Facility Ally, the operator-founded business support platform for sports and entertainment facilities, has named Mike Knowles Head of Growth. Knowles will lead outreach and partnership development for Facility Ally across the racquet sports industry, including tennis, pickleball, and padel.
Knowles spent more than 25 years in marketing before stepping into his most recent role as CMO of the Racquet Sports Professionals Association (RSPA), where he led the 97-year-old organization through a rebrand and grew membership renewals 25 percent, a stretch of growth that came while USTA Coaching, an organization with far more resources, was actively competing for the same members. Before the RSPA, he worked inside agencies including Publicis and Young & Rubicam, then client-side at Flowers Foods on brands including Nature’s Own and Dave’s Killer Bread.
“I’ve spent my career watching the same thing happen. Growth shows up, and it looks like success. But growth isn’t the problem. What you do with it is. I saw that up close at the RSPA, competing against an organization with far more resources than we had, and we held our ground because the structure underneath us was solid,” Knowles said.
“That’s what drew me to Facility Ally. Luke built this company the same way, from the operator’s side, not from a whiteboard. I roll up my sleeves. I’m not here to hand facilities a scorecard and walk away.”
Facility Ally was founded by Luke Wade, an Army veteran who started an adult sports league in Kansas City in 2012 and built Facility Ally to solve his own operational problems as that league scaled. The company now works with facilities across the U.S. and Canada, combining hands-on consulting with services and software built by an operator, not engineers guessing at what venues need.
“Mike brings something we don’t have in-house: deep, credible relationships across racquet sports, and a track record of holding ground against much bigger competitors,” Wade said. “He gets what we’re building here, an operator’s approach, not just software. Excited to have him on the team.”
In his role, Knowles will focus on introducing Facility Ally to operators, associations, and organizations across the racquet sports landscape, drawing on relationships built over years inside the industry.
To see how your facility’s operations stack up, take the free Facility Ally Operator Scorecard.
Feel free to reach out to Mike directly at 205.789.4006 or mike@facilityally.com.
