☕ In a pickle
Unpacking pro pickleball’s sponsorship transformation.
Marketing Brew <[email protected]>
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Morning Brew promotes its latest newsletter edition, featuring stories on sports marketing, including the growth of professional pickleball sponsorships. The brand highlights the increasing popularity of racket sports in the US and the shift in sponsorship structures. Morning Brew also mentions its team, including Alyssa Meyers, Katie Hicks, and Jeena Sharma.
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526 words · about 2 min to read
August 27, 2026
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Today is Thursday. To promote its new Mac Mini, Apple released a whimsical handcrafted claymation ad. And yes, of course there’s a behind-the-scenes video showing how it all came together.
In today’s edition:
Dill with it 🏓
Social, settled 🧑⚖️
Brand fans 🛍️
—Alyssa Meyers, Katie Hicks, Jeena Sharma
SPORTS MARKETING
Making a racket
the New Jersey Fives pro pickleball team posing with the Raisin Bran sun mascot wearing jerseys reading
It might feel like you’ve been hearing your neighbor talk about their pickleball habit since, well, forever. But it’s only been about five years since the first Major League Pickleball (MLP) matches.
Your neighbor likely isn’t a pro, but it’s still a fast-changing space, and racket sports are rapidly becoming more and more popular in the US—so it follows that the state of pro pickleball sponsorships is also in constant flux.
In the early years of the sport’s popularity surge, more than 150 brands rushed to get involved, seemingly without much rhyme or reason. By last year, after continued growth and a merger between MLP and the PPA Tour, pickleball sponsorships began to resemble deals in other pro sports, with big-name brands like DoorDash and Anheuser-Busch buying up league, team, and tour naming rights.
This year, the sport has shifted even closer to mainstream sponsorship structures, with growing interest from brands in individual team deals, an indication that pro pickleball’s audience size could be reaching a tipping point—though pro pickleball is still young enough to flex outside of 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 the early days of emerging sports, marketers can be hesitant to get involved because they’re not sure a new league will last, 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.”
Continue reading here.—AM
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