. You are responsible for everything done with your account. Tell us right away if you think someone else has used it.
We may refuse, suspend or close an account, for example if we reasonably believe its details are false or that it is shared or duplicated.

2. What Paddler is, and is not

Paddler is a tool for organizing and tracking pickleball: clubs, open play sessions, live queues, ranked games, ratings, tournaments, messages and a forum.
Clubs, organizers and venues are independent. They are not our employees, agents or partners. They set their own rules, fees, schedules and membership, and they alone are responsible for their sessions, events and venues. We do not own, operate, inspect or supervise any venue or game.
Arrangements between players, organizers and clubs, including any fees paid to a club or organizer, are between them. We are not a party to them and are not responsible for them.

3. Health, safety and your own risk

Pickleball is a physical activity with a real risk of injury, including falls, collisions, being struck by a ball or paddle, heat illness and heart problems. You take part in any session, game or event entirely at your own risk. Check with a doctor if you have any health concerns.
You are responsible for your own conduct, fitness, equipment and safety, and for following the rules of the venue and the organizer.
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not responsible for any injury, illness, loss or damage connected with any session, game, event or venue, or with the conduct of any player, organizer, club or venue.

4. Ratings, rankings and rewards

Ratings, levels, rankings, tiers, badges, points and other achievements are estimates produced by our systems. They may be inaccurate. We may change how they are calculated, recalculate or reset them, and void games or results, for example to protect fair play.
They have no monetary value, cannot be exchanged for money, and are not an official rating from any governing body.

5. Your content

"Your content" is anything you post, upload or send, including photos, profile details, posts, comments, messages and scores.
You keep ownership of your content. You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, display, adapt (for example resize) and distribute it in order to run, improve and promote the Service. The licence ends when your content is deleted from the Service, except for copies in backups and content others have already shared or rely on (such as scores in a finished game).
You are responsible for your content and confirm you have the right to post it, including the permission of anyone who appears in your photos.
We do not endorse content posted by users and are not responsible for it.

6. Your content and data can be removed or lost: keep your own copies

Paddler is not a storage or backup service. Photos, messages, posts, comments, profile details, game records and any other data may be removed, limited, changed or lost at any time, with or without notice to you, for example because of moderation, storage limits, maintenance, technical problems, changes to features, or the closure of an account or club.
Do not use Paddler to keep anything important that you cannot afford to lose. Keep your own copies. You can download a copy of your data from Account settings.
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not responsible for any loss of content or data.

7. Rules of conduct

You agree not to:

harass, threaten, bully, discriminate against or impersonate anyone;
post content that is illegal, hateful, sexually explicit or violent, or that infringes anyone else's rights;
cheat or manipulate ratings or results, including fixed games, false scores, sandbagging or using more than one account;
spam, advertise without our permission, or collect other users' information;
break, overload, probe or get around the security or limits of the Service, or access it with bots, scrapers or other automated means without our written permission;
contact a player under 18 for a sexual purpose, ask them for photos, ask them to keep secrets from their parents or guardians, ask to meet them in private, or try to move a chat with them to another app;
use the Service for anything unlawful.

The forum rules, pinned in the forum, also apply.

8. Moderation and enforcement

We may, at our discretion and without notice, review, hide or remove content, void games or results, and warn, suspend or ban accounts or clubs that we believe break these Terms, the forum rules or the law, or that put other users or Paddler at risk. We are not obliged to monitor content, but we may. We report suspected sexual abuse or exploitation of a child to the authorities, as the law requires.

9. Surveys

We may invite you to take part in surveys. Taking part is optional. We may use your account and profile details (such as your level, rating, city, clubs and play history) to decide who to invite and to analyse the answers. Survey results are shared outside the Paddler team only as anonymous totals. The Privacy Policy has the details.

10. Messages from us

We may send you service messages about your account, sessions, games and these Terms by email or in-app notification. You can manage many notifications in Account settings. Messages needed to run your account cannot be turned off.

11. Services run by others

The Service works with services run by others, such as Google and Facebook sign-in, maps and email delivery. Their own terms and privacy policies apply to your use of them, and we are not responsible for them.

12. Paid features

Paddler is free to use today. If we offer paid features in future, we will show the price and any extra terms before you buy.

13. Changes to Paddler and to these Terms

We may add, change, limit or stop any part of the Service at any time. We may update these Terms. When a change is material, we will ask you to accept the new version before you continue using Paddler. If you do not accept it, stop using the Service; you can close your account.

14. Closing your account

You can delete your account at any time from Account settings. We may suspend or close your account, or stop offering the Service, at any time. Sections that by their nature should continue (including sections 3 to 9 and 15 to 19) continue after your account is closed.

15. No warranties

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, accurate or fit for a particular purpose, or that any content or data will be kept.

16. Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, content, profits, goodwill or opportunity, however caused;
our total liability for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or USD 50.

Some places do not allow these limits, so they apply only as far as the law allows. Nothing in these Terms limits any liability that cannot be limited by law.

17. Your responsibility to us

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Paddler and its team against any claims, losses, damages and costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your content, your use of the Service, your taking part in any session or event, or your breach of these Terms or the law.

18. Disputes

If you have a concern, contact us first at hello@paddler.gg. We both agree to try in good faith to resolve it informally within 30 days before starting any formal proceedings.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the place where Paddler's operator is established, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and any dispute will be decided by the courts of that place, unless the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim where you live.
To the extent the law allows, claims must be brought individually, not as part of a class or representative action.

19. General

These Terms, the Privacy Policy and the forum rules are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. If we do not enforce a right, we have not given it up. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms; we may transfer ours as part of a reorganisation, merger or sale.

20. Contact

Paddler · hello@paddler.gg