Will Pickleball Betting Become Mainstream?

In August 2023, news broke that the popular US fantasy sports and sports gambling brand FanDuel, the chief US competitor to DraftKings and BetMGM in multiple markets, shall introduce pickleball betting at its licensed sportsbooks. That did occur, and it was officially announced on the 23rd of August 2023 by the Professional Pickleball Association, or the PPA, which formalized tournament structures for professional-level pickleball. It named FanDuel its sport’s betting partner and promised to help establish pickleball betting in the US. To accomplish this feat, the pair also partnered with Sportsradar, one of the betting realm’s leading technology companies, and Genius Sports, a performance analysis entity from London. Naturally, the latter’s job was to deliver statistical information on the events covered.

It is worth noting that Genius Sports and the Professional Pickleball Association first signed a partnership agreement in 2021, and two years later, this deal manifested in one that aimed to yield live odds for pickleball contests in twelve jurisdictions. As they still do, the PPA believed back then that data-powered betting on pickleball would open up a new gateway to bring people to the sport. The ability for sportsbooks to offer low-latency video feeds from top matches, such as those from the Kansas City Open, would potentially act as a powerful growth driver.

However, based on what gamblers have told us, FanDuel’s pickleball page was very unorganized, with this sportsbook brand only posting odds for contests just before they start and many top matches getting omitted from their offering. In September 2024, we learned that Fanatics Sportsbook was also offering pickleball gambling, available to residents of twenty-two US states, but with strange betting limits. Still, in-play wagering was reportedly provided on this brand’s sports betting platforms. Fantastics is a massive company operating in several branches, including licensed sportsware, sports merchandise, collectibles, and online gambling.

Hence, there is no doubt that if top American sportsbooks adopt pickleball as a featured sporting category in their betting lobbies, this trend will swell internationally; how the sport grows, and we explained the possibility of that happening here, and at what potential speed.

What Is Pickleball?

Okay, so pickleball has nothing to do with pickles. That out of the way, this is a sport akin to table tennis or actual tennis, meaning it’s a paddle/racket competition type that can be played by single competitors or in doubles. Its contests take place on a court that is usually thirteen meters long and six meters wide. Pickleball can be played indoors or outdoors. It was initially invented as a children’s backyard game in the US in the mid-1960s, and it started to pick up steam in North America at the start of 2020.

For three years in a row, from 2021 to 2023, the Sports and Fitness Industry Association of America named pickleball the fastest-growing US sport. Much of its popularity has been credited to the fact that this is a fairly inexpensive sport that does not require sizeable authentical ability, and it has simple-to-understand rules, utilizing a plastic pickleball that has less bounce than a standard tennis one. Rallies here begin with a serve, and the ball must bounce one before a player volleys it. Rallies go on until a fault gets committed or someone hits a winning shot. There is a special area near the net on a pickleball court called the kitchen, from where a player cannot volley.  The first side to get to eleven points wins, but the difference between points must be at least two. Thus, pickleball utilizes pretty standard concepts borrowed from other games.

Why Is Pickleball Growing in Popularity?

According to Fact.MR, a custom market analysis company that primarily does research on US and European industries, the pickleball equipment market should hit a global value of $155 billion by 2033, growing at a rate of 9% from its 2022 annual revenue pull of $65 billion. Fact.MR claims that pushing pickle as an Olympic sport will do wonders for it and that its growth is inevitable worldwide, as markets like Africa, the Middle East, and the Asian Pacific region virtually have zero familiarity with it. Therefore, there is only room for expansion.

The US allegedly now has close to five million active pickleball players, and Canada has somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 million. Aside from the already noted factors, pickleball gets seen as a casual porting activity with great health and fitness benefits. It doubles format adds a social aspect to it, and the fact that it can get played on tennis courts, basketball ones, and gym floors, give a year-round availability.

Moreover, many high-profile athletes have picked up pickleball, including Tom Brady, LeBron James, Drew Brees, Kevin Love, Kevin Durant, and Draymond Green, to name a few from the sporting arena. From the entertainment one, Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney, and Ellen DeGeneres have gone out of their way to endorse it. It is also more visible than ever now and has a clearer path to professional play for amateurs thanks to sponsorship agreements that have grown the prize pools of established tournaments.

Today, sixty-three national pickleball organizations exist, with the age range of people playing this sport being all over the place, with the male-female distribution standing at 60% to 40%, which is excellent.

The Challenges Pickleball Betting Faces

These are the same as most niche sports face. The first and most glaring one is the lack of extensive historical data. Sportsbooks rely on past results to set odds. Given that this is a fairly new competition type, with few top-end tournaments that have outcomes archived for several years back, it is hard for sportsbooks software to figure out patterns in setting good odds for upcoming events. That gets made even more difficult by the fact that top-quality players can appear out of nowhere, as the pro pool is not very deep, and there is no established advancement structure like in basketball or football, where players go through categories and develop. Those who follow those sports know of every prospect that stands out and have an idea of how he will develop; they can assess his potential quite accurately. In pickleball, a top talent can walk onto a premier competition’s court seemingly off the street, so setting reasonable odds with such unknown variables is super hard, almost impossible, as no one can judge the probability of something happening with so many unknowns.

Given that this is not a highly developed sport, its athletes do not get paid a lot, which makes the allure of match-fixing massive. Consequently, the integrity of the competitions can come into question, which can only be combated with high-end monitoring systems and collaboration between government bodies. But, here we have another hurdle: there is a global pickleball organization, and each country/state can have different rules regarding what types of sports they allow betting on. So this means that limited regulatory approval limits market expansion, which lowers bookmakers’ interest in featuring pickleball betting.

Pickleball lacks the diverse betting markets seen in other sports, so to boost variety, bookies may get forced to introduce creative ones, which may turn the sport into somewhat of a joke. Its premium competitions are also not as frequent or globally structured. Nonetheless, that will likely change soon, as the sports grows. That should not be a problem in a few years at most if pickleball keeps rising at this pace.

Will Pickleball Betting Go Mainstream Soon?

We would say that maybe in three to five years, it will be more common for people to bet on this rising sport. But realistically, it will probably take more than five years for international leagues to develop and sportsbooks to take more of an interest in featuring it after more data becomes available and major broadcast and streaming services start bringing pickleball to mainstream audiences. In the next year or two, we can only see more US-centric bookies offering basic lines for major events.

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