Professional female pickleball stars earn more than WNBA, NWSL athletes
Professional pickleball has become such a huge hit in the United States that scores of female players are earning salaries that are higher than those earned by their counterparts playing basketball and soccer.
The average pay for the roughly 60 women competing in the Professional Pickleball Association Tour and Major League Pickleball is $260,000 — which tops the highest pay in the WNBA and is more than twice the average wage of athletes in the National Women’s Soccer League.
The figures were first reported by CNBC.
The highest paid player in the WNBA is Jackie Young of the Las Vegas Aces, who earns $252,450 a year, according to Front Office Sports.
Caitlin Clark, the most popular WNBA player who started her professional career this past season after a stellar four-year college career at Iowa, earned $76,000 as a rookie.
The highest paid WNBA players earn around half as much as those in the NWSL.
Sophie Smith, a forward with the Portland Thorns, is the highest paid professional women’s soccer player — earning more than $500,000, according to Front Office Sports.
The top 12 earners in the NWSL — a group that includes Trinity Rodman, Alex Morgan, Maria Sanchez and Crystal Dunn — earn between $250,000 and $450,000 a year.
But there remains a significant gap between the high-end players and the rest of the league.
The average salary is $65,000 per season, according to Essentially Sports.
The explosion in the popularity of pickleball is reflected in the rapid build-up of the professional sports leagues, including the MLP and the PPA Tour — both of which operate under the umbrella of the United Pickleball Association, formed last year.
Pro pickleball players earned more than $30 million in salary alone last year, the league said.
Anna Leigh Waters, a former tennis player who is ranked No. 1 in the world in singles, doubles and mixed doubles pickleball, stands to earn $3 million from salary and endorsements this year, her agent told Forbes in September.
Waters, the daughter of Leigh Waters, a former Division I tennis player at the University of South Carolina, was just 12 years old when she started her pickleball career in 2019.
She make more than No. 1-ranked male pickleballer, Ben Johns, who is estimated to be pulling in $2.5 million from salary and endorsements this year, according to CNBC.
The growth potential of pickleball has attracted big-name investors from the world of sports and business.
NBA stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant, retired NFL legends Tom Brady and Drew Brees, and entrepreneurs Mark Cuban and Gary Vaynerchuk are investors in the MLP, which has also attracted interest from several private equity and venture capital groups.
