The former PPA professional believes reduced guarantees and stronger international alternatives could produce the largest redistribution of established talent since the Tour Wars.
- Ryan Fu predicts that between 40 and 50 players could be released, reject new terms or leave the PPA contract system.
- He says players reaching contract renewal are moving away from guaranteed appearance fees towards income dependent on tournament results.
- The APP’s international alliance gives professionals more options, although it has not yet proved that it can replace the PPA financially.
Ryan Fu believes professional pickleball is approaching a player-market correction that could remove between 40 and 50 names from the PPA Tour’s contracted ranks.
Some may be released. Others, he expects, could reject the reduced terms offered when agreements signed during and after the Tour Wars reach renewal or replacement. Many may then look towards the APP and an international calendar offering more credible alternatives than existed when the original contracts were negotiated.
Fu’s forecast, made during an appearance on the Open Play podcast, is not an official projection from either tour. It comes from a player with direct experience of the PPA’s exclusivity system and a clear personal stake in the argument.
The United Pickleball Association terminated Fu’s contract in December 2025, alongside those of James Ignatowich and Vivian Glozman, after they participated in activities connected to the Pickleball Japan Federation.
The players formally appealed that decision. They said they had attended an unpaid educational clinic with approval from the league-appointed Players Council, while the UPA maintained that their activities breached contractual exclusivity. The final public outcome of the appeal remains unclear.
Seven months later, Fu is looking beyond his own dispute towards the next shift in the market.
“The contracts are going to be way less favourable for the players,” he said on the podcast.
That may prove more consequential than any individual release. The Tour Wars created a professional class protected by guaranteed payments and appearance fees. The next contract cycle could ask many of those players to assume far more of the financial risk themselves.
From guaranteed appearances to earned prize money
Fu described a market in which players reaching the end of their original agreements are moving away from guaranteed appearance money and towards contracts that depend much more heavily on results.
They will have to earn prize money rather than receive a predictable payment for attending.
For the leading players, that may be manageable. They reach the latter stages of tournaments, command sponsorship income and possess enough visibility to build businesses away from the court.
For those in the middle of the professional field, reduced guarantees alter the calculation entirely.
Travel, accommodation, coaching and recovery costs do not fall when a contract becomes less generous. A player can compete regularly, win enough matches to remain credible and still struggle to cover the expense of following a national tour.
The PPA’s depth makes that problem more acute. Emerging players must qualify into fields containing established professionals, while those already inside the system face constant pressure from the next group trying to replace them.
Fu’s estimate combines two different groups: players whom the PPA may no longer wish to retain and players who may decide that the terms no longer justify exclusivity.
That distinction matters. Forty or 50 departures would not necessarily represent a rebellion against the tour. Some would amount to an organisation reducing its contracted workforce after an expensive period of talent acquisition. Others would be genuine acts of player choice.
Together, however, they would represent the largest redistribution of established professional talent since the Tour Wars themselves.
The contracts were signed in a different market
The agreements now reaching renewal were products of competition between rival organisations.
When the PPA Tour and Major League Pickleball fought for control of the same player pool in 2023, athletes briefly possessed unusual bargaining power. Tours were not merely paying for tournament participation. They were paying to prevent players appearing elsewhere.
Guaranteed money reflected the value of exclusivity during a contest for survival.
The merger of PPA and MLP under the UPA ended their direct bidding contest. The leading American tour no longer had to compete against a domestic rival with comparable access to capital and elite players. It still needed talent, but it did not necessarily need every player at the price agreed during the conflict.
The UPA said in December that it was paying more than $30 million annually across professional player contracts. It defended exclusivity as the foundation on which it could attract investment, secure broadcast agreements and sell sponsorship.
From the tour’s perspective, replacing expensive contracts with less generous terms is an attempt to bring costs closer to revenue. A sports property cannot preserve Tour Wars spending indefinitely if its income does not support it.
From the player’s perspective, the same process feels rather different. A contract built around guarantees can make full-time competition possible. A reduced agreement dependent on prize money can turn every tournament into a financial risk.
Neither side needs to be irrational for the market to move sharply.
The APP no longer stands alone
The difference between this contract cycle and the last is that leaving the PPA does not necessarily mean disappearing from professional competition.
The APP has worked with partners in Canada, Europe, India, Australia, England and Vietnam to create a coordinated international calendar.
The alliance was announced in 2025 with plans for 30 events during 2026, including 16 in the United States. Its organisers also began working towards a unified player-ranking system and a calendar designed to reduce conflicts between participating tours.
That approach gives players something the PPA’s exclusive model does not: the possibility of assembling a season across several tours and countries.
The prize money, broadcast reach and competitive depth will not be equal at every stop. Nor has the alliance proved that it can provide a stable full-time income for dozens of professionals leaving the PPA system.
The alternative is nevertheless more credible than it was three years ago.
Fu expects its importance to increase by 2028 as European and Asian circuits mature. Players offered smaller PPA guarantees may then be able to compare exclusivity against a broader portfolio of tournaments, clinics, sponsorships and appearances.
For a player outside the elite group, freedom may acquire a calculable value.
Fu has already lived the argument
Fu’s analysis cannot be separated from his own experience.
His PPA contract was terminated over activities in Japan that the UPA regarded as competitive and promotional. Fu and the other players said they had acted in good faith and had neither competed in a rival league nor received payment.
The dispute was fundamentally about where a professional player’s work begins and ends.
The UPA argued that exclusivity covered clinics, camps, exhibitions and other pickleball activity because the organisation was paying for the commercial use of a player’s reputation. The players argued that an unpaid overseas clinic approved through the available process should not have cost them their contracts.
That history gives Fu reason to favour a less restrictive market. It also gives him direct knowledge of what a player gains and surrenders when accepting an exclusive agreement.
His estimate should be read as an informed player’s prediction, not a confirmed list of impending departures. No public evidence has identified which 40 or 50 players might be released, reject terms or move to another tour.
The broader pressure he describes is harder to dismiss.
The PPA has a large contracted roster assembled during a period of abnormal competition. If guarantees fall while alternatives improve, at least some players are likely to leave. The uncertainty concerns the scale.
International pickleball is developing its own value
Fu’s travels have shown him that international pickleball is developing local playing cultures rather than merely copying the established American game.
He characterised recreational play in Vietnam with a memorable phrase: “No dropping in Vietnam.” Players, he said, continue driving third, fifth and seventh shots instead of moving towards the softer patterns common in the United States.
The observation is anecdotal, but the commercial implication is relevant. International pickleball is not expanding across empty territory. Local audiences, coaching systems and playing identities are forming around it.
A recognisable American professional can enter those markets as a tournament player, teacher, sponsor representative and source of expertise. That combination may eventually matter more than any single prize purse.
Quang Duong’s move towards Vietnam has already shown how a player with strong regional connections can build a career beyond the PPA. Fu’s Japanese experience, although it led to the termination of his UPA contract, exposed demand from another direction.
The professional market is no longer defined solely by which tour offers the largest guarantee. It is also shaped by where a player can compete, teach, sell equipment, attract partners and retain control of their time.
The end of the Tour Wars bargain
The Tour Wars gave professional pickleball players something rare in a young sport: negotiating power created by two organisations needing the same labour.
The merger ended the direct bidding contest between the PPA and MLP. The contracts remained.
As those agreements are renewed or replaced, the sport will discover how much of the player economy was sustainable and how much existed because rival tours were paying a premium for control.
Fu believes the correction could displace 40 or 50 professionals. The number may prove high. It may also include players who were never likely to remain central to the PPA’s plans.
His underlying point is stronger than the prediction.
Players are being asked to compare reduced guarantees and continued exclusivity with a growing range of international opportunities. The PPA may remain the strongest professional tour, but strength is not the same as being the only place to work.
The next battle in professional pickleball will not resemble the Tour Wars. Tours will not be throwing money at players to keep them from a direct domestic rival.
This time, the argument will be over what exclusivity is still worth.
Further Reading
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Chris Beaumont
Founder and Editor-in-ChiefChris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine. Chris follows the global game closely, reporting on the latest news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball Podcast, interviewing people at…
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