A look back at 5 years of Major League Pickleball

2021: ONE EVENT, EIGHT TEAMS 

On September 21, 2021, Major League Pickleball announced its arrival – marking the creation of the leading professional, coed, team-based pickleball league. MLP entered the scene with eight founding teams, each created to professionalize a sport that was exploding in popularity and amateur participation.

The unique MLP format debuted at the league’s November event in Austin, Texas – two women and two men on each team, with each seeing equal playing time across four doubles games.

The prize on the line: The Pritchard Cup – named after pickleball co-founder Joel Pritchard, a trophy that instantly tied the league’s future to the sport’s origin – won by a team featuring wunderkind Ben Johns, widely recognized as the greatest men’s player of all-time.

2022: THREE EVENTS, 12 TEAMS

Following a successful launch in 2021, MLP took big growth steps in both number of events and franchises, further elevating professional, coed, team pickleball.

In a major step forward, the league offered the highest prize purse in professional pickleball to date – $100,000 for the winning team at each signature event, meaning $25,000 per winning player.

Expanding from one to three events – hosted in Austin, Tex., Newport Beach, Cali., and Columbus, Ohio – allowed MLP to bring this unique and emerging product to new markets and bigger stages.

2023: SIX EVENTS, 24 TEAMS

The excitement around the sport of pickleball at all levels led to an explosion of interest in the business of MLP going into 2023, with the league doubling its number of teams and a collection of pro athletes, celebrities, and entrepreneurs joining new and existing team ownership groups.

The league’s event schedule again doubled, with six events hosted in Arizona, Florida, California, Georgia, and Texas, again growing MLP’s geographic footprint. The season schedule was split into two seasons, which allowed all teams to participate at the prestigious Premier Level for half of the season. In the Season 1 finale, the Seattle Pioneers and Johns defeated the New Jersey 5s in a classic.

2024: 11 EVENTS, 22 TEAMS

The much-anticipated MLP/PPA merger closed at the end of February, and MLP quickly put together its biggest season to date from May-November, featuring eight regular season events across the country, the inaugural Mid-Season Tournament in Grand Rapids, Mich., and two rounds of the 2024 MLP Playoffs. Professional pickleball went from a curiosity to big business, with increased fan turnout and significant corporate sponsor investment.

The regular season saw each team play a total of 23 matches across a collection of events, with top teams qualifying for the playoffs.

2025: 14 EVENTS, 22 TEAMS

A successful 2024 paved the way for an incredible 2025, which began with DoorDash becoming MLP’s official league title sponsor in a multi-year partnership.

The 2025 season schedule expanded to 10 regular season events – all hosted in team markets to bring MLP action to its most passionate fans and communities – in addition to the Mid-Season Tournament, two weeks of the playoffs, and the standalone MLP Cup. MLP set a host of business growth records this year, with sponsor revenue more than doubling and total event attendance growing by 52%, year-over-year.

Following an action-packed regular season, star-studded powerhouses St. Louis, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and Columbus advanced to the DoorDash MLP Finals in New York City in August, with the league’s second-ever season-long championship on the line. The upset-minded Columbus Sliders took down the New Jersey 5s for the title, with CBS’s exclusive broadcast of Finals Match 1 on Saturday, Aug. 23 averaging 499,000 viewers, marking MLP’s most-watched match ever and pickleball’s most-watched match since the MLP-PPA merger.