Behind the scenes sports documentaries have long been a thing, from HBO’s Hard Knocks to Netflix’s Drive to Survive to name just two in a crowded genre. So it should come as no surprise professional pickleball wants to get into that game, but it is proceeding without a distributor not secured.
The Caravana PPA Tour hired a production company and is currently filming at events for a behind the scenes series of life on the tour for the players and business executives who run the circuit.
“Right now Carvana is spending millions of dollars a year (on pickleball), and they’re funding a documentary like Drive to Survive,” PPA owner Tom Dundon testified in a federal court recently in an unrelated case.
A Tour spokesman confirmed the circuit has been filming at events but has no distributor or release date yet. Is there an audience for such a documentary? There is no denying pickleball is among the fastest growing recreational sports, with tens of millions picking up the small court game since the pandemic.
According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA), 19.8 million people played pickleball more than once in the U.S. in 2024, a 45.8% increase from 2023 and a 311% over the past three years. The Association of Pickleball Professionals (APP) reported that nearly 50 million adult Americans played pickleball at least once in 2023. Whichever figure is closer to the mark, there are a lot of pickleball players.
Whether that translates to viewer demand is another question. If recreational play meant high ratings for the pro game, soccer would outrate football. The PPA, and its sister league MLP (the team version), are streamed on PickleballTV, a venture with Tennis Channel. Matches are also on Amazon Prime, ESPN, FS1 and CBS and CBS Sports Network. The PPA boasts that in 2024, one billion minutes were viewed, and a Mesa, Ariz. event drew 501,000 viewers.
But the market is slightly skeptical. One media consultant referred to the circuit as an upper tier three property, asking for anonymity so as not to offend the PPA. The sounds of pickleball can be off putting, and fair or not the sport can seem like curling, something anyone could do so why watch.
Patrick Crakes, a former Fox executive, said in the end a documentary is about the players and their stories, and that is a must. Netflix’s Break Point, the behind the scenes series on pro tennis, lasted only two seasons in part due to lack of buy-in from the top players. That likely won’t be a problem, as pro pickleball players are hungry for exposure.
“I love pickleball,” Dundon testified in the trial over the lawsuit he is facing over the demise of the Alliance of American Football. “And I met a couple of the people. that were playing at a high level. I thought it was fun. I thought I could help,” he said of his 2022 purchase of the PPA, which last year merged with the MLP after a tumultuous negotiation.
By now, it’s almost obligatory for a sports league to put out a documentary. A SailGP executive made that observation this week to reporters in a discussion of the water bound circuit’s upcoming documentary on Paramount +, Uncharted. That series is about a team leader, Jimmy Spithill, who was cut by the U.S team and found success with Italy.
SailGP launched in 2018, a year before the PPA, so both are at the point in their life cycles of wanting to put out content that dramatizes their leagues to a new audience.
“It’s obvious if you come to one of our tournaments there are lots of cameras following around lots of our players,” said a PPA spokesman, who declined to identify the production company. “It follows the storylines of the players and some of the executives as well to give a little more insight into the personalities of the sport.”
So no titles yet for the series, so here are my slightly less than serious suggestions. “Behind the Dink.’’ “Get out of the kitchen.” “Let’s make some noise.” “Get that crap off the tennis courts.”
Seriously, there is no reason a pickleball documentary shouldn’t find an audience, or at the very least a distributor. Revenues for the PPA Tour are bustling. Dundon testified sponsorship revenue is close to $40 million, up from $1 million when he got there. His lawyer described the PPA as profitable, a signal there is a solid audience for the sport and perhaps room for yet another entrant into the cluttered sports documentary universe.
About Daniel Kaplan
Daniel Kaplan has been covering the business of sports for more than two decades. A proud founding reporter of SportsBusiness Journal, he spent the last four years at The Athletic.