A product of the COVID-19 pandemic, pickleball has taken over school communities, park districts, commercial gyms, and even historic sporting venues.
From 2019 to 2020, the sport saw a 21.4% spike in players. Increasing the total number of participants from 3.46 million to 4.80 million, a notable change in the sports world occurred.
While pickleball’s popularity boomed early this decade, it has been played for a number of years. In 1965, Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum played the inaugural game with ping pong paddles and wiffle balls. Pritchard, who was a former legislator for the state of Washington, developed the rules of the game in his backyard badminton court. Some people claim that the game received its namesake from the Pritchard family dog Pickles; however, the name originated elsewhere within the household: “Pritchard’s wife Joan, a rowing fan, came up with the name after watching her husband and neighbors invent the game with spare sports equipment” (United States House of Representatives Archives).
According to Bell, the game was designed so that everyone could participate, no matter age or size. From about 1975-1990, the game became popular in the Pacific Northwest. The game was consolidated to recreational centers and retirement communities. By 1990, pickleball had become a nationwide event, with each of the fifty states having been introduced to the game.
It was not until the growth of USA Pickleball (formerly The United States Amateur Pickleball Association) in the late 2010s to early 2020s that the game started to thrive. There are now over 100,000 registered members, and over 80,000 functional courts in the US. Specifically, Cleveland, Ohio has seen a 71% growth over the last year, and Huntsville, Alabama, has seen a 70.6% growth over the last year.
Evolving from a family-friendly game, to a social distancing activity, to becoming the most rapidly growing sports in America, pickleball has taken the nation by storm. Venues like Fenway Park have hosted pop-up pickleball events, and Wollman Rink of Central Park is partially transformed to pickleball courts in the offseason. The US pickleball market has reached about $2.1 billion, and it is expected to exceed a total of $6 billion dollars over the next decade. While concerns about the overbuilding of pickleball facilities have risen, the demands will meet the needs.
