Professional Pickleball Association Taps Genius Sports to Drive Growth By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Thursday, June 17, 2021 - 8:55 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The Professional Pickleball Association (PPA), the professional tour for the sport of picklebal, has inked a long-term partnership with Genius Sports, the official data, technology, and commercial partner that powers the ecosystem connecting sports, betting and media, to drive the global growth of the sport.
The Professional Pickleball Association continues to grow in popularity and a deal with Genius Sports will help fuel more growth.
This partnership will set the stage for regulated sports betting on PPA events for the first time. Genius Sports has been granted the exclusive rights to capture and distribute live data and video broadcasts from over 1,200 PPA matches per year with its global network of over 150 sportsbook partners.
Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, with over three million players in the United States alone. Invented in 1965 in Bainbridge, Washington as a backyard game, pickleball is a combination of tennis, badminton, and ping-pong.
Each PPA event will feature eight courts of live streaming action per day, offering unprecedented broadcast coverage of pickleball. GeniusLive, the award-winning live streaming solution from Genius Sports, will be deployed over the course of the partnership to broadcast this rapidly growing sport with new audiences worldwide.
It is an honor to be partnering with Genius Sports in this historic production for Pickleball, says Harry Cicma, PPA Tour Executive Broadcast Producer and CEO of Harry Cicma Productions, who fostered the partnership. The PPA Tour and Genius Sports are the two leaders in their respective industries, so it is only fitting for the organizations to join forces. The production will be innovative, and it is also exciting for the sports world to have a new professional league in front of an international audience.
Sean Conroy, commercial director of Genius Sports, says that for more than 20 years Genius Sports has established an incredible track record of driving the growth of sports at every level, providing data-driven technology that connects them with fans around the world.
Our long-term partnership with the PPA will combine our leading capabilities across live streaming, production, and regulated betting to accelerate their growth and expand their global reach, he says.
The PPA Tour will feature 16 events across the United States in 2021, offering over $1.5 million in prize money, with expansion to at least 20 events in 2022 and over $2.2 million in prize money. Starting in 2022, the PPA Tour will host major events at the Linder Family Tennis Center in Cincinnati, the Aviva Center in Toronto, and many other venues that have traditionally hosted the biggest events in professional tennis. The PPA Tour features four levels of events: 250s, 500s, 1,000s, and Majors, as well as a full schedule of events for amateur and junior players.
This is a significant development for the global development of pickleball and the PPA Tour, adds PPA Commissioner Connor Pardoe. With this agreement with Genius Sports, pickleball and PPA Tour events will be viewed by more people than ever before. This will further fuel the massive global growth of pickleball, not only from a participation standpoint but, more importantly, by establishing pickleball as a bona fide and exciting spectator sport.
North America Stories
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
Latino Film Institute Fellows Screen Their Short Films at the Egyptian Theatre
The Inclusion Fellowship and Spark Animation Grant uplifts 15 ...
29/05/2026
GLOOKAST LAUNCHES CINNAFILM TACHYON PLUGIN FOR MEDIA PRODUCER AND MEDIA SERVICES
This release first appeared here.
Visit our Tachyon product page or contact...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
29/05/2026
Experimental HIV vaccine achieves a long-sought goal In a first for the field, all non-human primates given a new series of vaccines generated antibodies capabl...
28/05/2026
FOX Sports' MLB coverage dominated the night at the 47th Annual Sports Emmy ...
28/05/2026
One of the most memorable postseasons in baseball history would have had no memo...
28/05/2026
NBC's Sunday Night Football is among the most-decorated and most-watched pro...
28/05/2026
The 2026 Sports Emmys marked a watershed moment for Prime Video Sports. After bu...
28/05/2026
Hosted by ESPN Senior Writer Ryan McGee, the ceremony honored winners from athletic departments, conference offices, professional networks, production companies...
28/05/2026
Major rights-holders rolled out their 2026 college football slates today, offering a first look at marquee windows, kickoff partners, and conference distributio...
28/05/2026
The 4 Nations Face-Off, an international competition that launched in February 2...
28/05/2026
Soccer is a truly global sport, and, to match the U.S. viewing audience's in...
28/05/2026
The NFL Today, CBS Sports' top-of-the-line NFL studio show, has a storied hi...
28/05/2026
Prime Video is no stranger to innovation, and, within the realm of live streamin...
Professional Pickleball Association Taps Genius Sports to Drive Growth By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
