Ho Chi Minh City pickleball tournament draws 200, builds media ties

Ho Chi Minh City’s latest pickleball event looked less like a routine tournament and more like a room where Vietnam’s media, government and business circles were all trying to meet at the net. More than 200 competitors from government departments, news outlets and the business community filled the Vietnam Journalists Association Pickleball Tournament 2026, a field wide enough to show how fast the sport is becoming a social language for the country’s professional class.

That matters because the event was built to do more than hand out trophies. Organizers presented commemorative medals to every player before the first ball was struck, then gave the day a sharper edge with the Leadership Doubles category, which drew 48 competitors, including 19 media leaders and 29 business executives. Random pairing was used to make the draw fairer and to force new connections across industries, a neat reminder that in Vietnam, pickleball is increasingly functioning as a relationship sport as much as a recreational one.

The opening ceremony backed that up. Representatives from the Central Propaganda and Mass Mobilization Commission, the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Culture and Sports, the Ho Chi Minh City Journalists Association and the Ho Chi Minh City Tennis–Pickleball Federation all attended, alongside more than 20 leaders of news organizations. Nguyen Van Nen, the former Politburo member and former Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee, also sent congratulatory flowers, giving the tournament an unusual level of official and symbolic weight.

Tran Trong Dung, vice president in charge of the southern region at the Vietnam Journalists Association and head of the steering committee, said the goal was to create a healthy sporting environment that supports journalists’ well-being while widening cooperation between the media, organizations and enterprises. That framing is not just ceremonial language. The tournament landed as the association marked its 76th anniversary, from April 21, 1950 to April 21, 2026, and as the country also recognized the 51st anniversary of the Liberation of the South and National Reunification.

The larger picture is even bigger than one day in Ho Chi Minh City. In September 2024, Vietnam’s Sports Administration and the Asian Pickleball Federation said Vietnam had taken the lead in Asia in pickleball development, with the APF reaching 21 member countries, about 50,000 players and 600 certified referees. The market has moved just as quickly: Vietnamese consumers spent nearly VNĐ511 billion on pickleball gear in the first half of 2025, almost 13 times the same period a year earlier, with 2.4 million products sold across major e-commerce platforms.

That surge helps explain why Ho Chi Minh City has become the sport’s commercial and competitive center. The city hosted Vietnam’s first PPA Tour Asia event in September 2025, and organizers called it the country’s largest pickleball hub. What happened on April 19 showed the next step: pickleball in Vietnam is no longer just growing, it is entering the country’s professional social calendar with sponsors, officials and media all in the same draw.