The short answer: On 28 October Major League Pickleball named the Houston Hammers, led by Hugh Zhang, as its 21st team for 2027. Nobody has said what Zhang paid. The public record, though, puts recent MLP deals between “over $10 million” and $16 million. And the league’s shape tells you more than its press release: 22 franchises in 2025, 21 once Houston arrives in 2027. MLP is not expanding. It is refilling, with a franchise on its sixth name in six seasons.
The announcement came on a Wednesday, two days before the Nations Cup, with the usual furniture: a new owner, a big city, a list of record numbers and a promise that “additional league information” would follow “in the coming weeks”. MLP’s release said the Houston Hammers would join for the 2027 season as the league’s 21st team, under a new ownership group led by Hugh Zhang.
What it did not say was the price. Nor did it say where the team came from. For that, you need The Dink. Alex E. Weaver reports that the Hammers are the former Nashville Chefs, a franchise that started life as Team Clean in MLP’s first season in 2021 and then became Clean Cause (2022), Frisco Clean Cause (2023), Frisco Pandas (2024) and Nashville Chefs (2025). It sat out 2026. Houston is its sixth name in six seasons. Some teams have a history. This one has a forwarding address.
That is the story underneath the story, and it is a more interesting one than “league grows”.
Who is Hugh Zhang?
He is a Houston figure with pickleball already on his CV. The Hammers’ own website describes him as holding “several board and trustee roles” and as co-chair of Big Brothers Big Sisters’ Pickleball for Kids’ Sake, which the site calls the largest pickleball charity event in Texas. The site also lists Amy Blumrosen, a litigation attorney and former college tennis player, among the owners. MLP’s release does not name the rest of the group.
The Hammers brand already exists below MLP level. The release says the owners will keep their CSP Champion senior team, field a Jr. Hammers side in Jr. MLP and host a 2027 league event in the Houston market. Zhang’s own description, in the release, is that “MLP completes the Houston Hammers ecosystem, with our regular-season champion senior team, Jr. MLP, and the minor leagues all under one brand.”
That is a sensible way to buy into a league. You build a local brand from the grassroots up, then buy the top tier rather than starting with a famous name and hoping the grassroots follow. Whether it works depends on a number nobody has published.
What does an MLP team cost?
We don’t know what Houston paid, and I’m not going to guess. What we can do is set out the deals MLP has put a number on itself.
| Deal | Date | Value disclosed | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| AZ Drive: controlling stake sold to a group including Proton Sports | Jan 2025 | Team valuation “over $10 million” | MLP |
| Palm Beach Royals: expansion franchise | 2025 | $16 million valuation | MLP |
| LA Mad Drops: controlling stake to Mad Drippin SPV (Alex Geesbreght) | Aug 2025 | $13 million valuation | MLP |
| Houston Hammers (ex-Nashville Chefs): new ownership | Oct 2026 | Not disclosed | MLP |
Two things stand out. First, MLP has been happy to publish valuations when they were going up. In August 2025 it called the Mad Drops and Palm Beach deals its “two largest franchise transactions” since the 2024 merger with the PPA Tour. Fourteen months later, a team in America’s fourth-largest city arrives with no figure attached. Leagues seldom hide good news. That doesn’t prove the number is lower than $13 million. It does mean we should stop assuming it is higher.
Second, these are valuations, not cheques. “Controlling stake at a $13 million valuation” means the buyer paid for more than half of something priced at $13 million.
Is MLP expanding?
This is where the conventional view, “the 21st team proves the league is growing”, needs testing against the league’s own boilerplate. In January 2025 MLP described itself as having 22 franchises. Its August 2025 release still said 22 teams. Houston’s release, after counting Houston in, says 21.
So the honest description of 28 October is that a league that was smaller in 2026 than in 2025 has brought one dormant franchise back with a new owner and a new city. That is not a criticism. Consolidation was the point of the 2024 MLP/PPA merger, and a league with fewer, better-funded teams may be healthier than one with 22 owners of varying patience. But it is a different story from expansion, and it should be told as one.
Here is the version I’d defend: MLP is not selling new seats at the table. It is finding new buyers for the old ones. The most interesting fact in the Houston deal is not the 21. It is the six names.
What is the league itself worth?
The best guide is the parent company. In May, CNBC reported that Pickleball Inc., which owns MLP and the PPA Tour, had raised $225 million from Apollo Sports Capital and Dundon Capital Partners, bringing total investment to $315 million. A person familiar with the matter, unnamed, told CNBC the raise valued the company at $750 million. The same report gave the United Pickleball Association’s figures: $60 million in combined MLP and PPA revenue in 2025 and a projected $74 million in 2026.
Put those side by side and Pickleball Inc. is priced at roughly ten times the leagues’ projected 2026 revenue. Keep the caveat in view, though. The $750 million covers the whole roll-up, including Pickleball Central, PickleballTournaments.com and the court-builder Just Courts, whose combined businesses CNBC said generated more than $140 million in 2025. Against that larger figure the multiple is closer to five. Either way, investors are paying for growth that hasn’t happened yet, and every MLP franchise is a small bet on the same thing.
The league’s own 2026 numbers support the bet. MLP’s season review reported on-site attendance up 69%, ticket revenue up 87% and Pickleballtv minutes up 32% on 2025, with more than 10,000 people across three days at the New York Finals. Those are real gains. They are also gains reported by the seller.
What does The Picklr have to do with it?
More than you’d think. On 10 October Sports Business Journal reported that The Picklr, the indoor-club franchisor, had filed for Chapter 11. According to its franchise disclosure document, it lost $4.4 million on $10.3 million of revenue in 2025 and had about $19 million in total liabilities by the end of March. Founder Jorge Barragan told SBJ the company had “signed, unfortunately, too many corporate guarantees” on franchisees’ leases.
Two details link it to the league. Pickleball Inc. led The Picklr’s Series B in 2024 at a $59 million valuation. And Tom Neale, whose Dynamus Alliance group is putting up $4.8 million of debtor-in-possession financing to sponsor the reorganisation, is also an investor in the LA Mad Drops, according to SBJ.
None of this means MLP teams are in trouble. The Picklr’s problem was leases on bricks and mortar. An MLP franchise has no courts to rent. But it does tell you something about the money in the sport. The same small pool of investors is spread across clubs, teams and the parent company, and in 2026 one part of that pool found out what rapid growth looks like when the landlord’s invoice arrives.
Why Houston?
Zhang’s reason is the obvious one: “Houston is one of the top pickleball markets in the country.” The less obvious reason is that this franchise has tried Frisco and Nashville and failed to put down roots in either. A local owner with an existing senior team, a junior team and a charity event is the opposite of the absentee model that MLP’s early, celebrity-heavy ownership lists encouraged.
Are those growth figures built on a big base or a small one?
Small, and the league’s own numbers show it. MLP gives one absolute attendance figure: a daily average of “nearly 1,500” across 51 event days in 2026. That is about 76,000 attendances over the whole season, and we’ve counted every day separately, so the real number of individual fans is lower. Work the 69% backwards and the 2025 daily average was somewhere around 900. Fewer than 900 people a day, at the top level of the team game in the sport’s biggest market, was the base.
MLP published no absolute ticket-revenue figure, so the 87% can’t be checked against anything. Pickleballtv minutes are the exception, with a real number attached: more than 415 million minutes in 2026, up 32%. That’s a meaningful audience. But it is streaming minutes, not households, and the league reported it with no breakdown.
The verdict: the percentages are real and the direction is right. They are the percentages of a young league, though, and nobody should mistake them for the economics of an established one. A European investor being shown “+87%” should ask the next question: 87% of what?
What should UK and European readers take from this?
Team pickleball and franchise ideas are being pitched on this side of the Atlantic too, and MLP is the model they point to. The lesson from Team Clean to the Hammers is not that franchises fail. It is that the price is published when it suits the seller, the growth figures come from the seller, and the asset that actually lasts is a local owner with a local reason to stay. If someone offers you a stake in a European team league, ask three things. What did the last team actually sell for? What are attendance and revenue in absolute terms? And how many times has the franchise you’re buying changed hands, or names? Houston’s answer to the last one is five.
What happens next?
MLP says the Hammers’ player-acquisition process, keeper deadlines, the draft date and the 2027 schedule will be announced “in the coming weeks”. How Houston will build its roster has not been announced. Those details will show whether the league treats the Hammers as an expansion side, with protections, or as just another franchise in the draft order.
The question we have put to MLP is simpler: what did Houston pay? Until someone answers it, the price of an MLP team is whatever the last published deal said, and the last published deal was fourteen months ago.
Six names, six seasons, one more owner. If Houston becomes the franchise’s last address, it will have been cheap at any price. If it doesn’t, it will be the most expensive way yet to learn the same lesson.
