Major League Pickleball by Margaritaville (MLP) and Carvana Pro Pickleball Association Tour (PPA Tour) have merged “under a unified and definitive professional pickleball holding company.” The deal will preserve the two brands – the PPA Tour being a “traditional, bracket-style tour” and the MLP being a “team-based, coed league.” Combined, they include “over 150 of the leading professional pickleball players.”
The deal will also establish a single holding company for both, thanks to an investment of €50 million from SC Holdings; Al Tylis, owner of the D.C. Pickleball team; Tom Dundon, owner of the PPA Tour; and the owners of other MLP teams.
The board of directors will include Jason Stein (SC Holdings), Al Tylis, Tom Dundon, Steve Kuhn (MLP’s founder) and Brian Levine (former partner at Goldman Sachs).
End of the civil war?
This is but the latest development in a year’s turmoil in professional pickleball. On Aug. 31, Yahoo Sports published an article – for which The Dink has since provided commentary – on the “civil war” between the MLP and PPA.
The story emerges of pros competing in both leagues under the terms of some kind of agreement and otherwise holding down day jobs to make ends meet.
Connor Pardoe had founded the Pro Pickleball Association in late 2018, signing top talent – among them the number-one players Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters – and paying them “extra money” if they refrained from playing on rival tours. As he told Yahoo in January, “TV partners, venues and sponsors wanted to know that the best players were going to be at our events every week.”
Meanwhile, Steve Kuhn was building up a league of his own for team rather than individual play. His inaugural tournament was four days long and a hit.
Things “remained cordial,” however, until a businessman from Dallas, Tom Dundon, acquired a majority stake in the PPA from the Pardoe family. Now, PPA contracts began to forbid pros from playing on any other tours or in MLP tournaments. Pardoe failed to put Kuhn and Dundon “in a room” to negotiate.
MLP now raised its purse to $1 million for a series of three tournaments in 2022 and raised its own profile by offering team ownership to celebrities (e.g., Drew Brees, Tom Brady, LeBron James).
Dundon’s riposte was to establish a direct competitor to the MLP. This was the VIBE Pickleball League, with team play. VIBE’s first team owner was Mark Cuban, owner also of the Dallas Mavericks.
Then, this past November, the PPA and MLP worked out a new deal. They would draft contracts together, promote each other’s events and sign all the top pros. As Yahoo writes, “Elite players would play singles and doubles on the PPA tour. Those who won enough earned the chance to be drafted onto an MLP team and to compete for extra prize money.”
This deal lasted a few months. Then, people stopped returning Pardoe’s calls. “I’m not saying this to be conceited,” he told Yahoo, “but usually when I call someone in pickleball, they call me back.”
No more day jobs
In the words of pickleballer Tyler Loong, all hell had broken loose. Kuhn, it turned out, had made a new kind of offer to several top players: a multi-year contract with perks for MLP exclusivity. Several players told Pardoe that the money was, as Yahoo puts it, life-changing.
Pardoe ran to the airport – “no bag, no cell phone charger, no toothbrush, no clothes” – and flew to Kansas City “to save my business,” as he told Yahoo. He spoke to as many players as he could reach on his way. The players’ lounge in town was, according to players present, “surreal,” filled with stars spending their time between matches on hushed telephone calls with their agents. Pardoe begged his players not to sign with MLP before he could make a counteroffer.
According to Yahoo, which cites “industry sources,” a few players “signed deals worth as much as $1 million per year and even those ranked outside the top 20 received six-figure contracts. The proposed deals also guaranteed a defined offseason and stipends for medical insurance and travel expenses.”
