The short answer: Steve Deakin’s company, Steve Deakin Pickleball (SDP), operates the PPA Canada Tour. Deakin is also Director of Pickleball at The Nest Sports in Delta, British Columbia, which has 29 courts and is the largest pickleball facility in Canada. The Nest hosted the first PPA Canada 250 and will host the season’s last stop. And Pickleball Canada named him captain and head coach of Team Canada for the MLP Nations Cup, which starts in Dallas today, with responsibility to “lead the selection” of the roster. My verdict: this concentration is the fastest way to build a professional pathway in a big, thinly spread country. But the selection role should be separated from the tour business before 2027, for Deakin’s sake as much as anyone’s.
The volleyball courts that weren’t
The Nest was not meant to be all pickleball. In June the Delta Optimist reported that the sloped floor in one of its two buildings did not meet FIVB standards for volleyball. The facility changed its plans, and the courts went to pickleball. “This change increases the facility from 14 to 29 pickleball courts,” the Nest said in a statement to the paper. It was candid about the cost: “We recognize that this pivot carries both loss and opportunity.” The loss belonged to the Seaside Volleyball Club, which had been planning around the space.
So Canada’s largest pickleball venue owes some of its size to a floor with a slope in it. Plenty of sports infrastructure has been built on less.
The Nest opened on 22 July, on what the Optimist described as surplus parking at Tsawwassen Mills shopping centre. It covers about 98,000 sq ft and has 30ft ceilings. Adult membership costs C$180 a year, and under-18s join free. It opened its doors to the Pickleball BC Provincial Championships, which Pickleball BC calls the largest tournament in Canada to date, with more than 1,000 players. The Provincials also feed selection for Team BC. In September, SDP staged the first PPA Canada 250 there.
Who is Steve Deakin?
Deakin is 51 and from just outside Vancouver. He took up pickleball in 2016 and retired from the PPA Tour in November 2025, according to his own account to Pickleball.com. In that interview he described what he was walking into at The Nest: “We have this amazing blank canvas.” He also coaches the Las Vegas Night Owls in Major League Pickleball. Back in September 2025, before a court was laid, he said in The Nest’s launch release, as reported by the Delta Optimist: “Pickleball players are constantly limited by the lack of high-quality courts. The Nest will be a game-changer.”
When PPA Canada launched its first season on 24 February, the release described him as “CEO of Steve Deakin Pickleball and PPA Canada Tour Operator”. It promised four PPA-sanctioned events in Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto. “These events will give Canadian athletes a clear pathway to the global stage,” Deakin said.
On 24 September, Pickleball Canada announced that Deakin would captain Team Canada at the Nations Cup. The release says the appointment “continues Pickleball Canada’s partnership with Steve Deakin Pickleball (SDP)”, which began with Team Canada’s entry at MLP’s mid-season event in Grand Rapids. It says Deakin will “lead the selection and preparation of the Canadian roster”. It credits “his leadership role with the PPA Canada Tour”. The squad MLP published is Tyler DiMuzio, Tina Hovenier, Kamilah Jiwa Mawji, Jacob Sleeth, Gabriella Torresin and Noah Walker.
Count the hats. Tour operator. Venue director. MLP coach. National captain and selector. Four.
Is that a problem?
The conventional view in Canada, as far as one can tell from what has been published, is that it is a blessing. Pickleball Canada’s executive director, Barry Petrachenko, put it warmly in the captaincy release: “We are very fortunate that Steve Deakin continues to give back to Canadian players in growing our sport.” And there is a strong practical case for him.
Canada is huge, and its pickleball is scattered. When WPM wrote about the divide between the CNPL and Pickleball Canada in June, the distances involved ran to thousands of kilometres. A federation with limited money cannot build a professional tour, a showcase venue and a high-performance programme on its own. A private operator who knows the professional game and has a building can. What has happened in British Columbia this year is what usually happens when a sport turns professional quickly. The person with the most energy and the best venue ends up holding most of the levers.
I don’t doubt Deakin’s good faith, and nothing published suggests anyone else does. That is not the question. The question is structural. If you run the tour, the selection of the national team should not depend on you as well, however sensible your choices. That isn’t because they will be wrong. It is because nobody can then prove they were right.
Has another sport been here?
Yes. Ours, in this country.
In June 2010, Barry Hearn won a 35–29 vote among snooker’s top 64 players to take a 51% controlling share in World Snooker’s commercial business. To do it, as BBC Sport reported at the time, he resigned as chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, the sport’s governing body. The deal kept the promoter and the regulator separate. Hearn ran the events and the money. The association ran the rules.
Hearn was, in the BBC’s words, the man who had “revitalised darts”, and snooker’s players still insisted on the line. Peter Ebdon, the loudest opponent of the deal, warned that players were being asked to hand over rights worth “millions each year”. The separation was the price of consent.
Pickleball Canada has not drawn that line, and to be fair, nobody has asked it to. It is a partnership arrangement for one event, and the captaincy is a coaching role. But the release itself links the appointment to the partnership with SDP and to Deakin’s tour role. Once that link is written down, it will be easier to repeat than to undo.
What does the tour itself look like?
Two events played, two to go. After the Nest 250 in September, the Ottawa 125 was played at The Forge last week. WPM has covered its result: Utah’s teenagers won everything. The Toronto 125 runs 26–29 November at Pickleplex Social Club in Downsview. Then the tour goes back to The Nest for the Vancouver 125 on 3–6 December.
So two of the four stops in PPA Canada’s first season are in the building where its operator is Director of Pickleball. That is a reasonable choice in year one. The Nest is the best venue in the country, and its 29 courts fit a professional draw with room for the amateurs who pay for it. It also means the tour’s economics, the club’s programme and the province’s championship sit closer together in Delta than anywhere else in pickleball.
Here is a number set against the hype. The BC Provincials, which Pickleball BC calls the largest tournament in Canada to date, drew more than 1,000 players. The English Nationals, which began in Bolton yesterday, drew a record 1,468, according to the Bolton News. A single Canadian province has nearly matched England’s national championship, and that is impressive. But it also tells you that Canada’s biggest event is still a regional one. The base is narrower than the talk of “the country’s biggest venue” suggests.
The global angle
The PPA’s international model, as its own launch material describes it, is a network of regional tours: Asia, Australia, Italy, Canada and more than 25 international events feeding one global ranking. In Asia, as WPM has covered this week, the tour sits alongside national federations and corporate leagues. In Japan, the federation itself is the organiser of the PPA Asia 125 in December. Canada is the clearest case in the network of a tour operator who is also a venue operator and, for one weekend, the national selector. If the PPA wants its regional tours to be trusted as pathways, Canada is where it should write the rules on who may wear which hat.
A quick word on the method
Facts about The Nest come from the Delta Optimist’s reporting of 20 June and 28 July 2026 and September 2025, and from Pickleball BC. Deakin’s biography is his own account to Pickleball.com. The captaincy is from Pickleball Canada’s release and MLP’s roster announcement. The snooker precedent is BBC Sport, 2 June 2010. England’s 1,468 is from the Bolton News (15 October), as used in WPM’s Nationals coverage. I have not seen the commercial terms between SDP, the PPA, The Nest or Pickleball Canada, and I make no claim about them.
My verdict
Canada has done in one season what some federations have not managed in five. It has a professional tour with world ranking points, a venue worthy of it and a national team at the first Nations Cup. A great deal of that runs through one man’s company, and on the evidence Canada is better for it. But the best thing Pickleball Canada could do for Deakin is take one hat off him. Selection should belong to the federation, published and owned by it, before the 2027 season starts. Snooker learned that the promoter should not also be the referee. Pickleball can learn it before anyone has a grievance.
What happens next
Team Canada play in Dallas from today, 30 October, to 1 November. The tour resumes in Toronto on 26 November. The question for Pickleball Canada is simple and has no deadline yet: when the Nations Cup comes round again, who will pick the team?
