Pickleball: From Recreational Phenomenon to Institutional Sports Asset

Why Pickleball Is Being Mispriced by the Sports World?

Pickleball looks harmless at first glance.

Paddles. Public parks. Retirees, families, weekend players. Participation numbers that feel almost too good to be true. To many investors, it still reads like a cultural blip racquetball with better PR, destined to spike and fade just as quickly.

That assumption is where the mispricing begins.

Because while the public narrative fixates on how many people are playing, the real story is unfolding elsewhere in boardrooms, league offices, media negotiations, and quietly assembled ownership groups. Pickleball is no longer just a participation phenomenon. It is in the early stages of institutionalisation. Governance structures are forming. Franchise systems are live. Broadcast and sponsorship ecosystems exist. Capital is already deployed just not loudly.

This is the same disconnect that existed around MLS in the 1990s. Around the UFC in the early 2000s. Sports that looked fringe, chaotic, or unserious right up until the moment their foundations snapped into place — and valuations re-rated almost overnight.

Pickleball is following that curve, not racquetball’s.

The difference is structural. Racquetball never solved control, ownership, or media. Pickleball is solving all three simultaneously. And it is doing so with far more sophisticated capital, clearer governance ambitions, and a faster path to professionalisation than most investors realise.

This report exists to correct that blind spot.

Not by celebrating participation numbers but by mapping power. By showing who actually controls pickleball today, where money already flows, how leagues and franchises are being structured, and which assets are investable now, before the sport’s institutional layer becomes obvious to everyone else.

Pickleball is not “too early.” It is simply under-analysed.

And in sport, the greatest returns rarely come from waiting for certainty they come from understanding the system before the price of entry resets.

Why Pickleball Scaled Faster Than Any Modern Sport

Pickleball’s growth from a niche hobby to America’s fastest-growing sport has been unprecedented in speed and scope. Several structural factors enabled this explosion:

Lowest-Friction Sport Ever Commercialized

The sport’s barriers to entry are remarkably low, which has supercharged participation. All that’s needed to start is a paddle (often <$50), a wiffle-style ball, and access to a compact court even a repurposed parking lot or driveway will do. “Two to four people, a low-slung net, rackets, and a ball are all you need”. The game is extremely easy for novices: you can have zero athletic background and still be playing real matches within 20–30 minutes of learning the rules. This almost frictionless onboarding converts curious onlookers into active players at a rate most sports can’t match. From a business perspective, such accessibility is gold: it widens the funnel of potential fans and customers. A broad base of recreational players attracts the interest of sponsors and broadcasters, since the pool of people who understand (and buy products related to) the sport is huge and growing. Major consumer brands have taken notice – for example, Anheuser-Busch has bought a Major League Pickleball franchise to cement its connection to this demographic. The upshot: pickleball’s low cost and ease of play create a massive, ready-made audience, which translates into instant marketability for events and products.

Demographic & Social Flywheel

Unlike many sports that skew toward a particular age or gender, pickleball’s appeal is truly cross-generational and inclusive. Every age group from Gen Z to retirees has seen increased participation in recent years. In fact, the single largest cohort of players in the U.S. is the 25–34 age range (over 2.3 million players), and over a million kids under 18 picked up the sport from 2022. This balanced age stack combined with nearly even male/female participation means pickleball has a diverse fan base that mirrors the general population more closely than most sports. It’s also inherently social: typically played as doubles, it blends competition with a fun, collegial atmosphere that has made it a staple of corporate wellness programs and community recreation alike. Companies have started incorporating pickleball for team building and employee fitness, capitalizing on its easy learning curve and social nature. The sport’s social flywheel is evident in how quickly casual players turn into enthusiasts who play weekly leagues, buy gear, and even attend pro events. Nearly 20 million Americans played pickleball in 2024, a 45.8% jump from the year prior and importantly, many of these participants become repeat consumers, whether that means paying tournament entry fees, renting local courts, supporting their local pro franchise or watching pro matches online. The clearest proof of this conversion: in 2024 over 320,000 fans attended pro pickleball events which was a 40% increase from 2023 and it was the first year that ticket sales revenue actually surpassed the revenue from amateur player registrations at those events. People who start by playing for fun are staying in the ecosystem as spectators and customers, fueling both grassroots and professional levels in tandem.

COVID didn’t create pickleball, it accelerated it. In 2020, locked-down communities were looking for something rare: a way to be active, social, and outdoors without friction. Pickleball fit instantly. Courts appeared in driveways and cul-de-sacs. Families and neighbours picked up paddles. What looked like a pandemic pastime quickly spread to millions.

The real signal came after lockdowns ended. Players didn’t leave, they stayed. Participation kept climbing, not flattening. From 2020 to 2023, pickleball grew 223%, including a further 51.8% jump in just one year. That’s not a temporary spike; it’s a behavioural shift. The flywheel is now self-sustaining. Players pull in friends. Informal games turn into clubs. Demand forces cities to build more courts many of which were busier in 2024 than during COVID itself. The pandemic lit the fuse. Pickleball’s simplicity, accessibility, and social pull did the rest.

2. Institutionalisation & Ownership Consolidation

Beyond the backyard craze, pickleball has rapidly institutionalized with power players in business consolidating key assets to control the sport’s future. What looks like a fragmented trend at the surface is actually coalescing into a capital-controlled ecosystem.

The Dundon Roll-Up Strategy

At the center of pickleball’s professionalization is billionaire Tom Dundon, who has executed a private-equity-style roll-up of the sport’s critical properties. Dundon – known for owning the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes saw an opportunity to vertically integrate everything from equipment retail to pro tournaments. In the span of a few years, his firm Dundon Capital Partners amassed a portfolio that covers every corner of pickleball. Players can buy a paddle on Pickleball Central, register for a tournament through PickleballTournaments.com, get news on Pickleball.com, and watch the pros in Major League Pickleball (MLP) and all of those entities are owned by Dundon’s group. By quietly collecting these assets, Dundon ensured that his camp benefits from every transaction in the pickleball value chain. “It’s an ecosystem play... a unique situation” explains Dundon’s CIO, noting that in most mature sports such a one-stop consolidation would be impossible.

This mirrors classic private equity roll-ups in niche sports and hobbies not unlike how Varsity Brands bought up cheerleading competitions, apparel, and training to dominate that industry (Varsity was later sold for $4.75 B in 2024). Dundon’s pickleball empire similarly spans events, media, data, and gear, giving him economies of scale and cross-promotion advantages. Critics have whispered about monopolistic control, but legal experts note the sport is still too nascent to call it a monopoly. For investors, the takeaway is that pickleball’s rapid growth is not random it’s orchestrated. A significant share of the sport’s infrastructure is being deliberately consolidated by a few players (with Dundon in the lead), positioning them to reap outsized rewards if the sport’s popularity continues to explode.