Indian pickleball locks in eight teams at the Phuket auction, opening in October

India's professional pickleball league has begun spreading across cities the same model cricket's IPL (Indian Premier League) runs on: owners hold the teams and build their rosters through a player auction. The Centre Court Pickleball League (CCPL) held an owners' meeting and player auction in Phuket, Thailand from September 3 to 6, 2026, finalizing the rosters of eight franchises. Season 2 opens on October 17 in Hyderabad. What started in 2025 as a single-city league in Hyderabad has reached this point through a rename and an expansion into other cities. That path previews the questions Japanese pickleball, where regional tournaments are still the main stage, will have to face next.

What the Phuket player auction settled

CCPL began as the Hyderabad Pickleball League (HPL), launched in Hyderabad in 2025. When operator Centre Court Sports and Entertainment took the format to Bengaluru, it renamed the competition the Centre Court Pickleball League (CCPL), and it now bills the coming Hyderabad edition as Season 2. The co-founders are Yashwanth Biyyala and Vikrant Rao. HPL's first season in 2025 was contested by eight franchises, with the Mavericks beating the All Stars 4-3 after a seventh set that went to a tiebreak. Around 2,000 people packed the final, and singer Lucky Ali took the stage at halftime. The league was built as a one-night show rather than a straight competitive event, and that says a lot about what it is.

What took place in Phuket was an "Owners' Weekend" and player auction ahead of Season 2. Owners of the eight teams gathered in Thailand and bid for every slot not already filled by a retained player. Champions Mavericks retained Sreekar Mothukuri, and runners-up All Stars retained Sameer Varma. Mikhil Tummalapalli and Vivek Reddy were also named among the retentions, while Karunesh Reddy, Abhaya Vemuri and Gopinath Reddy were listed as pre-auction picks. The four-day schedule included exhibition matches between owners and briefing sessions on the bidding, and staging it at a resort in Phuket rather than somewhere in India suggests the organizers wanted roster-building to double as socializing and media exposure.

Why the IPL-style owner-and-auction model came to pickleball

India could assemble this so quickly because two decades of franchise sport have baked the template into the country. City-named teams, corporate owners, a player auction, pre-season camps and hype, music at halftime. The pieces CCPL lined up follow the order fans already know from the IPL and Pro Kabaddi. What stands out is that the competition and the spectator experience, food and music included, were designed as one package from the start.

Biyyala has described Hyderabad as the place where the league started and where they first saw the potential of franchise pickleball as a property. That word, property, shows they treat pickleball not as a one-off competition but as a sports business that can run continuously across cities. The rename from HPL to CCPL and the move into other cities are that thinking in action.

The design also matters for players' careers. Going to auction means a player carries a market price. Once there are categories for retentions, direct picks and winning bids, pay starts to move with ability and popularity. In Asian pickleball, where local clubs have been the main arena, tournaments that put an auction price on a player and update it in public every season are still rare.

HPL Season 1 and CCPL Season 2 by the numbers

Here is the outline of the league as far as the organizers' announcements were reported. Prize money and investment figures were not disclosed in any of the reports, so they are not listed here.

Leagues forming across Asia at once, and where Japan stands

Taken on its own, CCPL reads as nothing more than a flashy Indian event. Line it up against the rest of Asia in the same period, though, and the move toward franchise teams is clearly not confined to one country. At the end of August 2026, Taiwanlaunched the professional pickleball league AEPL in Taichung, and in the Philippines,the city of Bacoor formed an official team with its mayor as owner. Taiwan has a league, Bacoor a single team carrying the city's name, and India franchises run by a private company. The operators and the way rosters are built differ, but the order is the same: build the container first, then gather players into it. Japan fits none of these patterns, with facility operators and equipment makers mostly running tournaments on their own. Seeds exist, such as the Kansai corporate team event and Zamst's sponsorship, but no market has grown up yet for buying and selling teams that carry a city's name.

The other thing worth watching is the infrastructure for rating players. Bidders have plenty to go on, from results to popularity, but a shared metric that puts a number on ability makes those calls easier. In India,a partnership between DUPR and Courtly that ties a single match logged in the app straight to a player's official ratinghas started to run. It is separate from the CCPL auction, but having infrastructure that measures a player's value from the outside come together in the same country is a tailwind for the franchise model. If Japan keeps running team competitions, how to share ratings like these becomes a question of its own.

What Japanese organizers and players can copy right now

Bringing the scale of eight team owners gathering in Phuket to Japan as it stands is not realistic. Several pieces of what CCPL has built, though, can be tried without heavy investment in franchises.

• Do not let a tournament end with one-off match results. Keep standings year-round by team, named for a city or a sponsor, and carry the story into the next season.
• Set up one thing between matches that makes spectators want to take a photo, and create a deliberate starting point for sharing on social media.
• Share player ratings among tournament organizers, and pilot a mechanism equivalent to retentions and direct picks alongside seeding.
• Build the peak of exposure in the off-season. The Phuket player auction worked as a device for drawing attention in September, when no matches were being played.

For equipment makers and facility operators, the lesson is that the framework of the show itself becomes a sponsorable product. CCPL supplied a reason to watch, in halftime music and city franchises, then combined sponsors and players with it. In Japan too, preparing the vessel of a team that spectators can cheer for by name, alongside investment in more courts, makes the next step in participation easier to reach.

One move Japanese organizers can try at their next tournament

CCPL Season 2 opens on October 17 in Hyderabad. What India has shown is that several Asian countries have begun at the same time to move pickleball from a club gathering to a continuing commercial event. The concrete move available to a Japanese organizer now is to record results at the next tournament under team names rather than individual players, and to carry those teams over to the following edition. Measure attendance, stream viewership and sponsor renewal on top of that, and you can check with your own numbers whether a team format creates commercial value. Follow CCPL's opening day and its results, and start by picking one step worth transplanting.

Sources

• RD Times, "Centre Court Pickleball League Returns to Hyderabad for Season 2 Following Player Auction in Phuket" (September 9, 2026)
• Telangana Today, "Hyderabad set to host CCPL Season 2 from October 17" (September 9, 2026)
• Khel Now, "CCPL Season 2: Pickleball League returns to Hyderabad after Phuket auction" (September 10, 2026)