Taiwan Tries a Different Route to Pro Pickleball

Good morning, pickleballers.

Today we are in Taiwan and Croatia, looking at two very different attempts to build something around pickleball. One is creating professional competition for players who have been spending thousands simply to find good enough matches. The other is laying dedicated courts across a route millions of tourists already travel.

Taiwan has built a pickleball league. The interesting part is what it has borrowed.

Taiwan's new Asia Elite Pickleball League begins on 29 August with five confirmed teams, eight planned stops and NT$1 million in prize money.

But the reason for the league is more revealing than the launch itself. Willy Chung says Taiwanese players seeking stronger competition can travel overseas two or three times a month, with every trip costing at least NT$30,000.

Now professional basketball organisation the Taoyuan Taiwan Beer Leopards is entering the competition. It raises a fascinating question for Asian pickleball: does every new professional team need to build an institution from scratch, or can the sport borrow some of the machinery that already exists around established teams?

Read the full Taiwan analysis

Six courts in Dubrovnik are only interesting when you look at the map

Pickleball Club 002 has opened six dedicated courts on Babin Kuk in Dubrovnik. By itself, that is a modest facility opening.

Then you add its four-court Zagreb centre and 12-court complex beside the Adriatic in Split. Suddenly there is a purpose-built pickleball route running through three places that travellers already connect naturally.

The opportunity is obvious, but so is the test. Tourists can improve the economics of Croatian pickleball. The real measure will be who is still booking those courts once summer has disappeared.

Inside Croatia's pickleball experiment

The English Open grew up at the NEC. Now comes the hard part.

We published this yesterday, but I want to put it in front of you again because the English Open deserves more than a results recap.

Six days at Birmingham's NEC showed what the tournament can become: bigger crowds, Championship Courts, technology, broadcast ambition and a genuine sense that this was no longer simply another event on the British calendar.

It also exposed the questions that come with that progress. After spending the week inside the event on commentary, this is my attempt to work through what changed at the NEC and what Pickleball England has to solve next.

Read the English Open review

There is more than one way to build a pickleball market

Taiwan and Croatia have very little in common as pickleball markets, which is precisely what makes today's two stories useful.

Taiwan is trying to give ambitious players better competition without forcing them onto another flight. Croatia is putting courts into places people already travel through. Neither needs to reproduce somebody else's version of pickleball. The interesting part of the global game is increasingly the different answers countries are finding to their own problems.

Your tournament deserves more than a camera pointed at the court

World Pickleball Studio is our production and broadcast arm, built to help tournaments turn their existing match coverage into something that feels like a proper sporting broadcast.

Commentary, graphics, studio presentation, sponsor integration, post-match programming and content around the competition can all sit around the stream you already have. The aim is simple: make more of the tournament without asking organisers to rebuild their entire production operation.

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