Most Lucrative Pro Sport For Female Athletes Is — You Guessed It — Pickleball

If you have a daughter who wants to play pro sports someday, it might be time to take her to the pickleball court. According to information released by The Professional Pickleball Association on Thursday, the sport is taking off — and it offers especially lucrative opportunities for women.

In fact, the average pay of the more than 60 women on the PPA Tour and Major League Pickleball in 2024 was $260,000. That is more than any WNBA player earns yearly and more than double the average salary of NWSL athletes.

Those figures do not include sponsorships and endorsement deals.

Pro pickleball brought in a collective $30 million for players this year, and that money is evenly split between men and women.

"There is no other sport where men and women can compete on the court together and have an equal opportunity to impact the game," United Pickleball Association’s Chief Strategy Officer Samin Odhwan said. "And arguably, what we’ve seen from early statistics and analysis of the sort of value of a player, the female outweighs what the male is able to do, in terms of just winning.

"The fact that they get more of the balls dictated to them because, sort of conceptually, the idea, especially in mixed doubles, is hit the ball to the weaker player, right, like (the) mind gravitates towards always funneling it to the female, and in turn, we’re seeing some statistical analysis show that that’s actually the wrong strategy."

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Interestingly, the highest paid pickleball player in the world right now is a female, and she's only 17 years old. Anna Leigh Waters — a former tennis player who is ranked No. 1 in the world in singles, doubles and mixed doubles pickleball — is set to earn $3 million from salary and endorsements this year, her agent told Forbes in September.

In February, Major League Pickleball and the Professional Pickleball Association merged, creating the United Pickleball Association. The deal also included $75 million of outside investment. 

And the move paid off. In 2024, the league said 320,000 fans attended PPA Tour and MLP events, up 40% from the year prior. It also marked the first year in which revenue from ticket sales surpassed revenue from amateur registration.

Odhwan said UPA is hoping to build on that success in 2025 by expanding its media rights partnerships and "continuing to build existing pros into household names in the world of sports."