Arizona Pushes to Make Pickleball Its Official State Sport
Arizona already has the courts, crowds and tournament dollars. Now lawmakers want pickleball to become the state sport, turning a boom into a tourism brand.
Arizona is trying to do more than ride pickleball’s popularity. It is trying to turn the sport into a civic calling card, and the numbers already make the pitch hard to ignore: Goodyear and Surprise rank second and third nationally among U.S. cities with more than 100,000 residents for pickleball courts per capita, and the 2025 Carvana Mesa Cup at Arizona Athletic Grounds sold out Thursday through Sunday, drew 18,965 attendees and produced more than $300,000 in ticket revenue.
That matters for travelers weighing where to book a retreat, because Arizona is not just advertising sunshine and open space. It is building a recognizable pickleball ecosystem around real infrastructure, tournament traffic and a growing player base. USA Pickleball, headquartered in Scottsdale, serves as the sport’s official national governing body, with authority over rules, tournament sanctioning, equipment certification and facility certification. Add in a dense local playing culture and the new PURE Pickleball & Padel project on the way, and Arizona starts to look less like a place that simply benefits from the boom and more like one that is organizing itself around it.
The state’s legislative push makes that branding strategy explicit. Senate Concurrent Resolution 1021, introduced by Senator Frank Carroll on January 29, 2026, was assigned to the Senate Rules Committee and would designate pickleball as Arizona’s official state sport. The bill text says legislators recognize the sport’s cultural, social and health contributions to Arizona communities. Missy Lagomarsino has emerged as a local face of the campaign, framing pickleball as a practical marketing tool that matches Arizona’s outdoor lifestyle and draws winter visitors and tournament travel. The Arizona Office of Tourism says its mission is to expand travel activity and related revenues, which is exactly why advocates see pickleball as more than a pastime.
The timing is favorable. The Sports & Fitness Industry Association says U.S. pickleball participation grew from about 4.2 million players in 2020 to more than 24 million in 2025, a surge that gives state branding real economic weight. Arizona’s own pipeline extends beyond adults and snowbirds, with Scottsdale players such as JZ Holmes and Andre Mercado representing the next generation helping keep the sport visible. The comparison most often cited is Washington, where pickleball was invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island and later named the official state sport in 2022. Arizona is now making the case that it already has the courts, the events and the tourism machine to do the same, even before the legislature finishes the job.
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