The UPA Financial Controversy
A Special Report by Pickleball Tech Dude
Speaker: Rafael Trevino
Time Stamps:
Transcript
[00:00] INTRO Pickleball social media has been spiraling out of control ever since Pro Player Jill Braverman's accusations that the UPA requires a $10 million emergency Bridge Loan by January 15th to stay afloat. I've spoken with several people over the last couple of days, both with and without dogs in this fight, to glean the facts about the situation. Today, we're going to dissect both Jullian Braverman's as well as a couple of UPA Executives' statements—very serious statements which, ironically, came out via Twitter. To be clear, I haven't read any of the statements in full, so I'm going to be reacting to these alongside with you partially, and if there's any information that I'm unaware of or unsure, I'm not going to be afraid to tell you guys, but I'm also not going to hold back. So by the end of the video, you're going to know absolutely everything that I know. So let's get into it.
[00:47] JILL BRAVERMAN STATEMENT Let's go through this bit by bit, and I'll interject with my commentary. Let's start with Jillian Braverman's statement: "10 months after the Blockbuster $75 million merger between Major League Pickleball, LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Heiser Bush and Tom Dundon's Carvana Top Golf back PPA tour, the new entity, the UPA needs an emergency Bridge Loan of $10 million by January 15th to meet its Financial Obligations."
The statement for the most part is accurate, but there are some misleading connotations here. Putting "$75 million merger" in quotations is definitely accurate. From my understanding, the number was closer to 30 to 40 million, and the 10 million dollar value of the loan on top of it being a January 15th deadline are both correct as well. However, calling this an "emergency bridge loan" is 1,000% a stretch. Bridge Loan requests are often sent months in advance to pre-existing investors, so my assumption is that that money has likely already been raised; otherwise, we'd be seeing emergency meetings with investors now. So the lack of evidence of that doesn't point to any kind of emergency whatsoever.
At the same time, the bridge loan request was sent to MLP team owners, and not without irony, the UPA announced via press release: "Pro Pickleball continues to explode, PPA tour Major League Pickleball have best year ever in 2024." False again—the bridge loan was probably sent months ago. Now whether it was sent two months ago or sent 5 months ago, I don't know, so the urgency there could be a little different, but the press release was very recently uploaded, so that was not at the same time.
Citing that female pickleball players make more than WNBA players and pickleball on Fox outperformed an MLS Cup broadcast—these numbers from the article are likely true but they're to be taken with a grain of salt. That MLS Cup game likely happened between two USL teams, which are already below Major League Soccer in a sport where we already don't really care about soccer. It's like comparing Manchester United game viewership versus Norwich City in the United States. If any of you can even tell me where Norwich City is, I'll be impressed, but overall it's just not a fair comparison.
The female pickleball player average salary being higher than WNBA is also technically true on paper. Female pickleball players average 260k according to the article versus WNBA being at just under 150k, but notably, the WNBA has a minimum salary requirement, which I don't believe currently exists in Pro Pickleball. And at the same time, on the pickleball side, it's very highly skewed by super high earners like Annalee Waters, Anna Bright, Catherine Parenteau, etc. So I would be interested to see the median salary of a female Pro Pickleball player as opposed to the mean in the future.
Can I ask kind of an awkward question—what exactly is going on here? Maybe we should rewind to last December when the 2-year long war between MLP and PPA ended with an uneasy merger between the frenemies. These are the questions that more people should be asking. I think Jill would have been totally fine leaving this tweet exactly where it is right here because UPA and UPAA both need to be a lot more transparent with how they're conducting business. I think in the long run though, it's difficult to hold them specifically to finances because they're operating as for-profit businesses. So you don't exactly see Chick-fil-A advertising how much they make on 12-count nuggets every week, and I think they will see that in a similar light, even though we will want to know that as players.
Inherited in the merger was $30 million in annual player salary debt, driven up in a war over players between MLP and PPA pre-merger. That's absolutely true—that war over players and the resulting contracts is what has put UPA in a hole from the very beginning. On the road to the merger, MLP asked its players to take 40% salary reductions, whereas Dundon's players (PPA) took little to no reductions. I mean, yeah, that's technically true, but there's a lot more contracted players in MLP than PPA in the first place, so I think it's wrong to say that there were no PPA players or less that took reductions because there were reductions taken by PPA players, but just comparatively a lot more contracts needed to be reduced on the MLP side, so you're kind of comparing apples to oranges there.
[4:46] A player's Coalition was formed and attorneys were hired. Famous and unfamous team owners alike opposed the merger, then got behind it after Dundon promised to back stop team valuations up to $4 million per team. Two teams immediately took him up on this - one owned by billionaire Mark Lasry and the other by Brene Brown, who exited quickly and quietly.
This is all actually accurate. There were a lot of team owners that were against the merger and probably still were a little bit even after it happened, but Dundon's agreement to back stop the teams was a major driver for making this deal happen. Although having two people back out immediately needing to buy back those teams is probably another major cost that UPA has had to deal with this year.
Finally, the merger closed in February of 2024, with each MLP team owner reportedly signing a hold harmless releasing Dundon from any future liability or litigation. Perhaps Dundon learned something from the $184 million lawsuit brought against him after the stunning failure and bankruptcy of the Alliance of American Football League.
This is definitely a side note that doesn't really relate to the issue at all here, but it is all true. Dundon technically could be on the hook for millions for filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy for the AAF when it was believed that there were other financial options available to him to keep them afloat.
So the new entities emerged and all was well in 2024 with little to no drama in pickleball... psych! So the reported $75 million raised in the PPA MLP merger - sources report the amount was closer to $35 million with 2024 year-end cash totaling only 2 to 4 million.
This is all true. I mentioned earlier that the actual result of the merger was $30 to $40 million raised, so 35 million may not be precise but it's closer to the real number, and the year-end cash 2 to 4 million does seem accurate as well. But I'm actually not too sure why that's mentioned here. I mean, despite the amount that was raised, it costs money to run operations, pay employees, pay players, and 2 to 4 million really does not seem that surprising to me. I mean, it costs money to run a business - it feels naive to feel like the year-end cash would be too much higher than what it is.
So will the UPA survive 2025 or will it be pickleball's Fyre Fest - a gorgeous, celebrity-laden, deliciously decadent soon-to-be relic unless a change of leadership and/or continued funding/SL bailout occurs? This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call fear-mongering. The UPA will 1,000% make it through 2025 and any notion that it won't is just Jill's heavy APP bias showing through, which is fine - all media including myself is biased, but that is very strong.
I will say though, I am definitely on her side that a change of leadership is required. I have zero confidence in the leadership ability of almost every single C-suite executive in charge of UPA right now. And if the UPA does survive, will they find themselves fighting yet again over players with new competing tours in 1.5 years once UPA's exclusive player contracts come up?
This is false - as much as I don't like UPA's leadership, they run the premiere tour in the world and I don't think it's particularly close, and we're not yet seeing big money coming on the horizon from competing tours. If Jill proceeds to mention PWR in this tweet, I am going to audibly laugh out loud because that is not a reliable competitor for UPA right now.
After all, 2024 saw the birth of the well-heeled Global PWR backed by Saudi Arabian dollars and India's Times Now media conglomerate. The tour is already gobbling up free agent players and signing them to their own exclusive agreements. Okay, don't get me wrong - she's right, PWR is scooping up free agent players, but the problem is that none of these players are going to bring high viewership to pickleball.
Also, PWR just had to delay their own first event of the season, which was scheduled to start in the beginning of January, back 3 months into March because of issues booking the venue. So when you're having issues like that, you cannot mention UPA and PWR in the same sentence for at least half a year while they're getting their act together. Also, both orgs are going to have issues paying out their player contracts, so don't make PWR seem much better than the UPA because it's not.
On Thanksgiving Day, UPA presented PWR with a partnership opportunity - PWR declined. This is true. So PWR was offered the opportunity to have exclusivity to certain international markets and also partner with UPA for branding and marketing etc. to draw in more players, and the CEO Panovski turned them down. And again, as much as I don't like to see the UPA model succeeding, they are gaining more traction internationally, and so PWR's ambition to want to own everything over the UPA and fight them on this could technically come to bite them in the ass down the line.
Meanwhile, quietly chugging along is the ever-underrated Inders Sport-owned APP (Association of Pickleball Professionals) tour which, by the way, is profitable, weirdos. This is a maybe - I don't know this for sure, but marketing is so ass and almost non-existent, they're rarely on TV, and their production quality is actually worse than UPA's now, so there is a world in which this is maybe true but I have a hard time believing that.
And currently hosting more pros than any other tour in the world - again another maybe, but I guarantee you the vast majority of those pros would rather play UPA qualifiers if they could make it far. No disrespect to APP - I think they run a fine tour, but a 5.1 duper entering qualifier and getting knocked out round one does not truly count as a pro player in my eyes. Will the APP tour be the cockroach that survives the nuclear pickleball fallout?
Also notable in 2024, the UPA created their own governing body and paddle certification program that competes with pickleball's nonprofit governing body USAP. This is true - so UPAA was created to be a competing organization to USA Pickleball, but they have terrible policies, really bad leadership, and so many conflicts of interest with for-profit organizations despite supposedly being independent that calling it a governing body is honestly insulting to the sport of pickleball right now.
Last week, paddle manufacturers banded together calling the UPA's demands a "mafia fee" in potential excess of $100,000 per year between certification costs and a marketing and licensing fee. This is technically true - again want to clarify that this request comes from UPAA not UPA as they are independent organizations. However, this $100,000 for paddle certification on top of a marketing licensing fee is completely true. However, they have been combined for paddle companies that chose to pay the full $100,000, but this has been described as nothing more than a mafia fee. This is the most accurate thing that Jill has written in this piece. I do have a full video up about the boycotting companies if you want to watch that as well.
Meanwhile, USAP is being sued for $50 million plus by Joola, a paddle manufacturer who saw their Extra Hot paddle delisted by USAP. The only thing for certain in '25? You guessed it - more drama. More statements that are completely accurate - there is ongoing litigation between Joola and USAP regarding delisted paddles of theirs, and I couldn't agree more with Jill's assertion that we're on the road to more drama in 2025.
I'll always keep you guys up to date, but inside it's always going to suck that we are straying further from the world where we had organizations that were purely in the interest of letting us have fun playing pickleball and letting us watch pickleball and enjoy the pros on the big stage.
[11:58] UPA CEO STATEMENT Okay, that was all a lot, but let's quickly go through the C-Suite Executives from the UPA who have responded so far. Connor Pardoe, CEO of UPA's response starts: "My response to Jill Braverman's take on Pro Pickleball. Wow @JillBPB what a sensational take. I wasn't planning to respond but when misinformation starts spreading, it's important to set the record straight."
He's absolutely right in saying this. I mean, we went through a lot of false information that was in Jill's statement, although I will say that this would be more appropriate coming from maybe their head of communications and a formal response to the media. So I hope that there's no indication in this message that anything that Jill said was taken personally.
"The health and trajectory of professional pickleball have never been better. The combined PPA tour and MLP generated over $50 million in Revenue last year and we're on track to exceed $65 million in 2025." The 50 million in this past year is definitely true. 65 million in 2025 is a maybe for me. I'm not sure who's been crunching the numbers over there since I left, but if the international tour stops are as successful as they might be, then I could potentially see 65 million for sure.
"That's without team sales by the way. Sponsorships are nearing 35 million, ticket sales are at 10 million, and event registrations are hitting 9 million. These numbers don't lie and they reflect a sport that's growing, thriving and building towards a $1 billion Enterprise." I think the exact numbers cited here are false, but that's because I consider 20% to 25% inflation of numbers to not be good accurate ballpark estimates. But if you do, then in that case they'd be accurate. But I will say pickleball valuation in American markets is set to be over $300 million I believe, so if we expand to the international markets and just include Asia and Europe and have similar success, then I could definitely see us heading towards a billion, sure.
"Merging MLP and the PPA tour wasn't without its challenges—growth never is. But we're incredibly proud of what this organization has accomplished. From a talented staff to the professional players and a supportive ownership group, everyone is working relentlessly to elevate the sport we all love." This is true, can confirm that there are some diamonds in the rough and there's definitely a lot of people at the UPA that are doing really good work for the sport.
"Your narrative, however, doesn't reflect reality. It's full of half-truths and sensationalism aimed at tearing others down rather than lifting the game up. If your goal is to truly help pickleball, spreading misinformation isn't the way to do it." I unfortunately have to agree here. As a fellow content creator, I understand the constant pressure of needing to put out content, but when you're dealing with topics like this that legitimately affect people's livelihoods, you need to be a little bit smarter about what you say, what you put out there, which is why I no longer put out drama news the day it releases. I always wait to get the full context.
"Professional pickleball is still in its early stages and yes, tough decisions have to be made, but let me be clear: Bridge loans, investments and calculated risks are part of any ambitious growth strategy. To suggest otherwise shows a lack of understanding of how successful organizations operate." I mean, this is true. I think from the outside looking in, it can be a little contradictory to be asking for loans amidst unprecedented growth, but sometimes you got to spend money to make money in certain businesses. That is—doesn't mean I agree with every financial decision being made here. I don't think that the tour is ready to support International stops, I don't think charging exorbitant paddle fees is good, I don't think that giving teenagers contracts worth over 250k annually is good, but in the end this is the trajectory that UPA has decided to take.
"The reality is Jill, the sport has outgrown your ability to stay relevant. Maybe that's why you're so bitter. It's easier to play the victim and stir up drama than to acknowledge that you're simply not a part of the future of pro pickleball. Good luck with whatever grudge-driven project you're working on for 2025. We'll be busy growing the sport, leading the community and building the next biggest Sports Enterprise. Pickleball's trajectory is set with or without you. Pickle on, Connor."
This is an absolutely classless move by Pardoe here. I really dislike this response. Imagine if Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, decided to respond to criticism about how the NFL is run from a third-string quarterback who knows nothing about business. I mean, as the leader of a Sports organization, you need to rise above certain things, especially in social media, and Pardoe has not done that and has fallen for the bait here unfortunately. This reveals a lot of his character and the character of a lot of people I think at the top of pro tours, and it's why I call for leadership changes so heavily in order for them to be sustainable in the future.
[16:15] NEW UPA CSO STATEMENT While speaking of a new era of leadership, the brand new CSO of the UPA, Samin, decided to respond via X as well, so let's go ahead and look at his response: "Jill, let's stick to the facts. Happy to help you with that. I just left a role with Kevin Durant's 35 Ventures and Boardroom to become Chief Strategy Officer at UPA. I moved my wife and newborn to Dallas yesterday because after meticulously reviewing the financials and financing strategy, I know this league will be a $1 billion plus business."
This is all true. I mean, Samin's credentials really do speak for themselves, and of course we talked a little bit previously how I could see this pickleball space becoming $1 billion or over in valuation in the future.
"Here's the reality: the league did $50 million in Revenue last year, right on plan, which is a miracle in a merger year and a testament to Connor Pardoe, our operating team and ability to execute." This is absolutely false. There's no way that the target was $50 million revenue, and even in the very unlikely chance that it was, I wonder how much of this was financed by pending investments such as title sponsorships for the UPA, which is set at a dollar value of $1 to 2 million, and I know for a fact there is one company that is already planning on signing that deal.
"The costs that we are now funding which were outside of the budget are: 1) buying back two teams and 2) buying players out of contracts we inherited from the bidding wars. These investments were made after board deliberation and with intentionality." Damn, I am so good sometimes. Yeah, this is probably true, and these are two factors that I previously predicted were going to be main things that UPA had to deal with that were unexpected. So this all but confirms that.
"You clearly have the email about the bridge loan but did you just invent the word 'emergency'? It's not in there. What you didn't mention is that the $10 million is already funded/fed by existing investors showing how committed our team owners are to our growth." This is a maybe for me as I haven't confirmed all the information, but I do have the bridge loan email as well and can confirm that "emergency" and any type of urgency in that way is not even implied in that email. And the maybe really comes from—I said earlier, one of the first things in the video, that the bridge loan was probably requested months ago and has already been covered. So I haven't confirmed that, but this is certainly indicating that that's the case.
"Since you'd like to make false claims, should we remind everyone when you said MLP players couldn't play PPA events? What happened there?" The implication that Jill was lying here is totally false. This was definitely going to be the case prior to the PPA/MLP merger when it looked unlikely. So afterwards, of course they're going to be allowed to play both—that doesn't even make any sense.
"Or when you claim to have over 100 players committed to your Collective? Should we share the truth on that? Or the many times you said the merger would never happen? You have absolutely no credibility." You kind of have to agree with Samin—he's got a point here. Everything that he said is true. It was determined that the player Collective that was established during the PPA/MLP bidding wars was never near 100 players, and then of course the very existence of the UPA is a testament that the PPA/MLP merger did end up occurring, regardless of how begrudging it was on both sides of the aisle.
"It's unfortunate you're not good enough to play with the best on the top tour and you have to resort to clickbait to fuel your career as a micro influencer. Seems like this time of year inspires you to make false claims. Looking forward to seeing what's next." Again, definitely not something that a C-Suite level executive should be saying on social media, especially one who's trying to endear himself to an entirely new crowd of people. Of course they're trying to defend the organization, both Samin and Pardoe, but this is definitely not the right way to do it. One thing you have to give Jill credibility for is that she never name-dropped anyone or made anything personal, and it seems like these two C-level Executives have stooped to personal attacks. It's just not something that you can do, and perhaps as a result of the fact that some of what Jill said is definitely true. However, it kind of presents itself in the end as truth amongst the lies, which isn't a great look for either side.
[20:08] OUTRO All right, well, I know that was a lot, but that's it—that's all that I know and all that I can glean after my first read of all these messages. If you want to continue staying close to these issues in 2025 and beyond from somebody who's been there and done that and dealt with a lot of people that are related to these situations, make sure you like, subscribe, and comment down below what you want to see next. Oh, and I do paddle reviews sometimes—it's not like my name is Tech Dude or anything. Well, regardless, thanks so much for sticking around here till the end. Again, please subscribe—we are on the road to 10K and we're trying to catch Pickleball Effect before the end of the year, so go ahead and join the gang. But with that, I hope you all stay happy and healthy and of course out on the courts until the next video. Peace.
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