Name: How pickleball became the fastest growing sport in America
Uploaded: 2023-01-26
Duration: 4 min 40 s
Description: Pickleball has burst into the mainstream due to its low barrier to entry and variety of health benefits—including the opportunity to socialize and build community—and investors big and small have picked up on the trend.

Pickleball has burst into the mainstream due to its low barrier to entry and variety of health benefits—including the opportunity to socialize and build community—and investors big and small have picked up on the trend.

How pickleball became the fastest growing sport in America

Sports

Pickleball has burst into the mainstream and attracted big-name investors due to its low barrier to entry and variety of health benefits.

Pickleball has burst into the mainstream and attracted big-name investors due to its low barrier to entry and variety of health benefits—including the opportunity to socialize and build community.

there's this massive explosion and it's just really taken off first time hit the ball. I was like in love with the sport and I think once people play it, they become addicted to the point where they don't ever want to play anything else. Pickleball is a paddle sport, combines elements of badminton, table tennis and tennis. It's similar to tennis where you're trying to get your opponents to make an error either by hitting into the net out or letting the ball bounce twice and you're trying to score points. So first team to 11 wins the game, the dimensions are exactly the same as the badminton court, so it's 20 ft wide by 44 ft long. Pickleball was started and sort of 1965 by the pritchard family from Bainbridge island Washington and in Washington they had these boat races where they would have a boat which is the stronger rowers and then the B boat which was kind of random people thrown into the boat together and they would call that the pickle boat, they were looking for a game for their kids to play. They had ping pong paddle ball, they were trying to play badminton, they didn't have enough stuff and so they set it up and started playing the game kind of took off from there When I discovered pickleball, it was the middle of the first summer pandemic and I think there were the ideal conditions for the sport of pickleball to kind of really thrive. It was a game that families could go outside, you can easily set up a net in your driveway. Once people started playing it really kind of took off. Pickleball has a very low barrier to entry. You can learn the game in 10, 15 minutes. So relative to other sports where the learning curve can feel quite steep before you can actually play a game of all, you can really just jump right in from the get go. It's a low price point from an accessibility perspective when you play it, you can play it at a very active manner. You can play it very casually from when I first started playing, I played with my grandfather and my mom and I can still play with my grandfather and my mom. So I think this is really cool that you can just play with all eight Throughout your family. So I just think it's a sport for everyone and that everyone can do together. And so there's a really fun, joyous element to it as well. As of today we've got about five million active players growing at 30, We expected to be close to 40 million players in the next 10 years. If that happens, it would be the largest participated in the us, my friends when I first started playing pickleball had absolutely no idea. But then once it kind of exploded there, like seeing me on tv and stuff and they're like, oh my gosh, this is like a real thing, I would say in the beginning of my pickleball career when we would go and travel somewhere and we would tell someone why were in town, they would be like, what's pickleball? And we'd have to explain it to them and now when we go and I'm like, oh my gosh, I love pickle ball, I played all the time or I just started playing pickle ball. I feel like everyone knows what it is when you look at sort of the amateur grassroots game and you have five million players going to 40 million. That would be more than tennis or golf. So you have a mass population of players playing when people are playing games, they're gonna obviously buy equipment, they're gonna buy merch, they're gonna join clubs, they're gonna watch professional league. So when you think about that huge community, uh, there's a tremendous investment opportunity. There are a number of celebrities and athletes that have a real passion for the game. And as a result of that passion, a significant amount of them have been investing in MLP and other ventures in Pickleball. The Kardashian started playing it. Vanderpump rules, it was featured on there, some major athletes like Lebron James and Draymond and kevin Love and tom brady and kim clijsters started purchasing major League Baseball teams, longoria visit Azul Heidi Klum, I met Jamie Foxx, Michael Phelps, Larry Fitzgerald, like I played pickleball with all of them, there's like so many celebrities that are getting into Pickleball or that have pickleball courts at their house or investing to pickleball, there's just a lot of engagement because people fundamentally are looking to invest in where they have a passion and I think a lot of these folks come from a passion of playing and then they recognized that sort of growth in the game and that's the reason they come in to invest. Community is such a key aspect to pickleball. Once you get into it, once you start playing it's very easy to have this passion for it and want to play it every day. So when you find others who share this passion you instantly have this connection. It's one of these games where if you've never played it before you can show up to a court and people will always embrace you. They're really interested in teaching other people how to play it within a couple of games, you'll know all the roles and you're never gonna leave that community. Um It's really fanatical in that way which is really wonderful. I really look forward to it growing. Two point where 40 million people are playing in the U. S. And that number more than doubles globally. I think if we can do that it unites people, it brings people into community. It brings a lot of things that we sort of need in the world in the country and I'm pretty excited about all those things