For generations, business relationships were built on golf courses. Vietnam believes pickleball can play a similar role for a new era. The newly announced World Entrepreneur Tournament is not simply another addition to the international calendar. It is an attempt to position the sport as a platform for networking, investment and international collaboration, offering a glimpse of a model that other countries may soon follow.
Key Takeaways
- Vietnam has launched the World Entrepreneur Tournament, bringing together more than 1,600 participants from over 80 countries and territories.
- The event is designed as much for business networking as sporting competition, reflecting pickleball’s growing place within Vietnam’s corporate culture.
- If successful, the tournament could provide a blueprint for using pickleball beyond traditional federation and professional tour structures.
For decades, the golf course was where business happened.
Deals were discussed between tee shots, partnerships were formed over 18 holes and networking often meant spending an entire afternoon together. Golf became part of the commercial culture in countries across the world.
Vietnam is making a compelling argument that pickleball may be better suited to today’s business environment.
When the Vietnam Young Entrepreneurs Association unveiled the World Entrepreneur Tournament 2026, it was announcing far more than another international competition.
It was presenting pickleball as a meeting place for entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders, using the court as a setting where professional relationships can develop as naturally as sporting rivalries.
That makes this one of the more interesting tournament announcements of the year. Not because of who might win it, but because of what it says about how one country is beginning to use the sport.
A Tournament Built Around Business
The tournament will take place in Da Nang from 2 to 4 September, with organisers expecting more than 1,600 participants from Vietnam and over 80 countries and territories.
Those numbers alone would make it one of Southeast Asia’s largest internationally focused pickleball gatherings. The structure, however, reveals the organisers’ priorities.
Rather than limiting participation through federation membership or national selection, registration is open to anyone who meets the tournament’s entry requirements.
The programme includes 26 doubles divisions, ranging from executive leadership competitions to beginner and intermediate categories, with competitors able to enter a maximum of two events per day.
A prize fund approaching 800 million VND provides an added competitive incentive, but it is clearly not intended to be the event’s defining attraction.
The tournament is designed to bring people together first. The competition provides the reason to meet.
Why Entrepreneurs?
That is perhaps the most revealing aspect of the announcement.
Most international pickleball tournaments are built around athletes, rankings or national representation. This one is built around entrepreneurs.
That choice reflects a noticeable shift taking place within Vietnam itself, where the sport’s expanding social and commercial role has become an increasingly important part of the country’s wider pickleball story.
As the game has spread across the country, it has increasingly found a home within the business community. Courts have become places where conversations continue after meetings finish, introductions happen more naturally than they might across a conference table and competition helps to break down formal barriers.
Golf has occupied that role for decades. Pickleball offers something different.
Matches take less time. The learning curve is shorter. Doubles encourages interaction rather than isolation. Players rotate partners, spend time together between matches and create opportunities for conversation that conventional networking events often struggle to reproduce.
The sport is not replacing business. It is becoming part of how business is done.
A Different Vision for International Pickleball
The announcement also says something about Southeast Asia’s growing confidence within the global pickleball landscape.
Rather than simply importing tournament models from North America, organisers across the region are beginning to develop events that reflect their own cultures and priorities.
Vietnam has already used pickleball as a setting for sporting and diplomatic exchange, including a formal Vietnam-Japan match built around international relations. The World Entrepreneur Tournament extends that idea into business.
This event is not trying to become another stop on the professional calendar. It is not competing with the PPA Tour or Major League Pickleball.
Instead, it occupies a space that neither currently serves, combining international participation, corporate networking and competitive amateur sport within a single event.
That makes it less of a conventional tournament and more of an experiment.
If it succeeds, there is no obvious reason why similar events could not emerge in Singapore, Malaysia, India or the Middle East, where business communities are also beginning to embrace the sport.
It would represent a different form of international development from the familiar model of professional tours, federation championships and ranking events. The value would lie in the relationships created around the court, rather than only in the standard of competition on it.
Why It Matters
Not every important pickleball story is decided by a gold medal or a championship trophy.
Sometimes the most significant developments come from the way different countries choose to use the sport. Recent WPM coverage has shown Singapore, Europe and Vietnam developing pickleball in markedly different ways, shaped by their own sporting and commercial environments.
Vietnam is not simply investing in more courts or organising another tournament. It is exploring whether pickleball can become part of the country’s commercial infrastructure, creating opportunities that extend beyond recreation and competition.
Every sport eventually finds its place in society.
Football became culture. Golf became business.
Vietnam is betting that pickleball can become both.
Further Reading
- Latest pickleball news from around the world
- Tournament coverage and results
- Rankings and player profiles
- Regional pickleball coverage
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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