Shenzhen launches Asia-Pacific youth pickleball competition with city backing

Shenzhen is trying to turn pickleball from a club trend into a junior pipeline. The Asia-Pacific Youth Pickleball Competition opened at Ramsports Group Pickleball Club in the city with the Shenzhen News Group Global Communication Center, the Pingshan District Government and Ramsports Group all on board, a setup that says this is about more than filling a draw.

The competition carried the theme Friendship through sports, youth without borders, and that framing matters. Shenzhen is not just hosting matches, it is building a structure for youth participation, coaching and cross-border exchange. That puts the city ahead of the usual club-only model still common in fast-rising Asian markets such as India and Vietnam, where pickleball growth is expanding but the junior ladder is still thinner and less institutionalized.

This push did not appear overnight. Ramsports opened China’s first pickleball stadium at Mission Hills MH Mall in Longhua District on Jan. 20, 2024, with 3,500 square meters of international standard courts. The site includes three indoor courts, three outdoor courts and four courts with electric retractable roofs, and the opening drew Li Ning, Richard Gossett, Tenniel Chu, Seymour Rifkind, Steve Kuhn, Eddie Shen and Michael Newell, a roster that showed Shenzhen was already connecting itself to the sport’s global network.

The competition also sits on top of a growing event calendar. On June 7, 2025, Ramsports staged the first Greater Bay Area Prize Money Series at Ramsports Pickleball Stadium in Longhua District, drawing more than 100 players and putting 8,000 yuan on the line. Alex Yuan said then that Ramsports wanted to create more competitive events and build more opportunities for young people to try the sport, a useful reminder that China’s pickleball market is still early enough for the infrastructure to matter as much as the results.

Shenzhen’s youth push also carries diplomatic weight. In April 2025, 44 teachers and students from 13 schools in Maryland visited Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing for a pickleball exchange, and Chinese reports later said Xi Jinping described pickleball as a new bond for youth exchanges between China and the United States. On Feb. 15, 2026, another U.S. youth delegation of 45 teachers and students arrived in Shenzhen for a ten-day program.

PCL Asia has already treated Shenzhen as a regional anchor, saying its Season 2 ecosystem included 256 clubs across 10 countries and 1,536 players, with finals held in the city in 2025. That is the real story here: Shenzhen is not simply hosting youth pickleball, it is trying to become one of the places that decides where Asian pickleball grows up.