Six businesses spanning professional leagues, a retailer, software, a consumer portal and court manufacturing are merging into Pickleball Inc. with $225 million from Apollo Sports Capital — the first test of whether a vertically integrated pickleball ecosystem can generate returns at scale.
The Professional Pickleball Association (Carvana PPA Tour), Major League Pickleball (MLP presented by DoorDash), the retailer Pickleball Central, the software division Pickleball Play Solutions, the portal Pickleball.com and the court manufacturer Just Courts are merging into Pickleball Inc., a new holding structure with an old name and extant underlying assets.
Making this possible is a structured investment of $225 million led by Apollo Sports Capital (ASC) – whose parent, Apollo Global Management (AGM), acquired a minority stake in Canadian gym operator GoodLife Group in February. According to PPA and MLP alike, the merger is producing “the largest singularly-operated pickleball ecosystem in existence.” Connor Pardoe, Pickleball Inc.’s CEO, sees it as “creating an end-to-end experience.”
The deal is a sequel to the merger of 2024, between the Carvana PPA Tour and MLP by Margaritaville, which yielded a “unified and definitive professional pickleball holding company” called the United Pickleball Association (UPA).
That merger was itself the resolution of a civil war between the leagues and some of their founders: PPA and Connor Pardoe, MLP and Steve Kuhn. The battle lines shifted in 2022, when, according to several reports, Tom Dundon’s Dundon Capital Partners finished acquiring a majority stake in PPA, Pickleball Central and PickleballTournaments.com. Included in that acquisition was the original Pickleball Inc., established by Pickleball Central co-founder David Johnson in about 2016 to gather some assets under one name.
Tom Dundon and the Pardoe family will have a majority share in the new Pickleball Inc., whose constituent businesses, according to the merger’s press release, generated more than $140 million in revenue last year.
Since its founding, in September 2025, ASC has acquired a majority stake (about 55%, according to The Athletic) in Atlético de Madrid (LaLiga) and announced the acquisition of a minority stake in Wrexham AFC. ASC parent AGM is an investor, through its Hybrid Value Funds, in the Spanish online retailer TradeInn. According to the Financial Times, AGM has also loaned £80 million (€93m) to Nottingham Forest FC.
