On Thursday, the Pro Pickleball Association (PPA) announced that FanDuel Sportsbook would immediately start taking bets on its matches in 10 U.S. states and one Canadian province (Ontario), marking the first time legal pickleball wagering will occur on North American soil.
The PPA has been methodically laying the groundwork for wagering on the sport since it struck a deal granting exclusive data rights to Genius Sports back in June 2021. The states where FanDuel account holders will be able to wager on PPA matches — starting with the Vulcan Kansas City Open, which runs from this Thursday through Sunday — are Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, and Wyoming.
In a press release, the PPA said it expects “all major U.S. sportsbooks” to offer pickleball wagering as it gains approval in more states, adding that it had engaged Sportradar to help create a sports betting and integrity policy to educate and protect its athletes.
“This is a monumental moment for the PPA Tour and the game of pickleball as a whole,” PPA Tour Founder and CEO Connor Pardoe said. “We are excited to be paving the way in the pickleball sports betting space, and we couldn’t be prouder to lead the sport’s leap into such an innovative industry. The immense growth of pickleball over the past few years has driven widespread interest in all aspects of the game, including playing as amateurs and watching the professionals in person at events and from home. Our venture into sports betting will bring a whole new level of engagement from current and new fans, and we continue to be excited for what the future holds for our sport.”
“As pickleball has taken the nation by storm, we’re excited to partner with the PPA to be the first sportsbook for fans to bet on the sport,” a FanDuel spokesperson said in a statement issued to Sports Handle. “In the past, we’ve seen a lot of excitement for racquet sports and believe there is a lot of potential for fans to engage with the markets we’ve created for PPA Tour competitions.”
Causing quite a racket
Pickleball’s rise has been breathlessly chronicled in publications ranging from US Bets to The New York Times, the latter of which reported that participation in the sport grew by 159% between 2019 and 2022. Celebrities like Tom Brady and Drake have purchased ownership stakes in pro pickleball teams, while a Texas billionaire named Steve Kuhn started a PPA rival circuit, Major League Pickleball, that has grown from one event and eight teams in 2021 to six events and 24 teams today.
But with pickleball’s exploding popularity has come the inevitable backlash. In New York City’s Central Park, a man named “Paddleball Paul” Owens has, according to the Times, “made it his goal to eradicate pickleball from the courts designed for wall sports.” And in Bainbridge Island, Washington — the birthplace of the sport — tennis players have been reluctant to cede too much court space to their wood-paddled counterparts, while pickleball nets were removed from one public park after residents complained of too much commotion.
A scene happening all across the nation.
Turning tennis courts into pickleball courts. pic.twitter.com/lV0Pyb9n4l
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) August 13, 2023
Speaking of commotion, a June 30 Times piece that could have easily been confused for an Onion story chronicled the battle between pro- and anti-pickleball forces at a community center in Arlington, Virginia, portraying the conundrum as representative of “a nationwide scourge of unneighborly clashes” over the sport, which involves players banging wiffle balls to and fro with tiny wooden paddles.
“One of our neighbors who lived directly across from the courts and was dying from cancer noted the pickleball noise was worse than his cancer,” one Oregon resident testified at a local government meeting. “Sadly, he recently passed.”
