Global Courant
Major League Pickleball gains new leadership as it looks to benefit from the rise of America’s fastest growing professional-level sport.
The team-based pro pickleball league announced Wednesday that it has appointed financial and media manager Julio DePietro as CEO and former NFL manager Bruce Popko as chief operating officer.
“The additions of Julio and Bruce represent another significant step forward in the evolution of Major League Pickleball,” said MLP Founder Steve Kuhn.
DePietro and Popko will be tasked with leading the league at a time when the sport of pickleball has experienced explosive growth at the amateur level.
“We’re pretty sure we have both the platform and the product. We’re just at the beginning of this hockey stick growth,” DePietro told CNBC.
DePietro was previously a partner at Citadel, where he worked with Kuhn for many years. In 2022, he bought a stake in the Florida Smash MLP team, calling the investment a “no-brainer”. As part of his new role, he will soon divest his stake in the Smash.
In the plus year he’s served as owner in the league, DePietro said, team ratings have grown 100-fold. Teams today, he said, go for as much as $10 million. Previously, teams were scooped up for as little as $100,000.
With more than 36 million people playing pickleball last year, DiPietro and Popko say their biggest challenge is converting all new casual pickleball fans into MLP followers.
The burgeoning sports league has attracted dozens of high-profile sports owners and investors, including NBA superstars LeBron James and Kevin Durant, as well as Tom Brady and Drew Brees of NFL fame. In November, beer maker Anheuser-Busch bought a team.
Popko’s background includes more than 30 years working in the sports industry, with previous COO positions at Buffalo Bills and Pegula Sports & Entertainment.
“One of the things I’ve learned in the sport over the years is that the most fanatical fans are those who directly participate in the sport. That’s why I love this sport so much, because we’re off to such a great start .” Popko tells CNBC.
Popko said he will focus on three pillars once he steps into his role: growing sponsorship, building the media rights business, and licensing and merchandising strategy.
As they continue to build the fan base, DePietro says MLP is just surfacing in terms of opportunities and monetization.
“We’ve barely turned any of the ad buttons let alone the subscribe buttons, we think there’s a huge opportunity to leverage a lot of the install base, the excitement behind it, the eagerness of the fans, of the players, and there’s tons of sponsorship and marketing opportunities for the league,” said DePietro.
Another challenge facing the MLP is marketing and positioning more of its players as household names. Part of that effort is finding a consistent media partner. Currently, MLP tournaments can be viewed anywhere from YouTube and ESPN to the Tennis Channel or MSG Networks, which can be confusing for fans.
“The good news is that we are in advanced talks with an A-plus type broadcast partner interested in broadcasting our season and all of our content live for 2024,” said DePietro.
Media viewership has grown consistently for the sport. MLP’s Premier Level Super Final on June 19 reached over 975,000 viewers on ESPN2, according to the league.
MLP said its YouTube livestream channel saw its viewership increase by 500% last year.
DePietro also said that MLP is in advanced talks with another well-known production company to create a series about the players themselves. He declined to name the production company or broadcaster MLP is in talks with.
“They’re great athletes, some of them have incredible stories. I think it’s going to play a big part in attracting viewers for us by bringing the human element into it,” he said.
