Major League Pickleball is gaining new leadership because it looks to capitalize on the expansion of America’s fastest growing sport on the skilled level.
The team’s pro pickleball league announced Wednesday that it has named CFO and Media Julio DePietro as its CEO and former NFL executive Bruce Popko as COO.
“The additions of Julio and Bruce mark one other groundbreaking step forward within the evolution of Major League Pickleball,” said Steve Kuhn, founding father of MLP.
DePietro and Popko shall be tasked with leading the league at a time when pickleball is experiencing explosive growth on the amateur level.
“We’re pretty sure we’ve each the platform and the product. We’re just at the start of this hockey stick growth,” DePietro told CNBC.
DePietro was previously a partner at Citadel where he worked alongside Kuhn for a few years. In 2022, he bought a stake within the Florida Smash MLP team, calling the investment “obvious”. As a part of his new role, he’ll soon divest himself of his stake in Smash.
DePietro said that within the greater than a 12 months he owned the league, team valuations increased 100-fold. Teams today, he said, go as high as $10 million. Previously, teams were collected for as little as $100,000.
With over 36 million people playing pickleball last 12 months, DiPietro and Popko say their biggest challenge is popping all of the new casual pickleball fans into MLP supporters.
The fast-growing sports league has attracted dozens of high-profile athlete owners and investors, including NBA superstars LeBron James and Kevin Durant, in addition to NFL’s Tom Brady and Drew Brees. In November, beer producer Anheuser-Busch bought the team.
Popko’s background includes over 30 years of working within the sports industry, with previous COO positions at Buffalo Bills and Pegula Sports & Entertainment.
“Considered one of the things I’ve learned over time in sports is that essentially the most die-hard fans are those that are directly involved in the game, and that is why I really like the game a lot because we have such an amazing begin to running,” Popko told CNBC.
Popko said that when he assumes his role, he’ll give attention to three pillars: developing sponsorships, constructing a media rights business, and a licensing and merchandising strategy.
Continuing to construct a fan base, DePietro says MLP is just scratching the surface by way of opportunities and monetization.
“Now we have hardly turned on any of the promoting spinners, much less subscribe spinners, we imagine there is a large opportunity to capitalize on a big portion of the installed base, the joy behind it, the fervor of fans, players and there are tons of sponsorship and marketing opportunities for the league.” DePietro said.
One other challenge facing MLP is marketing and positioning more players as big names. A part of this effort is finding a daily media partner. Currently, MLP tournaments could be watched anywhere from YouTube and ESPN to Tennis Channel or MSG Networks, which could be confusing for fans.
“The excellent news is that we’re in advanced talks with an A-plus broadcast partner who’s fascinated about broadcasting our season live and all our content for 2024,” said DePietro.
Media viewership is consistently growing for the game. In accordance with the league, the MLP Premier Level Super Final on June 19 reached over 975,000 viewers on ESPN2.
MLP said its YouTube live stream channel saw a 500% increase in viewership over the past 12 months.
DePietro also said that MLP is in advanced talks with one other high-profile production company to create a gamer-only series. He declined to call the production company or broadcaster MLP is in talks with.
“They’re amazing athletes, a few of them have amazing stories. I believe incorporating the human element into it should have a big impact on attracting viewers,” he said.