The 2025 Australian professional pickleball scene offers more opportunities than ever, with both NPL and MLP Australia providing competitive platforms for players. Whether you’re following the $250k NPL season or the $500k MLP Australia tournaments, the sport’s growth in Australia shows no signs of slowing down.
What’s the dill?
If you were following the state of professional pickleball in Australia towards the end of 2024, you may have heard rumblings of emerging “tour wars” [pronounced hawk · tuah] (when multiple pickleball tours compete to sign players to their leagues, essentially locking them into semi or fully exclusive contracts) between the two major leagues here.
We’re sort of on the other side of that now, but there is still much to play out over the coming months with big influence from emerging leagues in India and greater Asia.
To help make sense of it all, here’s a quick rundown of what the professional pickleball scene looks like in Australia.
Professional pickleball tours vs leagues
The difference between a tour and a league:
- League: A team-based format typically made up of both men and women who compete together against other teams across a season
- Tour: A series of individual tournaments where individual players compete in brackets against others in their same age and skill level throughout the year
There are two main entities dominating Australia at the moment:
- National Pickleball League (NPL) founded in Australia in 2023
- Professional Pickleball Association Australia (PPA Australia Tour) also founded in 2023 (formerly as PPL – Pacific Pickleball League) which is combined with Major League Pickleball Australia (MLP Australia) and has partnered with the US-based PPA tour since February 2024
Both run individual tournaments where players compete for prize money and tour ranking points in singles, gender doubles and mixed doubles across a single weekend. You’ll see the top players from around the country playing tournaments for both tours as player-league exclusivity doesn’t affect these events.
Both ALSO run a team-based league pitching teams of four players (two men, two women) against each other over the course of a season.
The National Pickleball League has a unique tournament format which tends to favour singles more heavily than doubles. If you’re keen to learn more about the NPL format in detail, check out this post.
The main Australian pickleball leagues
The two leagues are following different seasons this year (with tour dates spread across the year)
- NPL will hold two seasons in 2025: S3 March – June and S4 August – November
- MLP will hold one season in 2025: April – November
2025 season details – prize money & team structures
- The NPL has 18 teams split across 3 states: Queensland (QLD), New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC). Teams are almost exclusively filled with Australian players who compete against the other teams within their home state initially (in pool play style) before traveling to Melbourne for a season ending tournament.
- Prize money: $250k is on offer for 2025
- MLP Australia features 12 teams tied to different regions across Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. The player base is split to roughly half Australia/New Zealand players and half international talent (though there’s a bit of controversy surrounding this after the most recent draft).
- Prize money: A cool $500k is on offer for 2025
The drafts for both leagues have recently taken place on 6 and 7 Jan (for NPL and MLP, respectively) and you can get the scoop on the captains and players selected for each of the leagues and teams on their instagram pages (@nplpickleball and @mlp.australia).
As a quick side note, in addition to the Premier (aka highest) level, new in 2025:
- MLP Australia has expanded to include eight Challenger level teams and eight teams in a Masters (50+) division
- NPL is offering a Division 2 for the ‘rising stars of Australia’ which will consist of 12 teams
How to follow the action
The best place to follow results is via Pickleball Tournaments (which is a bit clunky and not my favorite site in the world, think you also need to create an account), otherwise each organization tends to publish their own results via social media, with matches also streamed live on Youtube.
Key dates to keep track of
These are the professional pickleball league tournament calendars that have been published so far:
How to watch professional pickleball in Australia
While the best kind of action is seen in person, most tournaments are streamed live! Follow the action live via Youtube @NPLpickleball and @PPATour.australia (for both tour and league events)
The future of Australian pickleball
There’s plenty cooking up across both organizations— and pickleball across Australia in general— only made more complex by big players emerging out of India and Asia more widely (and of course the influence of the USA).
Speaking of big players in India… on October 2024, NPL announced an exclusive partnership with Pickleball World Rankings (PWR) (a partnership between The Times Group, the news and entertainment leader in India and Pickleball Asia Private Limited).
Without getting into too much detail on PWR (which is a whole situation on its own), they’re essentially operating as a unified global ranking system and offering players to earn ranking points by competing in regional events.
Players accumulate points through the PWR World Tour and can qualify for the PWR World Series— a series of $1m USD+ global tournaments hosted by PWR.
Tati’s final thoughts
2025 is shaping up to be a massive year for professional pickleball in Australia, with hopefully positive growth for the non-pro levels as well.
I’m keen to see how it all plays out and what, if anything, might have changed come December.
Tell me — what are your thoughts on all the leagues and how 2025 is shaping up so far?
xx,
Tati (fact-checked by Joey)
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p.s., if you’re keen for more info related to any of the above, @slamjam.thepodcast has all the latest on who signed where and key players to watch in the space. Check them out on Instagram and YouTube!
Quick Links:
– NPL Instagram: @nplpickleball
– MLP Australia Instagram: @mlp.australia
– Live streaming: Youtube @NPLpickleball // Youtube @PPA Tour Australia
– Tournament results: Pickleball Tournaments
