International Pickleball Growth Set To Move Forward With World Pickleball Ventures Fund

For those of us based in North America, we certainly have not been able to miss the growth of Pickleball domestically. Participation reports released earlier this year pegged the number of people in America who have tried the sport to be approaching 50 million, or nearly one in five US Adults. There is no question that pickleball is here to stay in the US and in Canada (who quietly have membership numbers that nearly eclipse those of USA Pickleball).

However, the world is a big place, and there’s an awful lot of people out there who might also take to pickleball in the same way we have here. Over the past couple of years, we’ve started to see more and more interest in the sport internationally. There’s multiple groups vying to become the international NGB: in order of tenure of existence, IFP, WPF, GPF, PIC, and UPA-A all are currently claiming to be “the governing body” of the sport on a global scale.

We’ve seen the APP’s support of major international events in places like India, England, and Spain. There’s now a burgeoning Major League Pickleball – Australia league that’s entering its second season and which now includes half a dozen US-based pros. The UPA announced in July plans for five PPA-affiliated events in 2025 that will feature the PPA’s top contracted pros playing in places like Australia, India, Canada, Asia, and Europe. A week after UPA’s announcement, Pickleball World Ranking had its kickoff in Dubai, which promised a $15M prize purse for its 2025 pro slate based in and around the Middle East.

By the time you read this, we’ll have another group that is looking to plant its flag internationally in a major way, and its led by a familiar name to those who follow the industry.

Steve Kuhn, the founder of DUPR, Major League Pickleball, and a critical figure in the early growth of the professional game in the United States, is joining forces with Amitabh Jain, the Managing Partner of Rally Sports Venture and founder of the Pickleball Minds conference, to form the World Pickleball Ventures Investment fund.

The fund will be an internationally focused vehicle designed to invest in the ecosystem of the sport; facilities, leagues, technology, and talent development. They are looking Asia primarily as a target geographic area, to include India, China, other southeast Asian countries, plus the Middle East, with a secondary focus on other areas like Europe, Australia, and the Americas.

This is a first-of-its-kind initiative designed to be at the absolute forefront of the same growth cycle in Asia that we’ve seen in America, and to be in a position to capitalize on it. Kuhn and Jain travelled to Hong Kong to make the announcement just ahead of Pickleball Mind’s 9/20/24 Hong Kong Investor Summit.

Says Kuhn, “The US and Canada together have, what 400-500 million people? There are 4 billion people in Asia who already love sports, and are going to love pickleball. That’s 4 billion potential customers here. The opportunity is vast.”

Kuhn went on, talking about an interesting historical sporting comparison for the possible direction of the sport globally. “What are the most popular racquet sports in Asia right now? Badminton, squash, table tennis? They were all founded in England, and for the first fifty years of those sports’ existence, most of the world champions were from England. But for the next fifty years almost none of the champs are from England. Table Tennis is so engrained in China now that they’re shocked to learn it wasn’t invented there. In these racquet sports, it took five decades for Asia to become a force, and the same thing could happen in Pickleball. Everything in pickleball is working at warp speed right now, and I think it’s just a matter of time before Asian countries are highly competitive in this sport. Also, if we get Pickleball named officially as an Olympic sport, then all bets are off. That would accelerate the development in Asia in particular, but also worldwide.”

Adds Jain, “Asia has an installed base of badminton courts, which are the exact same size as a pickleball court. These badminton courts are everywhere, so it’s even easier from an infrastructure perspective than it was here in America. If you’re looking for the next big market in which to invest, Asia is the place to be.”

There’s a lot of truth to these observations. Pickleball grew up in America with its players hijacking tennis courts and chalking out lines. There won’t be a need to do that in Asia; the pickleball court dimensions adapted by its founders on Bainbridge Island five decades ago indeed used a standard badminton court size for their playing surface. Any badminton court can be made into a pickleball court by simply lowering the net from its normal 5-foot height to be ground level.

Says Kuhn, “A focus for me has always been to bring as much joy to players as possible. My first pickleball initiative was ‘40 by 30’ [40 million domestic players by the year 2030], but now we’re well past that. I don’t think we’re done growing in the US, but I feel the bigger immediate impact is in Asia. It’s hard to have more impact than in a location with 4 billion people. It will be hard to top the growth rates of the sport in the US, but I think the pace at which we grow in Asia will astound people. I think we will see pickleball become one of the top five played sports globally by 2030, and I want to be a part of that growth.”

Jain concludes, “The sport needs consistent, concerted efforts from certain people so the profile of the sport is raised across the globe.” Jain and Kuhn are taking a major step forward to become one of those people this week.

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Accredited investors interested in this new venture can reach out to Steve & Amitabh at info@worldpickleballventures.com