Pro pickleball is ‘open for business’ and hoping to meet brands on the court

It’s officially spring, which means longer days, seasonal allergies, and the telltale sound of plastic meeting paddle.

That’s right—it’s pickleball season.

The sport first boomed during the pandemic, and as leagues formed and merged in subsequent years, hundreds of brands picked up their metaphorical paddles. And in worse news for anyone who can’t stand the sound of pickleball, the sport has been quickly maturing from a sponsorship standpoint, with assets like team and tournament naming rights grabbing the attention of marketers at major brands across industries.

“There’s clearly interest, as more and more non-endemic brands are coming into this space,” said Samin Odhwani, chief strategy officer of the United Pickleball Association (UPA), the holding company that was created when Major League Pickleball (MLP) merged with the PPA Tour. “Brands are trying to get creative. They’re trying to cut through in different ways, and [naming rights] is a really interesting [way] for them to do that in a sport in America, where, for all intents and purposes, American sports don’t really allow this.”

Getting pick(le)y

Despite the merger under UPA, MLP and the PPA Tour still exist as individual brands with their own sponsors, but they’re both spoken for in terms of naming rights. The PPA Tour has had Carvana as its title sponsor since 2022, and just this month, MLP and DoorDash inked a multi-year deal to rename the league “MLP presented by DoorDash.” It was reportedly the largest naming deal in MLP’s history. Days later, Japanese manufacturing company Toray became MLP’s first Asia-based sponsor.

Individual tournaments also have naming partners, like the MLP Mid-Season Tournament (whose previous title sponsor was Advil Targeted Relief, but which is getting a new title partner for this year) and the Biofreeze USA Pickleball National Championships. With more sponsors comes more revenue: In 2023, the PPA Tour and MLP brought in a combined $16 million in sponsor revenue, which increased by 56% to $25 million in 2024, according to UPA. That figure is projected to reach $35 million this year.

Makena Berchem, senior brand manager at Carvana, said the naming rights element of its sponsorship with the PPA Tour has been “the biggest value driver for Carvana.” The brand also activates around pickleball at games and on social, but the tour naming rights are a unique aspect of the deal, she said.

“It’s created a really positive relationship between the two brands, because we both have this mutual success that’s so tied into one another’s,” Berchem said. “You won’t see league naming rights and tour naming rights in a lot of other spaces, simply because they’re too mature. They won’t consider it.”

For that reason, UPA is “open for business,” Odhwani said; he said he can envision a future where pickleball goes the way of Formula 1, where almost every team has a brand name attached to it. That doesn’t mean UPA will partner up with any brand, though: As brand interest has grown, the organization, which approves naming rights deals down to the team level, has become more selective about its sponsorship roster in recent years, he said.

“I don’t want to exclude brands, but Formula 1 is cool because it’s cool brands,” Odhwani said. “That’s that line that you have to toe.”

So far, three MLP teams are owned by brands: the Atlanta Bouncers, which were established by Anheuser-Busch; the Brooklyn Aces, co-owned by Lotto; and the Phoenix Flames, in which sports equipment brand Proton Sports owns a controlling share. For Anheuser-Busch, owning the Bouncers outright means it can engage fans while also helping to shape the development of the sport from its early stages, Kerry Scalora, head of US sports marketing, told us.

“Our ultimate goal is to be synonymous with the sport, and our level of ownership unlocks unique opportunities…by thoroughly integrating our brands at every touchpoint,” she said. Those touchpoints were highlighted in a major moment earlier this year, when Anheuser-Bush’s Michelob Ultra brand featured Bouncers players in its pickleball-themed Super Bowl ad.

Open play

The fact that so many pickleball sponsors aren’t endemic to sports is another sign of maturation, but some of the endemic brands are sticking around, too. “We need them, they need us,” Odhwani said.

Compression sock and gear brand OS1st, which started sponsoring national pickleball tours in 2021, has “sponsored pretty much every major pickleball tour at this point,” Director of Marketing Stephanie Lee said. It’s so invested in the sport that it sells socks with different MLP team logos on them.

“We felt like having team merchandise and being a part of that was a really great way to leverage our specialty [product] model,” she said. “And it’s just plain fun to be a part of teams when they’re starting.”

Brands are getting involved in pickleball beyond buying teams or sponsoring leagues. Recently, branded pickleball experiences have popped up at conferences and other corporate events, according to Laura Gainor, founder and CEO of pickleball marketing agency Pickleball in the Sun. Take Billboard and Smirnoff, which set up a branded pickleball court at SXSW last year. To capitalize on the demand for branded pickleball experiences, Pickleball in the Sun recently formed a partnership with PickleRoll, which makes portable courts.

There’s also traditional TV ad interest in pickleball. Harrison Hess, head of sports media investment at TV ad platform Tatari, said that in recent months, some advertising clients have requested inventory in nationally broadcast pickleball events.

Small court

Despite the growth, pickleball still has plenty of room to develop in terms of audience and sponsor involvement. Berchem said pro pickleball can feel like “we’re still kind of in the wild, wild West,” and Gainor pointed out that, while people seem to want to play pickleball en masse, a much smaller contingency actually watches it. Fox’s broadcast of the PPA Mesa Arizona Cup drew 501,000 viewers in late 2024, making it the largest-ever TV audience for the sport, but that’s still just a fraction of viewership for other sports.

That could be because the sport is still so nascent at the pro level. It’s only recently that pickleball athletes like Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters have been able to make professional careers out of the sport by earning money from it, and though some colleges have intramural teams, there’s no significant infrastructure that allows athletes to seriously train to compete professionally, Gainor said. If more high schools and colleges start offering pickleball, “it’ll definitely grow” at the pro level, she said, but for now, she said the biggest opportunity for brands is still among casual fans.

“I’m always all for continuing to help grow professional pickleball, but on my side, that sweet spot, that opportunity, is the recreational, casual player,” she said. “It’s incredible to see a brand like Anheuser-Busch supporting professional pickleball…but I think that there’s lots of options depending on what your goals and budgets are.”

Correction 04/16/25: This story has been updated to correct the list of brand-owned pickleball teams.