Pickleball courts laid out in the concourse of Pazhou Station, Guangzhou Metro, October 2025. Photo: Jasonjiang.1998 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The short answer: Anna Bright told a Manila crowd this week that pickleball, as a spectator sport, could grow faster in Asia than in the United States. She is probably right, and for a reason Americans tend to overlook. In Asia the courts are where people already are: in malls, in metro stations, in the middle of the city. Manila will test the idea in 2027. A PPA Asia 125 event runs from 14 to 18 January and the PPA Asia 500 Manila Open from 24 to 28 February, both at the new Helios complex in Pasig. Our verdict: Asia will out-watch America in person within a few years. On screens, it has not started.
The venue was a music hall in a shopping mall, which is the point. Bright, a 43-time PPA titlist fresh from winning women’s doubles at the Hong Kong Slam, appeared at a meet-and-greet in the SM Mall of Asia Music Hall in Pasay. Tabloid Hataw reported that she was mobbed by Filipino fans. According to Philstar, the American told them something the American pickleball business may not want to hear.
“As a spectator sport, pickleball is going to grow so fast in Asia,” Bright said. “I think it can even grow faster than the United States where we have other sports that are already very big, very established… But here you have courts in malls, and there’s tons of people watching.”
She also said: “The Filipino pickleball community here has been so, so, so incredible.” Players say that kind of thing everywhere. The first quote is the one that matters, because it is an argument, and it is one worth testing.
What Manila is actually getting
The facts first. According to Fastbreak, two PPA Tour Asia events will be played at Helios SPARC in Bridgetowne, Pasig: a PPA 125 from 14 to 18 January and the PPA 500 Manila Open in late February. PPA Tour Asia’s own event page gives the Manila Open dates as 24–28 February; Fastbreak reports 25–28 February. The first phase of the venue has 14 courts and a championship court seating about 1,000, and it opens alongside the Manila Open. Fastbreak reports that Helios Pickleball Manila plans to reach 25 courts and a 2,000-seat venue by 2028. Further details will come through Pickleball Pilipinas.
The man who brought Bright to the mall was Dickie Bachmann, the former chairman of the Philippine Sports Commission and now head of operations at Kosmas Athletic Ventures Corporation (KAVC), the promoter behind Helios. He was candid about what the visit was for. “We needed her to actually introduce to everyone here the PPA 125 and the 500,” he said, according to Philstar.
He was also candid about what it would replace. “Kasi andaming mga Pilipino that will go to Vietnam, Malaysia, just to play in the PPA,” Bachmann said, meaning that a great many Filipinos travel to Vietnam or Malaysia to play PPA events. “And now they don’t have to fly over.”
That is the business model in one sentence. Filipino players were already spending money on PPA events abroad. Helios brings the events, and the spending, home.
A brief history of Helios
None of this was improvised. On 17 July 2025, at the groundbreaking for Helios, UPA Asia and KAVC signed a memorandum of understanding to work towards hosting several PPA Tour Asia tournaments at the site from 2027. PPA Tour Asia’s announcement described a 17,500 square-metre complex with 25 courts including a stadium court, a gym, a sports clinic, dining and two levels of basement parking, built in partnership with Robinsons Land Corporation.
Kimberly Koh, managing director of UPA Asia, said at the time: “In the years to come, we will look back on this day as the day when everything started. Not just in the Philippines but the revolution of pickleball in Southeast Asia, in Asia, and the globalization of the sport.” Kim Lapus, president of KAVC, said the deal “cements the bond between PPA and the tour with Helios”, and that the facility would let them “invite international players to a purpose-built facility that is one of a kind”.
Koh’s goal then was a major PPA event in Manila once the facility was ready, “slated to be ready in 2027”. Fifteen months later, there are two on the calendar. In this sport, that counts as keeping a promise.
Is Bright right?
Bright’s argument has two parts. The first is that America is crowded: pickleball there competes for attention with the NFL, the NBA, baseball and college sport. The second is that in Asia the sport is visible in a way it is not in the US.
The first part is hard to dispute. The second is where it gets interesting. In the United States, pickleball has grown mostly as a participation sport. The Sports & Fitness Industry Association counted 24.3 million American players in 2025, according to figures cited by the IAPPF. But participation growth there has slowed sharply: Athletech News reported SFIA data showing just 1.3% growth in the first half of 2026, against 14.5% for padel. American pickleball’s growth phase is maturing. Its spectator phase has barely begun, and it is crowded out.
Asia’s courts are built differently. The photograph above shows courts laid out in the concourse of a Guangzhou metro station. Bright’s “courts in malls” is not a figure of speech in Manila. Courts inside a mall or a station come with passers-by. A spectator is created by walking past. In the US, a spectator has to go looking.
The courts are already there. SM Supermalls opened six more at SM City East Ortigas on 25 September, taking SM Pickleball to 108 courts across 33 malls nationwide, according to Philstar and BusinessMirror.
There is a counter-argument, and it is a strong one. Watching a game at a mall is not the same as buying a ticket, and buying a ticket is not the same as watching on television. The audiences that pay for professional sport, through broadcast rights and sponsorship, are still mostly American. The PPA’s broadcast deals are with American networks. Asia has created a lot of attention. It has not yet turned that attention into money on the same scale.
The test, and why 1,000 seats matter
This is where Helios becomes useful as evidence rather than just as a venue. A 1,000-seat championship court is not large. But a sell-out in Pasig in February, at an event where many local players will be competing rather than watching, would tell us something real about Bright’s thesis. A half-empty stand would tell us something too.
The Hong Kong Slam, where Bright won women’s doubles a week before her Manila visit, was the tour’s biggest Asian event so far. WPM asked in August whether PPA Asia can manufacture tradition. Manila is the next question in the same series: can the tour create an audience, rather than simply import players?
The broader picture favours Bright. Vietnam has put pickleball into its National Sports Games for the first time this November. The PPA Tour Asia calendar opens 2027 with four 500-level events in Bangkok, Manila, Penang and Ho Chi Minh City. Japan has a franchised indoor club in Tokyo. In Guangzhou, there are courts in a metro station. No other region is adding professional infrastructure this quickly.
The Philippines is not even relying on one promoter. In September, WPM reported that Manny Pacquiao is building a professional league in the country. A market with a boxing legend’s league, a PPA promoter run by a former sports commission chairman, and a 25-court complex under construction is not waiting for permission from anyone in America. It is building its own calendar, and America’s tours are deciding how much of it they want.
What Bright brings
Bright’s value to all this is not only her titles. She is, as she said in Manila, unusually open about failure: “Failing is part of the process.” In a sport whose Asian audiences are mostly new players, that message matters more than a highlight reel. The fans who crowded into Mall of Asia were not there to watch a player they had seen on American television for years. Many were there because they play, and because they want to see what the top of their own sport looks like.
That is the real difference between the two continents. America’s pickleball audience is made up of people who used to play something else. Asia’s audience is still being formed by people who play pickleball now, in public places, where others can see them do it.
Verdict
Will Asia out-watch America? In person, at the courts, yes, and sooner than the American industry expects. Malls, metro stations and purpose-built complexes such as Helios put the sport in front of people who were not looking for it. On broadcast, the money is still in America and will be for some time. Bright’s prediction is a bet on footfall over television. On the evidence of a mall in Pasay this week, footfall is ahead.
The first real count comes on 14 January in Pasig, when the PPA 125 opens at Helios. Watch the stands, not the scoreboard. If they are full for a 125, the 500 in February will not need a star to sell it, and American promoters will start to wonder why their own stadium courts still need one.
