Professional Pickleball

Where is professional pickleball heading?

Major League Pickleball has announced that an expansion team just paid $400K for a place in the Premier League and confirmed that 12 teams paid the same amount prior to their financial commitment. That’s almost $5M invested into next year’s MLP season.

Granted, that money will be broken down in multiple ways, it’s not as if the take away for the championship title is going to be $5M, but still, that’s a lot of money on a very new and emerging sport.

Just 5 years ago I was explaining what pickleball is over and over again to people in my life.

So where can this sport go from here, if the incline is so dramatically steep? Is this sport capable of capturing the viewership of its more established cousin: tennis?

Let's talk about it...

Image credit: The Kitchen Pickleball

In southern Florida, The Fort, which will be located in Fort Lauderdale will soon become pickleball’s first stadium.

A facility of 43 courts is being built and will feature one center stage. The mock-ups online make this place look like a top-notch venue.

The spacing between the side-by-side courts couldn’t look more perfect, and with 14 weatherproof courts and not to mention the backdrop of palm trees, 2024 couldn’t come any sooner.

Based on the map the venue boasts a recovery fitness area, a beach on a lake, disc golf, and a dog area. With a stadium court, I’m certain that professional tours such as PPA, APP, and MLP will consider including The Fort as an addition to their lineup.

Image credit: @playthefort

The entrance of high-level athletes from other sports into pickleball is becoming increasingly evident that this sport is a smart investment of a professional’s time.

Jack Sock, a successful professional tennis player has now made strong moves into the pickleball scene, before Sock, Olympian volleyball player Tyson Apostel dove into pickleball, and more recently former WTA player Genie Bouchard announced her entrance into pickleball.

Not to mention the handfuls of high-level tennis players moving over into pickleball, the landscape is truly changing daily.

The popularity of professional pickleball has led to increased media coverage. When I first started in pickleball YouTube had a few live feeds here and there during some major tournaments.

Pickleball Channel on YouTube dominated coverage during the US Open, which was the largest pickleball tournament (and party) each year.

Amazon was streaming live pickleball, but they chose to speed up some of the matches, so players were moving at an unrealistic pace, which might have gone unnoticed to the less familiar viewer, but it was hilarious watching the players change sides at a rapid pace and the fans in the background waving their signs in an unnatural motion.

But Tennis Channel and the PPA Tour have struck a huge partnership to bring the world PBTV (Pickleballtv), which is still accessible through Amazon (Freevee).

Image credit: Sara McInnes

It’s not shocking that tennis has clamped onto pickleball though, they’re siding up to the cooler cousin.

Even here in Canada, tennis has done its best (and quite successfully so) to take pickleball “under their wing”; although the older sport has a lot to offer in the ways of resources, I see the match-up as a “well, if you can’t fight them, join them” type of situation.

We know that some tennis players are resentful of pickleball and we know that most pickleball players can’t be fussed by this resentment and that pickleball is going to forge ahead and continue to be great.

So, I suppose we’ll see more and more professional tennis players move into the sport, but pickleball is growing to be so large that everyone will have the chance at a slice of the pie!

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