SM’s Gen Z council decrees: More pickleball, running hubs, and an Aura library

Raphael Reyes/Rappler

'We really took the young ones, the officers who are Gen Zs, to do all the insighting for us,' says the mall's marketing chief of its 'Gen Z Council,' which is helping bring everything from pickleball courts to a library into SM malls

AT A GLANCE

• SM Supermalls is implementing upgrades based on insights from a Gen Z Council, focusing on sports and leisure activities like pickleball and running to attract younger consumers.
• The company plans to add two tennis courts at SM Aura and transform its grand staircase into a library, reflecting a mix of active and quiet spaces.
• Despite economic challenges, SM reported an 8% revenue increase in the first half of 2026, with a significant rise in restaurant tenants and early preparations for Christmas festivities.

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SM’s next round of mall upgrades sounds less like traditional renovation plans and more like a wishlist from your typical Gen Z group chat.

More pickleball. More places to run. Two tennis courts at SM Aura – and while they’re at it, turn Aura’s grand staircase into a library too.

See, there’s a reason all this skews young. Somewhere inside SM is an internal council made up entirely of Gen Z employees whose job is to tell senior management what people their age are actually into. SM Supermalls president Steven Tan, now in his 50s, is quite aware of the age gap. Beside the Gen Z consumers the company is chasing, he joked that he’s practically “antiquated.”

So, SM set up a Gen Z Council for that. And like any good council, membership is pretty exclusive. Tan isn’t allowed in. SM marketing chief Jonjon San Agustin doesn’t make the cut either.

“We really took the young ones, the officers who are Gen Zs, to do all the insighting for us,” San Agustin told reporters, explaining that SM deliberately taps younger officers instead of leaving it entirely to vice presidents and department heads to see the pulse of the market.

“You learn so much from the younger generation,” Tan added. “Their ideas are very different. You just have to be more practical when you apply it. That is where we come in naman. Because of our experiences, [it] balances it out.”

To be clear, the council doesn’t literally dictate where the next pickleball court goes, of course. But it’s reflective of how SM tries to keep its ears to the ground.

And lately, that has meant a lot of sports. Tan began pushing San Agustin in late 2024 to get SM into pickleball and running. San Agustin negotiated for some time and asked for until summer 2025 to roll it out.

Then they went for it.

The rise and rise of pickleball, running

SM tried pickleball, running, table tennis, karate and, as San Agustin put it, “anything that was in the Olympics.” When an atrium had no event booked, staff could simply roll out a mat and turn it into a temporary pickleball court.

What started as a scramble to make use of available spaces has since grown into 102 pickleball courts – the largest pickleball network in the country, according to SM.

Running took a similarly improvised route. Twenty-one of SM’s 22 running hubs simply loop around mall perimeters, which meant San Agustin’s team had to sit down with security and operations and work out how to redirect morning traffic so runners wouldn’t have to share the route with incoming cars.

Close to 50,000 runners used the hubs or joined SM events in the first half of 2026, San Agustin said, while major runs at the Mall of Asia complex can attract 10,000 participants alone.

“It has grown so big in the past two years in terms of that community. That’s one of the biggest tribes that we have in the active lifestyle,” San Agustin said. 

Tennis, a public library at SM Aura?

SM is now looking to relaunch its sports and leisure business unit, which currently handles bowling, game parks, and skating rinks, to expand more strategically into pickleball, tennis, and other sports.

There are already more projects coming. SM Aura is getting two tennis courts in its Sky Garden, a detail Tan casually dropped during the briefing.

“Kayo din ang first dibs diyan (You all get first dibs on that),” he told reporters.

Don’t worry, if sports isn’t your thing, Aura is also getting something much quieter. Its grand staircase will be transformed into a library, with its redevelopment estimated to wrap up as soon as Q4 2026.

So far, it seems SM’s strategy is paying off even as households become more deliberate with their spending. SM Supermalls posted P41.8 billion in first-half revenues, up 8% year on year, while occupancy hit a record 96%.

The mix has changed too. Restaurants, for instance, have grown from less than 5% of tenants when Tan joined SM in 2004 to around 30% today. The “cookie-cutter” malls he once bemoaned are also giving way to flagships like SM Nuvali, opening November 27 with a one-hectare air-conditioned indoor garden ringed by restaurants.

At SM, Christmas starts in March

And lest we forget, it’s already September, which means Christmas is officially on in the Philippines. But at SM, that would already be about six months late.

If you’ve been to your local SM, you’d see Christmas celebrations already coming into full swing – red and green arches by the doorway and festive music playing overhead. To get all that ready, preparation apparently starts as soon as the first quarter of the year.

“Christmas decors namin, March pa lang, approved na ‘yan (We have our Christmas decors approved as early as March),” Tan told reporters on Tuesday, September 1.

In fact, starting that day, the festivities had already begun to amp up, with 30% of SM’s background music changing to Christmas jingles. Yes, there’s apparently a Christmas music percentage.

From 30%, it gradually climbs as SM rolls into its “100 Days of Christmas” campaign and its Christmas lighting activities, building toward what is naturally the biggest boom time for retailers in a consumption-heavy economy like the Philippines. – Rappler.com