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New app serves reservations to 700 sports courts across Houston

Drop Shots HTX is one of the facilities Houstonians can book through CatchCorner.

Photo by Abante Photography

Indoor sports like pickleball and futsal are seeing a spike in popularity, especially during the blistering summer heat. The sports center booking app CatchCorner, powered by Sports Illustrated, enables users to seamlessly secure a spot for a quick game without membership fees. It soft launched in Houston this spring and, according to co-founder and chief operating officer Maya Azouri, has been a huge success.

"The Houston expansion has been jaw-dropping," she says. "Up until now, CatchCorner’s launch in New York City had been our most successful market, but Houston has launched on par with it. Over the last 30 days, we’ve already seen over 30,000 users join the app. There are more than 70 venues in the process of launching, meaning we’ll have around 700 unique recreational spaces users can choose from in the city. There’s a real sports culture here, with athletes of all levels from casual weekend players to competitive amateurs and even pros. The diversity of the sports community, combined with the number of high-quality facilities across the city, makes it a perfect fit for CatchCorner."

Currently, CatchCorner in Houston offers bookings for basketball, volleyball, soccer, pickleball, padel, baseball, and badminton, with plans to include tennis, golf simulators, and ice rink sports soon. So far, the most popular sports are basketball, soccer, volleyball and pickleball. The Zone Sports, Toros HTX, PAC Gym and Houston Pickleball Center are among the most popular venues.

Using the app is a snap. Once you pick your sport, venues with available slots are listed including distance from you with the booking schedules in the results so there are no surprises. The slots can go fast, so occasional error messages pop up when trying to book, but it's otherwise a three-click process. CatchCorner also helpfully includes a picture of the facilities while booking in case you want to get the vibes.

CatchCorner announced Google integration in June that lets users book through the app directly from searches when they look up specific venues. This is slightly less intuitive to use than the app, but does ultimately work in both mobile and desktops versions. Either way, it greatly streamlines the booking process for people who just want to schedule a quick pickup game somewhere.

"It’s especially useful for casual players or people who want to organize something on short notice," says Azouri. "Whether it’s a weekend basketball run, a weekday futsal match, or a spontaneous pickleball game with friends, CatchCorner makes it easy to coordinate without the usual logistical headaches. Some feedback here has been that we’re like 'Expedia for sports.' It’s because booking a flight online is that easy, booking your next game or workout should be just as simple."

Jobs report

Texas clocks in as No. 7 best state to find a job, new report says

Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

It's easier to find a job in Texas than in nearly any other state.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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