Over the weekend, while the leading professional pickleball tour (the Professional Pickleball Association or PPA) was sweating away holding a major event in Kansas City’s heat, and while its erstwhile tour competitor the Association of Pickleball Players (APP) was visiting Philadelphia for its latest stop, the “other” major player in the professional realm of the sport was making some serious moves.
Late Thursday night on August 24th, Major League Pickleball (MLP) announced that it had begun signing the sport’s top players to multi-year, guaranteed contracts. These contracts will guarantee massive pay days (6-figures annually), cover travel and lodging, provide healthcare, create an “off-season” for the exhausted players, and exclusively tie the players to MLP going forward. It was a massive shot across the bow of primarily the PPA, but also the APP, which still claims a few Premier-level players on its books and now looks like it may be poached of its top talent for a second successive year.
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