June 11-14

Austin Pickle Ranch
11000 Middle Fiskville Road, Building B, Austin, TX 78753

Choose between Ground Pass, Courtside Pass, Reserved Courside Pass, or VIP Pass.

The format is straightforward. Eleven teams compete across two groups. Group A features the California Black Bears, Carolina Hogs, Columbus Sliders, Miami Pickleball Club, and Socal Hard Eights. Group B includes the Atlanta Bouncers, Bay Area Breakers, Dallas Flash, Florida Smash, New Jersey 5s, and the Texas Ranchers.

Days one through three are pool play. Day four is bracket matchups, with the top teams in each group facing off for standings points. Championship Court matches livestream on Pickleballtv, and Grandstand Court action streams through the Pickleballtv app.

Doors open one hour before the first match each day. Outside food and drink are not allowed, but concessions, a bar, sponsor activations, and a DJ run throughout the event.

According to the official MLP event page, four ticket tiers are available through Tixr. The Grounds Pass gets you into the venue with access to amateur matches and pro matches outside of Championship Court and Grandstand. The Courtside Pass opens up first-come bleacher seating on Championship Court along with all four MLP match courts. The Reserved Courtside Pass locks in a guaranteed seat in a reserved section. The VIP Pass includes lounge access, two drink tickets, elevated food, and expedited entry.

Parking last year ran $20 per day through pre-purchase, with public lots surrounding Austin Pickle Ranch off Middle Fiskville Road.

The sport itself was born in 1965 on a Washington island, but the modern pickleball boom has Austin's fingerprints all over it. By 2023, Texas Monthly was openly calling Central Texas the gravitational center of professional pickleball, pointing to the cluster of pros, facilities, and ownership groups that had quietly migrated south.

The reason is simple. When Steve Kuhn, a Harvard-trained former hedge fund manager, went looking for a place to build the sport's professional infrastructure, he chose Dripping Springs. Top players followed. Then the money followed the players. Then the leagues followed the money.

Today the metro has more than a dozen dedicated facilities, plus public courts spread across city parks. Austin Pickle Ranch alone runs 16 indoor courts and two outdoor courts inside a 50,000 square foot building near the Domain, according to the venue's published information.

The origin story is unusually specific. Kuhn discovered pickleball in 2015 through his nephew, got obsessed, and opened Dreamland in Dripping Springs during the pandemic in 2021. Dreamland had 16 dedicated courts, mini golf, and a community-first design that drew touring pros to relocate to the Hill Country.

On September 21, 2021, Kuhn officially announced Major League Pickleball at a launch event held at Dreamland, alongside co-founder Brooks Wiley and the original eight team owners. According to CultureMap Austin, the launch positioned MLP as the first professional league built around a unique team format with male and female players competing together.

Dreamland closed its doors in late 2024, but the league it birthed kept growing. MLP now runs 23 teams across Premier and Challenger levels, and the 2026 schedule spans 10 regular season cities plus playoffs and finals in New York City.

The Ranchers are one of the eight original MLP franchises and the most aggressively branded team in pro pickleball. Founded by oil and gas executive Bryan Sheffield with an early investment from tech banker Tim Klitch, the team is now run by 26-year-old CEO Evan Floersch.

Then there's the owners list, which reads like a celebrity Rolodex shaken loose at SXSW. Per a 2023 Ranchers ownership announcement and follow-up reporting, the group includes world number one golfer Scottie Scheffler, country music superstar Zach Bryan, ATP top-five tennis player Taylor Fritz, Kendra Scott, Lil Wayne, Bobby Bones, Dallas Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons, Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett, Atlanta Falcons running back Bijan Robinson, Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud, Tim and Demi Tebow, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Raising Cane's founder Todd Graves, and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg.

More than 30 owners total, all betting that pickleball becomes the next major American sport.

The numbers explain why MLP is investing this heavily in Austin. According to the SFIA 2026 Topline Participation Report, 24.3 million Americans played pickleball in 2025, a 22.8 percent jump from 2024. Over the past three years, participation has surged 171.8 percent, and the sport is the fastest-growing in America for the fifth consecutive year.

Roughly 4.5 million new players picked up a paddle in 2025 alone. For context, that's more new pickleball players in one year than the entire population of Los Angeles.

The sport's appeal is generational. The largest age group is 25 to 34, but the 65 and over crowd makes up another 15 percent of all participants, which is why local recreation centers, private clubs, and food hall patios across Austin are all installing courts as fast as they can pour concrete.