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Pickleball paid its female players the highest salary on average out of all of the professional sports leagues in 2024. That’s right. Pickleball.
According to a new report by Daniel Kaplan for Awful Announcing, the United Pickleball Association tour paid out an average salary of $269,000 to its female players. That amount dwarfs the average salaries that female athletes received in the National Women’s Soccer League ($50,000 to $60,000) and the WNBA (close to $120,000). (Players in individual sports like golf and tennis are independent contractors and not paid salaries.)
The United Pickleball Association was formed in 2023 when the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) and Major League Pickleball (MLP), both formed in 2019, merged. Meanwhile, the WNBA began play in 1997 and the NWSL was formed in 2012.
What makes this pay disparity even more interesting is that pro pickleball events only had a combined 320,000 in attendance in 2024 and the UPA earned zero media rights fees.
Despite all of that, players on the Carvana PPA Tour and on teams in Major League Pickleball, both ran by the UPA, were paid $30 million, which was split evenly among the male and female competitors.
“There is no other sport where men and women can compete on the court together and have an equal opportunity to impact the game,” said Samin Odhwan, UPA’s chief strategy officer. “And arguably, what we’ve seen from early statistics and analysis of the sort of value of a player, the female outweighs what the male is able to do, in terms of just winning.
“The fact that they get more of the balls dictated to them because, sort of conceptually, the idea, especially in mixed doubles, is hit the ball to the weaker player, right, like (the) mind gravitates towards always funneling it to the female, and in turn, we’re seeing some statistical analysis show that that’s actually the wrong strategy.”
The United Pickleball Association is headed up by Tom Dundon, the current owner of the Carolina Hurricanes in the NHL and former owner of the Alliance of American Football. Teams in Major League Pickleball are now owned by Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Naomi Osaka, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, and Kevin Love.