Editorial Standards

The racket sports industry is not good about data. Numbers get repeated until they sound true. We are trying to be the exception, and this page is how you hold us to it.

What we publish, and how we source it

ARA reporting — the news feed, the monthly industry report, the padel and pickleball reports, and the Compensation Report — is sourced and attributed. Every factual claim traces to a source you can go check yourself. Where the figure belongs to another organization, we say whose it is, and its accuracy belongs to them.

Our news was previously aggregated from podcasts. Podcasts are opinion, sometimes well informed and sometimes not, and aggregating them produced numbers we could not defend when members asked where they came from. Members asked. We changed the standard rather than the answer.

Compensation data

The Compensation Report is built from verified IRS filings across 325 clubs, triangulated against CMAA survey data and Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. Three independent sources. None of it self-reported. Where the three disagree, we publish the range instead of choosing the most flattering number.

Members, guests and speakers speak for themselves

The ARA convenes conversations. It does not vet opinions.

Webinars, podcast episodes, panels, contributed articles and member comments carry the views of the person speaking. They are not ARA positions, ARA endorsements, or claims the ARA has verified. We do not ask speakers to submit their remarks in advance and we would not want to.

If someone states a fact you intend to rely on, ask them for the source. We encourage it, and we ask the same question ourselves.

Selling from the stage

This is where we differ from the certifying bodies, and it is deliberate.

Vendor members and sponsors are allowed to talk about their business. A vendor membership includes a webinar. A sponsorship includes content placement. Those were paid for and we are not going to pretend otherwise or make anyone pretend for us.

What we ask instead: lead with the expertise. The session should be worth an hour to someone who will never buy anything from you. Selling is permitted. Selling in place of teaching is what gets an invitation not repeated.

Where a placement is paid for, it is labeled as such.

Corrections

If we published something wrong, tell us. We will correct it and say what changed. Reply to any ARA email or write to info@americanracketsportsassociation.com.

Corrections are not embarrassing. Uncorrected errors are.