Skilled pickleball has turn into such an enormous hit in america that scores of feminine gamers are incomes salaries which are increased than these earned by their counterparts enjoying basketball and soccer.
The typical pay for the roughly 60 ladies competing within the Skilled Pickleball Affiliation Tour and Main League Pickleball is $260,000 — which tops the very best pay within the WNBA and is greater than twice the typical wage of athletes within the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League.
The figures had been first reported by CNBC.
The very best paid participant within the WNBA is Jackie Younger of the Las Vegas Aces, who earns $252,450 a 12 months, based on Entrance Workplace Sports activities.
Caitlin Clark, the preferred WNBA participant who began her skilled profession this previous season after a stellar four-year faculty profession at Iowa, earned $76,000 as a rookie.
The very best paid WNBA gamers earn round half as a lot as these within the NWSL.
Sophie Smith, a ahead with the Portland Thorns, is the very best paid skilled ladies’s soccer participant — incomes greater than $500,000, based on Entrance Workplace Sports activities.
The highest 12 earners within the NWSL — a bunch that features Trinity Rodman, Alex Morgan, Maria Sanchez and Crystal Dunn — earn between $250,000 and $450,000 a 12 months.
However there stays a big hole between the high-end gamers and the remainder of the league.
The typical wage is $65,000 per season, based on Primarily Sports activities.
The explosion within the recognition of pickleball is mirrored within the fast build-up of the skilled sports activities leagues, together with the MLP and the PPA Tour — each of which function below the umbrella of the United Pickleball Affiliation, fashioned final 12 months.
Professional pickleball gamers earned greater than $30 million in wage alone final 12 months, the league mentioned.
Anna Leigh Waters, a former tennis participant who’s ranked No. 1 on the earth in singles, doubles and combined doubles pickleball, stands to earn $3 million from wage and endorsements this 12 months, her agent advised Forbes in September.
Waters, the daughter of Leigh Waters, a former Division I tennis participant on the College of South Carolina, was simply 12 years previous when she began her pickleball profession in 2019.
She make greater than No. 1-ranked male pickleballer, Ben Johns, who’s estimated to be pulling in $2.5 million from wage and endorsements this 12 months, based on CNBC.
The expansion potential of pickleball has attracted big-name traders from the world of sports activities and enterprise.
NBA stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant, retired NFL legends Tom Brady and Drew Brees, and entrepreneurs Mark Cuban and Gary Vaynerchuk are traders within the MLP, which has additionally attracted curiosity from a number of personal fairness and enterprise capital teams.
