Apollo-led investment unites pro and amateur pickleball under one company

Big money just pulled pickleball’s pro and amateur lanes into the same corporate house. With a $225 million structured investment led by Apollo Sports Capital, Pickleball Inc. became the new parent company of the Carvana PPA Tour and Major League Pickleball, a move that gives the sport’s fastest-moving business one central command.

The company said the new structure brings together professional pickleball, amateur play, consumer products, technology, retail, courts, and media under one roof. It described Pickleball Inc. as the largest singularly-operated pickleball ecosystem in existence, and said the newly merged business verticals produced more than $140 million in combined 2025 revenue. Tom Dundon and the Pardoe family remain majority shareholders, while additional assets across facilities, courts, ecommerce, and technology are being folded in to deepen the platform.

For amateur players, that matters because the sport’s growth is no longer being built around scattered leagues and standalone tournaments. A unified owner over the PPA and MLP can influence how players move from local brackets to bigger stages, how events are standardized, and how the funnel from rec play to high-level competition is organized. It also creates more leverage over the gear on shelves, the retail channels selling it, and the technology that shapes registration, rankings, and fan access.

Connor Pardoe called the transaction a “seismic day” for pickleball, and said the goal is to make the sport feel like one cohesive journey for “a casual enthusiast or a dedicated fanatic.” That framing is important because the amateur side has become part of the core business, not just an add-on to the pro tours. Under one corporate umbrella, the same company can now shape the experience of a first-time league player, a tournament regular, and the professionals they follow on broadcast and in person.

Apollo Sports Capital chief executive Al Tylis said the firm sees pickleball as one of the fastest-growing sports in the world and believes the combined entity now has the resources to reach the next level. The company tied that thesis to the sport’s broader participation boom, saying pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in America for five straight years and citing 24 million players in 2025.

That scale explains why the deal looks bigger than a balance-sheet headline. When the pro tours, amateur pathways, and consumer side are all wired into the same business, the pressure shifts toward durable governance, cleaner event pipelines, and a model that can survive beyond the boom. The next phase of pickleball will be judged not just by prize money or media reach, but by whether this new structure makes the sport more coherent for the millions who actually play it.