Pickleball and Marketing


The growing popularity of pickleball has led to lots of marketing from businesses seeking to ride the wave of the sport's popularity.

If you watched any of the finals matches from the Proton PPA Tournament in Australia last weekend, there was one marketing technique worth mentioning.

Proton, the pickleball and softball sports company who sponsored the event, should be commended for some genius marketing.

In the finals matches, which were televised across the world, they hired young kids to be ball boys and girls.

That, by itself doesn't sound so amazing, but consider the planning behind it.

The PPA was not providing ball boys and girls.

So, Proton decided to hire the kids and provide them for the finals.

I doubt they had to pay them much, if anything.

The kids were probably 9 - 12 years old and cute as could be.

Proton outfitted these kids in hats and shirts, each of which had the Proton logo clearly displayed.

So, the net effect was that, every area of the court the camera covered showed the Proton logo repeatedly.

That is marketing genius!

Hats off to whoever came up with that plan.

And this week, Proton is sponsoring the PPA's Tucson Open.

It is clearly worth their money!

Last year a realtor from the Nashville and Franklin, TN area posted a video on YouTube detailing housing communities in that area which included pickleball courts as part of their amenities.

That was smart!

And the videos showed actual video footage driving down the streets of these communities.

The videos showed the houses while she narrated the range of sizes of homes and the corresponding price ranges in each community.

The videos showed the amenities such as the pools, clubhouses, bike paths, as well as the pickleball courts.

She detailed how many courts there were for each community.

That was also marketing genius!

She was riding the wave of popularity of pickleball to help sell houses.

Very smart!

Another way businesses have capitalized on the popularity of pickleball is to do sponsorships.

Skechers is the official footwear of the PPA Tour.

The PPA Tour itself is actually the Carvana PPA Tour.

That's right. 

Carvana, the industry leader in buying and selling used cars online.

What do they have to do with pickleball?

Just that, when they started this sponsorship, they were the fastest growing online auto retailer, and pickleball was, and still is, the fastest growing sport in the US.

Carvana was smart enough to see skyrocketing popularity of pickleball.

They wanted to be associated with it.

So, the sponsorship began and has continued.

And there are many other sponsors. Brands like Oh Snap, Vizzy, OS1st, Aloe MD, HyperIce, Thorlo, Tesla, Hertz, Biofreeze, etc.

People with some knowledge of marketing can appreciate the genius of businesses attaching themselves to the growing popularity of pickleball.

Then, the goal for these businesses is to just ride the wave!



Ben Holt
​CEO, Pickleball Living