Sports

Will Sports Collectors Buy Pickleball Cards?

The popularity of tennis has come and gone more than a few times over the decades. The new rekindled interest in tennis courts is a repurposing of the courts due to the rise of pickleball. It may resemble a cross of tennis, badminton and perhaps ping pong, but it has been rising in popularity around the country to the point that there are leagues and associations. And now we have famous athletes to the tune of Tom Brady, Kim Clijsters and LeBron James actually buying or investing in pickleball teams.

If pickleball is going to become a mainstream sport, will collectors ever consider buying sports cards of the nation’s (or world’s) top pickleball players?

You can laugh at this notion. In fact, go ahead and laugh. It has to be a joke, right? Well, it turns out that the powers that be have been willing to make cards for just about any sport, movie, TV series and so on. If it’s popular one of the card companies will get a set issued.

Let’s think about other sports that have cards that collectors have gone after. It wasn’t more than a few years ago that it seemed insane that Formula One racers would see a surge in card buying. Two decades ago tennis cards were basically unheard of. They have sports cards for emerging basketball teams of players who are hopefully being groomed for future NBA teams. And they even make Lacrosse cards.

Check out this Google Trends chart below!

Interest in pickleball

According to a PRNewswire release:

An ownership group headlined by 5-time NFL Super Bowl MVP quarterback and entrepreneur Tom Brady and Former World No.1 tennis player Kim Clijsters has purchased an expansion team for the 2023 Major League Pickleball (MLP) season. The group, led by Knighthead Capital Management, LLC, includes co-founder of Knighthead Tom Wagner, acclaimed producer Matt Alvarez, Wall Street bond saleswoman Callie Simpkins, and financial advisor Kaitlyn Kerr, who will serve as General Manager.

And according to Major League Pickleball founder Steve Kuhn, the league is looking to elevate professional pickleball and to reach 40 million pickleball players by 2030.

Other team owners and partners include the following people by name:

  • LeBron James,
  • Draymond Green,
  • Kevin Love,
  • Drew Brees,
  • Gary Vaynerchuk (Gary Vee),
  • Brené Brown,
  • Marc Lasry,
  • James Blake,
  • Molly Joseph,
  • and Ryan Serhant.

The expansion teams will take the number of teams from 12 teams up to 16 teams in 2023. The MLP events will also grow from 3 to 6 events, and the player prize money and payouts are now expected to be more than $2 million. Who knows if there will be pickleball cards or not, but it certainly seems like Tom Brady and LeBron James might end up on pickleball cards. What will they think up next — Michael Jordan on baseball cards? Oh, that happened too.

The image below for pickleball paddles is from Franklinsports.com for their Signature Pickleball Paddle, and they are a sponsor of MLP.

pickleball paddles

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