Major League Pickleball is rebranding as part of a sponsorship with DoorDash. The league will now be called MLP by DoorDash after it signed the food and grocery delivery company to a three-year title partnership. MLP, with its lengthy roster of athletes as team investors from LeBron James to Patrick Mahomes, is the fourth U.S.-based […]
Major League Pickleball is rebranding as part of a sponsorship with DoorDash. The league will now be called MLP by DoorDash after it signed the food and grocery delivery company to a three-year title partnership.
MLP, with its lengthy roster of athletes as team investors from LeBron James to Patrick Mahomes, is the fourth U.S.-based league with a league-wide deal with DoorDash, a newly prominent marketer in sports. Since 2022, the company signed and renewed deals as the “official on-demand delivery platform partner” of the NBA, WNBA and MLS; and has agreements with multiple teams throughout sports. It is also a founding partner of the Northern Super League, Canada’s first women’s pro soccer league that begins play this month.
This is the largest sponsor agreement in the league’s history, and it runs in the seven figures, according to a person close to the discussions. DoorDash replaces Margaritaville as MLP’s title sponsor.
“It’s important … to have a partner that brings value and has some creativity behind it,” said George Killebrew, the chief revenue officer of MLP’s holding company, United Pickleball Association, in a video interview. “If you look at all the things DoorDash has done in much bigger sports leagues than ours, that’s what got us really excited. I think it brings us up a level to be in the same conversation as those other leagues.”
The deal includes promotions for DoorDash users, both at MLP events and at home, including on pickles through grocery delivery.
In an email, a company spokesperson said the partnership is “a way for fans and players to further integrate DoorDash into their everyday lives.”
DoorDash will also take the naming rights of the league finals in New York City’s Central Park. In 2024, the finals attracted nearly 5,500 fans over four days.
In describing how DoorDash’s entry into the sport helps the company reach more consumers, both the company and league cited the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) latest participation study that names pickleball as the fastest-growing sport in the U.S. for the fourth straight year. In 2024, 19.8 million Americans took up the sport, a 43% increase from a year prior.
“Brands look at this and they say the sport is exploding,” Killebrew said. “If we can take a fraction of the people that are playing the game and turn them into DoorDash customers, or have some loyalty to DoorDash, or any other brand, you’re winning the game. The scale of this is growing leaps and bounds.”
While a league’s name isn’t often considered a place for a title sponsorship, it’s not as sacrosanct in pickleball. The UPA is also the holding company for the Carvana PPA Tour, which completed its merger with MLP last year through $75 million of funding from private equity firm DC Holdings and several franchise owners in both tours.
Killebrew, who spent 20 years with the Dallas Mavericks, including as the team’s chief revenue officer, hailed the PPA’s Carvana pact as the model for what MLP was seeking.
“The perfect sponsorships are ones that make sure they pay the property X amount of dollars to be involved, but then they bring it to life in so many different ways,” Killebrew said. “And I think that’s what really became mutually attractive to both us and to DoorDash.”
Margaritaville, which built a presence in pickleball as the sport’s popularity began to rise, was MLP’s previous title sponsor, beginning with the 2023 season. Jimmy Buffett, the late musician and Margaritaville’s founder, was an avid player.
