Major League Pickleball's top franchises are now valued in the eight figures, with league-wide revenue and viewership climbing fast. Here's a look at the teams driving that growth.
By Deco
Major League Pickleball’s franchises have gone from side-project buy-ins to genuine sports assets in just a few seasons, and the numbers back it up. Here’s a look at how big the league’s biggest teams have actually gotten, and which rosters are leading the way on the court.
The clearest signal of MLP’s growth is what teams are trading for. The Los Angeles Mad Drops recently sold a controlling stake at a $13 million franchise valuation, and the league’s newest expansion franchise, the Palm Beach Royals, was valued at $16 million out of the gate. Those two deals represent the largest franchise transactions MLP has seen since the 2024 merger that brought MLP and the PPA Tour together under the United Pickleball Association. For a league that started with franchises changing hands for a fraction of that not long ago, it’s a sign of how quickly the business side of team pickleball has matured.
It’s not just franchise sales. Season-over-season, MLP has reported sponsor revenue more than doubling, ticket revenue up 28 percent, social media impressions up 277 percent, YouTube views up 156 percent, and telecast hours up 83 percent across national, regional, and local broadcast partners. Whatever you think of pickleball as a spectator sport, the growth curve on the business side is real and it’s steep.
Valuation is one measure of a “big” team, but on-court identity matters just as much. The Dallas Flash have been the form team of the back half of the 2026 season, going back-to-back at MLP San Diego and MLP Chicago behind the doubles pairing of JW Johnson and Augie Ge, with Alix Truong and Danni-Elle Townsend anchoring women’s doubles. Townsend was voted the league’s 2026 Most Improved Player after this past week’s playoff event in Dallas, which the Flash also won at home to advance to Newport Beach.
The Brooklyn Pickleball Team carries one of the league’s deepest rosters, built around Riley Newman, Christian Alshon, Jackie Kawamoto, and Rachel Rohrabacher, and it showed in Dallas, where Brooklyn needed a dreambreaker to get past SoCal but got the job done. The New Jersey 5s, meanwhile, closed out the regular season by winning the season-long standings title outright, edging St. Louis in a head-to-head decider that both teams treated like a genuine rivalry game.
None of this happens without real fan interest, and the revenue and viewership numbers suggest that interest is compounding rather than plateauing. As franchises keep trading at higher valuations and teams like Dallas, Brooklyn, and New Jersey keep building rosters worth watching, MLP is starting to look less like a startup league and more like a permanent fixture on the pro sports calendar. The next real test comes at Newport Beach in mid-August, when this year’s playoff field is complete and the path to Championship Weekend in New York City comes into focus.
Coverage reference: source link (paraphrased; not a quotation).
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Founder & Editor
Deco (Declan Martin) is the founder and editor of US Pickleball Court and The Pickleball Court. He builds catalog-backed buying guides for paddles, court shoes, balls, bags, apparel, accessories, and portable nets, plus pro tour news and where-to-play coverage for US and Canadian players. Focus: verified facts, clear product comparisons, and honest disclosures — not hype.
