Quick question; which sports league paid female players the most on average in 2024, the year women’s sports finally broke through?
Was it the Caitlin Clark-infused WNBA? (Sorry Sheila Johnson, but like it or not Clark is the top reason for the surge in popularity.) Maybe the National Women’s Soccer League, which has seen skyrocketing franchise values and vibrant competition among cities for the next expansion franchise. Or the Professional Women’s Hockey League, which launched this year with the backing of Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and Billie Jean King?
If you chose D, none of the above, you’d be correct. Because it is actually the pro pickleball tour, which paid out on average $269,000 to its female competitors.
Unlike those in most other individual sports, players in pickleball are employees of theirs – the United Pickleball Association (UPA) – so the comparison to other leagues is apt (unlike tennis and golf where the players are independent contractors). The average salary for a player in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in 2023 was around $50,000 to $60,000 per year, and almost $120,000 in the WNBA this year. Those figures will surely rise soon, but pickleball, a relatively new professional sport, is also growing and should see prize money tick up too.
The UPA operates the Carvana PPA Tour and Major League Pickleball (the team product) and pays $30 million to players, evenly split between men and women.
“There is no other sport where men and women can compete on the court together and have an equal opportunity to impact the game,” said Samin Odhwani, UPA’s chief strategy officer. “And arguably, what we’ve seen from early statistics and analysis of the sort of value of a player, the female outweighs what the male is able to do, in terms of just winning.
“The fact that they get more of the balls dictated to them because, sort of conceptually, the idea, especially in mixed doubles, is hit the ball to the weaker player, right, like (the) mind gravitates towards always funneling it to the female, and in turn, we’re seeing some statistical analysis show that that’s actually the wrong strategy.”
This year was the first for the merged MLP and PPA, with ownership controlled by Tom Dundon, who also owns the Carolina Hurricanes and a significant share of TopGolf. The merger brought some much-needed consolidation to the still fledgling sport and likely saved MLP, which had handed out exorbitant player contracts that ownership could not afford.
Like the WNBA, the UPA doesn’t make money, with revenue coming in through three main buckets: event ticket revenue; sponsorship; and amateur registration. UPA events occur alongside grassroots tournaments.
In 2024, event ticket revenue for the first time exceeded amateur registration, an important barrier to cross given the knock on the sport is it is growing like mushrooms on the recreational level, but that doesn’t translate to viewers. Total attendance across PPA Tour and MLP events was 320,000 – up 40% from 2023 (next year there are 35 scheduled events).
There are no media rights fees, at least not yet. Pickleball consumed 350 hours on linear TV in 2024, with the bulk on Tennis Channel and Fox Sports, a figure Odhwani projects may go to 500 hours in 2025. There is also a free ad-supported streaming channel, Pickleball TV.
In a few years, UPA revenues should top $100 million, Odhwani projected, though he declined to disclose what revenues were this year (after publication a representative said they are halfway towards the goal). The higher figure assumes media platforms will start paying for the UPA, though he agrees there is a sentiment that pickleball is not easy on the eyes. The small court does not allow for the loping graceful movements tennis can inspire, and the sound of the paddle hitting the ball is not enjoyed by all to put it mildly.
But Odhwani said some of the perception is the residue of cheap TV production is in the past, when matches were actually streamed through mobile phones. “I empathize with that,” he said of the idea that professional pickleball is hard to watch, “because where we were from a production standpoint, like, two years ago it wasn’t great to watch. It was being filmed on a phone for a year, like, on a tripod, and then connected to YouTube.
“But I’m really proud of where we’ve gotten to, even in the last quarter of this year, where we’ve got a jib camera that’s like zooming into the serve and then sort of making its way towards the net as the players progress towards the net.”
There is no doubt recreational pickleball is booming, a trend that started during the pandemic. In 2023, roughly 13.6 million Americans aged 6 and over participated in pickleball, a sharp increase from 8.9 million in 2022 and 4.2 million in 2021, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. Pickleball participation is now roughly the same as outdoor soccer.
Translating that to a viable professional sport is a challenge of course. It took decades for soccer –long touted as a surefire pro sport because so many kids played it – to reach today’s level of MLS and NWSL. Pickleball faces other hurdles. It was invented in the early 1960s, meaning there are no generations steeped in its history and charms sharing that with younger viewers.
Also, pickleball players haven’t broken into pop culture and become household names (the sport is deployed in many ads). UPA plans more marketing, but as the owner of the events, it has to spend on promoting those as well. Some pro tennis players, like Genie Bouchard, have switched to pickleball. A recent around-the-net shot she executed made SportsCenter’s Top 10 plays that day, the kind of exposure the game needs more of.
Will pro pickleball make it? Well, we don’t have a crystal ball, but at least the UPA can say in the year women’s sports broke through, the U.S. sports league that paid women the most on average was the one played with paddles and plastic balls.
