Pacquiao backs Philippines pickleball league with eight franchises, 5 million purse

Manny Pacquiao is putting his name behind a pickleball project with the kind of prize money and structure that can change a sport’s business case. The Maharlika Pilipinas Pickleball Tour will launch as a team-based league with eight franchises, a purse of at least 5 million and sanctioning from the Games and Amusements Board, giving it a more formal frame than the exhibition and open-play events that have powered pickleball’s rise in the Philippines.

That matters because MPPT is not being built as a one-city novelty. The league is expected to stretch across Metro Manila, Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao, which gives it regional reach and the chance to build rivalries fans can follow by franchise, not just by individual bracket. Three teams had already confirmed participation, an early sign that the idea has moved beyond branding and into actual inventory for players, sponsors and broadcast partners to sell.

For Philippine pickleball, the timing is hard to miss. The Philippine Pickleball Federation says the sport’s first known clinic in the country was held in Cebu in February 2016, when Sara Ash arrived with a portable net, paddles and balls. The federation also says there were no pickleball clubs in the Philippines that year. Today, it says, the game is played daily by thousands of Filipinos nationwide. The Philippine Pickleball Sports Association was established on April 15, 2019, and the federation celebrated its sixth anniversary on April 27, 2025 with guests including Steve Kuhn, founder of Major League Pickleball and DUPR, and Jan Papi of Pickleball Global.

That arc from clinic to commercial league is exactly why Pacquiao’s backing matters. He is not just lending celebrity to a growing sport. He is helping package it as a repeatable property, the kind that can support player earnings, attract sponsor money and eventually create media-rights value. A league with franchises and a real purse gives pickleball something one-off tournaments cannot: a season, a brand identity and stakes that can be measured from month to month.

The sport is already showing signs that the market is there. The PlanOut Pickleball Open in Dumaguete City on May 1-3 was described as the biggest pickleball tournament in the Philippines to date, with a P1 million prize pool and a celebrity exhibition game. MPPT would enter a scene that is already testing bigger events and bigger checks.

Pacquiao has done this before. He founded the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League in 2017 as a regional competition, and it grew into a major pro circuit. If MPPT follows even part of that path, Philippine pickleball will have crossed from fast-growing participation sport to serious business, with the country suddenly in position to matter in Asia for more than just how quickly the game spread.