The Curious Case Of Pickleball
Badminton has a lot to learn from America’s fastest growing sport.
Here’s the dill.
In the past five years, the game has grown from an “uncool” preserve of older Americans (ageist I know) to a cool, fully professionalized and highly lucrative sport for all ages. It’s a staggering reinvention that invites both the envy and intrigue of badminton fans.
Pickleball In Numbers
- In 2022, 14% of Americans played at least once, and over 8.5 million played it at least eight times.
- Pickleball tournaments have recorded up to 35,000 in-house spectators.
- On average, five new pickleball courts are being built each week.
With numbers like these, it’s no wonder the Sports & Fitness Association (SFIA) has crowned pickleball as the nation’s fastest growing sport for the second year running.
How Did They Do It?
When dissecting pickleball’s success story, there are three main themes.
- Natural Factors
- Marketing
- Structure & Organization
Natural Factors
When asked to describe pickleball, the most common description is that it’s a hybrid of tennis, badminton, and table tennis. All three of these sports are globally popular, and a lot of that is down to “natural factors.” Specifically, these sports thrive off being highly accessible in terms of technique, cost, and setup. Pickleball is very much in the same boat, hence its early status as a “retirement home sport.”
Marketing
This is the big one. This is where USA Pickleball (USAP) absolutely smashed it out of the park. They deserve great credit for taking the initiative, rebranding itself (from USAPA) and assembling a crackpot marketing team. This team were excellent at keeping their finger on the pulse, conducting surveys, monitoring social media activity, and tailoring campaigns accordingly. Knowing that pickleball’s pre-existing player base had a slight skew towards people aged 55 and older, they knew that their messaging had to be inclusive and non-aggressive. As such, their early campaigns (circa 2018) stressed community, accessibility, and getting people active. But, as word spread and more young people got in on the act, they evolved their message without alienating their older audience. Specifically, pickleball found organic ambassadors (i.e., celebrities who already play pickleball) to promote the sport. They also played up its more competitive side, its ceiling potential if you will.
Structure & Organization
Strength in numbers is one thing. Legitimacy and financial viability are another. The pickleball community understood this, and did well to set up strong competitive structures across age groups and skill levels, structures that allow amateur players to gain exposure, play, socialize, improve, and… maybe, just maybe, turn pickleball into a career?
If and when the time comes to go pro, players have the tantalizing prospect of participating in Major League Pickleball and/or the PPA Tour. Or, should I say, the Carvana PPA Tour.
This is yet another clever commercial move by pickleball. By creating marketing campaigns that generate massive grassroots interest, along with competitive structures that produce talent and up the competitive standard of the game, pickleball becomes a tempting investment opportunity for high-profile investors, ensuring that professionals have a chance to have a viable career, and that the sport will have even more public exposure. That certainly is the case when those high-profile sponsors in question include Skechers, Anheuser-Busch, LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Kevin Durant.
This newfound legitimacy can create intriguing new business opportunities. Just check out the rise of pickleball-themed restaurants like Chicken N Pickle, Courtside Kitchen, and Rally!
What Does This Mean?
To bring it back to basics, the “nature” of the sport itself, it’s vital to remember that pickleball shares a lot with badminton. After all, was quite literally designed in a way that incorporate badminton techniques. So, when we draw up reasons as to why badminton is lagging in popularity and “legitimacy,” it can’t be to do with the sport itself. Instead, the issues lie squarely in marketing, organization, and structure. Yes, the BWF World Tour exists. Yes, Shuttle Time exists. But these are incredibly broad in scope and thus don’t do enough to target or appeal to the U.S .market specifically. And if the BWF or USA Badminton want some launchpad strategy ideas to change that, they should consider looking at their paddle-wielding cousins.
