I am not going to pretend I saw this coming. Nobody did. But the money moving into Major League Pickleball right now is not retirement-hobby money.
In 2018 pickleball was played by about 3 million Americans, most of them over 55, mostly in community recreation centers and retirement communities. It was a genuinely fun game that combined elements of tennis, ping pong, and badminton, and it was almost completely invisible to the sports business world.
Today the sport claims over 36 million players in the United States alone, has two competing professional leagues fighting for TV deals and corporate sponsors, has attracted investments from Tom Brady, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and dozens of other celebrities and athletes, and has franchise valuations in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
I played pickleball twice in the last year. Both times there was a wait for a court. In New York City. In the winter.
The pandemic closed gyms, cancelled team sports, and left tens of millions of Americans looking for something physical to do outside with other people. Pickleball, which can be played outdoors on a small court, requires minimal equipment, and is easy to learn but genuinely fun to get good at, was perfectly positioned for that moment.
It spread through social networks the way good games always do. Someone taught their neighbor. Their neighbor taught their office. Within two years the recreational growth was so obvious that serious sports investors started paying attention.
The people who write checks for sports leagues are not doing it because they enjoy the game. They are doing it because they missed the ground floor on MLS and they are not about to miss another one.
What makes pickleball interesting from a business standpoint is not just the participant numbers. It is the demographic. The sport skews young in its new growth wave even though it started old. College students are playing it. Young professionals in cities are playing it. That is an audience that sports media companies will pay to reach.
Major League Pickleball has signed deals with broadcast partners and streaming platforms. The prize money at top tournaments has grown from thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands. Professional players who were teaching tennis lessons two years ago are now making real money playing pickleball full time.
There are two competing leagues and they have been at war over players, venues, and legitimacy. MLP and the Professional Pickleball Association have both tried to lock up the best talent and sign exclusivity deals that prevented players from competing in the other league. It created chaos for the athletes and confusion for fans.
This is exactly what happened when the American Basketball Association and the NBA competed for players in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The ABA eventually folded and the NBA absorbed its best teams. One of those leagues does not exist anymore.
I do not know which pickleball league wins. But I am confident that the sport itself is not going anywhere. Thirty-six million players do not forget that they like a game. The business will sort itself out around them eventually.