Pro pickleball is only about five years old—the first Major League Pickleball (MLP) matches date back roughly to 2020—but its sponsorship market already looks a lot like mainstream professional sports.

In the sport's early popularity surge, more than 150 brands rushed in with little apparent strategy. By last year, following continued growth and a merger between MLP and the PPA Tour, sponsorships began to resemble deals in other pro sports, with big-name brands like DoorDash and Anheuser-Busch buying league, team, and tour naming rights.

This year, the market has shifted even closer to conventional structures, with growing brand interest in individual team deals—an indication that pro pickleball's audience may be reaching a tipping point, even as the young league still flexes outside sponsorship norms.

"Last year, we were just in a different place with how many people were fans and aware of professional pickleball," MLP commissioner Samin Odhwani told Marketing Brew. In emerging sports, marketers often hesitate because they are unsure a new league will survive, he said. Now, with pickleball, "it's just a question of, 'How big are we going to be?' I think that's really helped unlock a new set of partners."

Raisin Bran's underpriced attention play

Among the new partners, Raisin Bran stands out. After running a Super Bowl ad this year, the cereal brand announced a deal with the New Jersey Fives in early July, timed to MLP's mid-season tournament in Michigan—home state of Raisin Bran parent company WK Kellogg Co.

Appearing at both the Super Bowl and a pickleball tournament within six months may look strategically opposed, but Doug VanDeVelde, Kellogg's chief growth officer, called it a deliberate use of the brand's media budget.

"One of the concepts we love is this notion of underpriced attention," he said. "A lot of [sports inventory] is super expensive to be part of, because people are passionate about it and they pay attention to it. It's rightly priced, but it's super expensive, so we're looking at…something that's getting a lot of attention, [but] maybe isn't fully priced yet to where it can ultimately be."

Under the deal, the team was temporarily renamed "the Fibes" to support the brand's fiber messaging. The partnership also leans heavily on social content from the brand, team, and players—a strategy that continues through MLP's semifinals and finals in Central Park this weekend, VanDeVelde said.

"That mid-season tournament…was a really fun, casual atmosphere to introduce this to, but that also excites me that much more for New York City, because it's almost the antithesis," said Ryan Harwood, co-owner and GM of the Fives. "It's like we graduated from the grassroots casual, and we're going big stage, corporate, big lights."

Disney enters the game

Brands don't need a health message to get involved. The Walt Disney Company also broke into the sport this year: the Orlando Squeeze—the MLP team started by Ryan DeVos and other family members—partnered with the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort to host this season's regular-season finale, where teams competed for playoff spots.

Some partners overlap between the Squeeze and the DeVos family's other teams—the Orlando Magic, the Osceola Magic in the G League, and the Orlando Solar Bears in the ECHL—but securing sponsors for the Squeeze wasn't easy at first.

"It was a more challenging conversation than I was expecting early on in the process," DeVos said. "The first year was all education…It shifted from education to now our partners are really starting to see the value in it."

The finale delivered results. It marked the first two arena sellouts in MLP history, at 2,500 seats per day, and drew almost 7,000 attendees across four days of play, per the league. Coverage of the Squeeze versus the St. Louis Shock also posted the highest viewership of any pickleball event on FS1, averaging 146,000 viewers, according to MLP.

A rising tide

Not every MLP team has the access to big brands enjoyed by the Fives—co-owned by marketing mogul Gary Vaynerchuk—or the Squeeze. But interest from Fortune 500 and global companies could lift the entire league's profile.

"Having them start to dive in and dip their toes into the water gives other brands more comfort and confidence that they've done their work [and] they're seeing some value here," DeVos said.

MLP has its own partners, including title sponsor DoorDash, but it encourages teams "to get creative" with sponsorships and activations, as long as they don't conflict with existing league partners, Odhwani said. The league focuses on selling "the events themselves," while teams offer additional opportunities.

The Fives, for example, "cut our players into our deals because we want to use them as influencers," Harwood said. That willingness of the team and its players to engage with Raisin Bran was part of what the brand's marketers liked about the deal, VanDeVelde noted.

With individual teams and players attracting brands with significant budgets, Odhwani anticipates pickleball media buys will follow, especially as the audience grows. For now, MLP is leaning into what makes its fans different—not just their growing numbers.

"The tier-one sports leagues are just so centered around the live game, where [with] pickleball, the beauty of it is the access, and that anyone can do it at any time, anywhere," Odhwani said. "Why not use that same through line in how we allow our teams to activate?"

Source: Marketing Brew (https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/major-league-pickleball-team-sponsorships?utm_source=&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=feed) / Source: instagram.com (https://www.instagram.com/p/Db6VLltJXFU/?hl=en)