In partnership with
Nike x Anna Leigh Waters x Ares Management:
Nike has finally picked a side in pickleball, and it has gone straight to the top of the pyramid with Anna Leigh Waters, the world’s No. 1 and the most decorated player in the sport. This is Nike’s first global endorsement in pickleball and it is a full head‑to‑toe play: apparel, footwear and on‑court visibility every time Waters steps on a PPA or MLP court.
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Nike’s First Real Move In Pickleball:
The timing is not an accident: pickleball has been the fastest‑growing sport in the US for four years running, with participation jumping from under 5 million in 2021 to almost 20 million in 2024 and an estimated 22.7 million by 2025. A sport that started as a meme in suburban cul‑de‑sacs now looks, on the numbers, like a mid‑tier US league‑sized participation engine with a long runway for equipment, apparel, events and rights.
Nike is not chasing a trend; it is buying a first‑mover story in a category that is already scaling like a serious participation asset.
The Waters Portfolio - Building ‘’Pickleball Inc.’’:
Anna Leigh Waters’ commercial reset over the last few months is the clearest signal yet of where the ceiling is moving for elite pickleball. Franklin Sports signed her to a long‑term paddle deal that insiders peg in the region of US $10 million, widely promoted as the biggest endorsement contract in pickleball history and structured over multiple years.
Nike now sits on top of that stack as her global apparel and footwear partner, giving her a major‑brand “head‑to‑toe” look that the sport simply has not had before. Around those anchors she already carries a mainstream brand roster across travel, delivery and beauty, so commercially she looks less like a niche athlete and more like a small consumer platform with pickleball at the core.
On court, she is No. 1 in singles, doubles and mixed doubles, with 180‑plus career golds and dozens of triple crowns at just 18 years old. That dominance gives brands a simple, scalable story: if pickleball has a Serena‑style figurehead for the next cycle, it is probably Anna Leigh Waters, and the marketing money is now lining up accordingly.
The top of the pro pyramid has gone from side‑hustle money to low‑eight‑figure contract value in about three years.
Nike’s Racket-Sports Rethink:
To make sense of why Nike is doing this now, you have to zoom out to its broader racket‑sports portfolio. Over the last 18–24 months Nike has quietly trimmed its tennis bench, allowing a series of mid‑tier and stylistic players to leave, while locking in genuinely elite names like Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka on richer, longer deals.
Specialist reporting has described a shift toward performance‑based contracts and incentive‑heavy structures for everyone outside that top tier, replacing older guaranteed‑fee deals that kept rosters bloated without clear sell‑through. At the same time Nike has increased marketing spend again, under pressure to show that those dollars are landing with properties it can clearly own national teams, generational stars and now, potentially, a whole new racket category via pickleball.
Waters is a neat fit for that thesis, because Nike can:
Use one dominant athlete to define what “serious” pickleball looks like on TV and social, in contrast to the casual rec‑centre aesthetic that has dominated early imagery.
Prototype tennis‑style performance and fashion silhouettes in a sport whose apparel norms are still fluid, then decide whether to scale into wider category lines or keep the play deliberately tight.
Treat pickleball as a low‑risk call option: if it keeps compounding at 20–30%+ annually, Nike already has the category’s first true superstar under contract.
Ares, Pickleball Slam And The Institutional Money Signal:
On the capital side, Ares Management has just bought title rights to the Pickleball Slam, marking its first move into front‑of‑shirt sports sponsorship and extending a sports and media investment strategy that already runs into the billions. The Slam began as a made‑for‑TV curiosity with tennis legends playing pickleball, but it has evolved into a recurring, televised property with a US $1 million prize pool and line‑ups that now include Waters alongside Andre Agassi, James Blake and Eugenie Bouchard.
Ares closed its initial dedicated sports, media and entertainment fund at about US $3.7 billion and has been working on follow‑on vehicles and semi‑liquid products aimed at giving institutional and retail investors exposure to sports assets. For a firm that already writes cheques into NFL, MLS and European football structures to put its name on a pickleball event is a clear signal that the sport is graduating from curiosity to credible platform within diversified sports portfolios.
For you as readers, this matters in three ways:
1. It validates pickleball as a rights and hospitality product that can sit alongside traditional properties in multi‑asset sports funds.
2. It sets a benchmark for future event‑level sponsorship fees in the space, especially as media coverage and prize money scale
3. It tightens the link between grassroots participation, star‑driven sponsorship (Nike x Waters) and institutional capital, which is exactly where long‑term franchise and IP value tends to be created.