SM Sports adds permanent pickleball courts at Four E-Com Center

Six permanent pickleball courts at Four E-Com Center have turned a mall-office complex into a place where the sport can fit before work, at lunch or after a shift, not just on weekends. By placing courts inside a major commercial district, SM Sports and Leisure Center has made the game easier to reach for office workers, tenants and nearby residents who can now play without traveling to a far-flung recreation site.

The move sits inside SM Active Hub’s broader push to make active-living spaces part of daily urban life. SM said the program launched in March 2025 and uses the SM Malls Online app for community access and event registration. It also said the platform had built a base of more than 110,000 Active Hub members and more than 260,000 event registrations, while expanding its pickleball footprint to 44 courts in 21 malls.

SM closed 2025 with 61 pickleball court locations across 25 properties and 37 total permanent courts, the largest count among mall operators, and said it had 24 semi-permanent courts nationwide as of early 2026. The company plans to raise that inventory to close to 80 courts in 2026, a sign that it sees pickleball as a lasting draw rather than a pop-up trend.

Four E-Com Center will also serve as the finals venue for the 2026 SM Active Hub Pickleball Trio Challenge on July 12. The path there runs through five qualifying legs: May 17 at SM City Bicutan, May 24 at SM City Sta. Mesa, June 7 at SM City Santa Rosa, June 28 at SM City Marikina and July 5 at SM Center Muntinlupa.

The competition is open to DUPR 9 and DUPR 11 categories, with teams of three required to include at least one woman. Registration is set at P5,700 per team. That structure gives the event a clearer competitive spine than a simple drop-in session and helps connect recreational play to a defined circuit.

The timing matters because pickleball in the Philippines has grown from a street-level experiment into a national habit. The Global Pickleball Federation said the sport began on Emerald Avenue in Pasig City in April 2018 and had grown to 80 clubs and more than 4,100 players by April 2024. ABS-CBN later reported that the country had passed 250 clubs, with major hubs in Metro Manila, Cebu and Davao.

That is why Four E-Com Center matters beyond one venue opening. In a city where access often decides which sports stick, permanent courts inside a business district can lower the time cost of playing and make pickleball feel less like an event and more like part of the workday itself.