Numbers Sometimes Lie – Digging Deeper on the PPA Tour’s Record Breaking Viewership on CBS
Another tradition unlike other: the PPA propping up viewership or viewership adjacent numbers for mass public consumption as a sign of its incredible and steady growth.
This time, it was Connor Pardoe posting on X that the Sunday, January 18th morning/early afternoon time slot on CBS for the Master’s was the most watched pickleball event in history, averaging 791,000 viewers during their TV window. A large number, objectively speaking.
Pardoe also noted that it beat out other major sports at the same time slots including the NBA on Amazon Prime, Big12 Women’s Basketball on Fox, Premier League Soccer on USA Network and LIGA MX on Univision. Awesome! Pickleball to the moon!
Understanding that the PPA, UPA and Pardoe want to show their business in the best possible light to any outside observers, what is almost always frustrating about these proclamations is that they lack much needed context and nuance. Linear TV numbers cannot be viewed in a vacuum and should not be presented in such a way that the large number itself is the be all, end all of the discussion.
Along with the other 3 major TV networks, CBS is a large network that draws viewers no matter because it is available in far more households, even as viewing habits shift away from traditional TV. Comparing viewership number to sports being shown on networks available in far less households across the country is the easiest PR cheat code.
Pardoe excitedly exclaimed in his post that this demonstrates pickleball has “arrived” while also tagging a CBS Sports executive in his post. Well, do we think PBR bull riding, the team based rodeo sport, has arrived? A quick Google search will show you that in October 2025 a PBR event hit a record viewership number on CBS at 2.71 million viewers, which beat out the Yankees-Blue Jays playoff game 2 in a similar afternoon time slot.
Digging deeper on those numbers, the Awful Announcing article points out the PBR event had the benefit of a massive NFL lead-in of 19.58 million viewers. In addition, the head to head time slot MLB game was on FS1, a network carried in far less households than CBS.
Again, we get this is the game of public relations and PPA/UPA are not isolated in their misleading of the public for these announcements, but it is likely incorrect to use the record viewing number for pickleball on CBS as a statement that the pro side of the game has arrived in a meaningful way to the mainstream viewing public.
The large viewership numbers distract from the reality that the vast majority of those viewers probably did not actively seek out to watch pro pickleball. That’s why the above graphics are silly as a direct comparison. Direct comparisons to head-to-head time slots or a Big 10 basketball game on NBC that faced competition of an NFL divisional playoff game or other pickleball national broadcasts without any consideration for network size, lead-in and lead-out, head to head shows (i.e. NFL divisional playoff game) etc. provides us with next to no information about what that single TV number means. Anyone with a basic grasp of linear TV numbers should understand that.
The only head-to-head time slot on an equivalent network that the PPA broadcast beat out was the Big 12 women’s college basketball game on Fox. In contrast, averaging over 500,000 plus viewers on Amazon Prime for an NBA game is actually a good chunk of viewers when you consider those people have to find and specifically tune in for that NBA game.
791,000 CBS viewers does not mean 791,000 were jacked up to watch pro pickleball.
The real measurement for pickleball’s growth is in the Pickleball TV numbers that are not shared publicIy, other than what the UPA provided recently in a press release near the beginning of the year outlining the purported growth of its product. Notably, the primary metric used in presenting their growth was limited to “totals”, such as total ticket and hospitality revenue, and total minutes viewed on Pickleball TV.
The most interesting number to us from the press release was that total attendance on the PPA was only up 16% per domestic event, which we assume does factor in that events were extended with more progressive draws and semi-progressive draws in 2025. The 16% growth was also the lowest total year-over-year growth based on percentages shared in the press release by a significant margin.
It leads us to wonder whether all the numbers are buoyed by using “totals” instead of a more objective measurement tool. For example, the average daily live viewers on a Championship Sunday year-over-year at the same tournament would tell us a lot more than the total growth in minutes viewed across all of Pickleball TV, especially when we don’t know what goes into the total minutes viewed metric year-over-year.
We have always thought it was a big mistake to shift away from live stream broadcasts of tournaments being available on YouTube, where you can build and draw massive audiences. But we’ll never know for sure whether the move to a subscription based model so early in the rise of the sport with Pickleball TV has and is negatively impacting the accessibility of the sport for potential new viewers. It is worth nothing the Savannah Bananas still stream every game live on YouTube, even those that are nationally televised.
What we do know with more certainty is that YouTube was a pretty good measurement of the growth of viewership for the sport. Without that visibility, the viewership numbers are not really a topic of conversation for the niche pickleball consuming public like they used to be because there isn’t anything to talk about. As a result, we’re left to read between the lines of curated press releases in an effort to determine what the reality is in terms of the growth of pickleball viewership, or lack thereof.
In our view, there appears to be growth but it’s more of the slow and steady variety, not the rocket ship to the moon picture that is being painted by the UPA. At the end of the day, there should be an understanding that growth may not be as rosy as it is being presented to us and it should not be a surprise in 5 years when pro pickleball is still without a major TV network deal or some kind of major breakthrough from a mainstream viewership perspective.
Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com! You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @nmlpickleball
