On the night of September 3, 2026, Yuta Funamizu, pickleball's Asian champion, appeared on TBS's hidden-camera variety show Monitoring disguised as a man who looked hopeless at sport. The target was Jun Mizutani, who won team silver in table tennis at the London Olympics and mixed doubles gold in Tokyo. Mizutani, usually the one setting up the prank, was on the receiving end this time. Terrestrial prime time had put a sport whose name is still unknown in many households at the center of an evening.
What happened on the show
The broadcast went out from 20:00 on Thursday, September 3, hosted by Black Mayonnaise. In the show's athlete-in-disguise segment, Funamizu joined a class with his ability hidden and played like a beginner early on. Taichi Shiozaki of M!LK took part in the warm-up, and when Funamizu released his real technique partway through, the reactions of Mizutani and Shiozaki became the high point. What the show was after was not the result but the gap: someone who had looked like a pure beginner suddenly switching to high-level ball control. Where would Mizutani, who reached the top of the neighboring sport of table tennis, sense that something was off? The setup is simple, but it works only because the subject is a genuine Olympic gold medalist.
Why Funamizu can play someone hopeless at sport
Funamizu was born in 1993 in Aomori Prefecture and was originally a professional soft tennis player. In soft tennis he won gold in the national team event at the 2015 World Championships and took both singles and doubles at the World Junior U21. He took up pickleball seriously in October 2023. In February 2025 he signed with the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA), and the following March he was drafted by Miami in Major League Pickleball (MLP). In May 2026 he became the first Japanese man to reach No. 1 in Asia on the DUPR rating (men's doubles), and he has reached 25th in the world. His win in men's doubles at the PPA ASIA 500 Sansan TOKYO OPEN held that July in Tachikawa, Tokyo had already been reported in Japan asa homecoming in which he beat a former world No. 1 in Tachikawa. The deeper a player's technique runs, the harder it is to act clumsy on purpose. A top player's performance of holding back works only because the raw skill is on another level.
Why casting Mizutani worked
There is meaning in Mizutani being the one chosen. Table tennis and pickleball are structurally close: you hold a racket, or paddle, play across a net, and break the other side down with spin and changes of pace. That put Mizutani in a position to read the traces of someone who is no amateur in the quality of Funamizu's ball and the way he moved. The show turned that reading into the showpiece. Even for viewers who do not know the sport, watching an Olympic table tennis champion struggle conveys pickleball's technical depth without words. The rules could be skipped because Mizutani's face spoke for the difficulty.
Other times variety shows have covered pickleball
This is not the first time terrestrial television has picked the sport up. TV Asahi built a show around Miyazon taking on the game, producinga slot introducing the sport as Tsunagaru Pickle. TV Aichi held a public recording of a special with Abareru-kun and Nana Suzuki, turning a taster session itself into programming. In those, comedians and personalities stood on the side of touching the sport for the first time, reacting at the same eye level as viewers. This Monitoring segment goes a step further, using an Asian champion's ability as a hidden card to test an Olympic gold medalist, a plan built on how far the sport can go. The weight has shifted from introduction to contest.
What coverage in terrestrial prime time means
地上波のゴールデン帯でトップ選手の技術が正面から扱われたこと自体が、競技にとって大きな露出になった。競技経験者からは、トップ選手の技術がゴールデン帯で正面から扱われた点を評価する声が聞かれた。バラエティの一企画とはいえ、勝敗の駆け引きを競技の魅力として提示できたことは、これまでの「珍しい新スポーツ」という紹介の枠を超える。
What facility operators and players can read from it
The broadcast left two things for people who know the sport. One is that it made widely visible how players from neighboring sports such as table tennis and soft tennis can climb to a high level once they switch to pickleball. Funamizu's path is the symbol of that, showing how a racket-sport background blossoms on a paddle. Market research has showninterest among tennis players and a playing population of 330,000, with the potential pool estimated at more than 10 million. There is plenty of room for people who learned the sport's name from the broadcast to flow into it. The other is the reality that television can carry people only as far as the entry point: without places to play and people to teach, interest cools while it is still warm.
The ripple beyond wider recognition
Prime-time exposure lifts the number of people who want to try within a short window. Searching for where to play nearby in the week after a broadcast has happened with past media coverage. What is tested here is readiness on the supply side. Permanent indoor and outdoor courts keep increasing nationwide, but the frequency of taster sessions for beginners, paddle rentals and the number of instructors who can teach the rules vary widely by area. When the wave of recognition arrives, in places where capacity to host beginners is thin, the interest that was created drifts to other sports nearby. The broadcast is a tailwind, but turning it into retention is a matter of operational design on the ground.
The practical work of converting interest into classes and tasters
If facilities and local clubs are going to turn this exposure into attendance, moving early is better. While the show's name and search terms such as disguise and Jun Mizutani are still being talked about, put the dates and the sign-up method for taster sessions somewhere prominent. Even one line for people with table tennis or tennis backgrounds, saying that racket-sport experience carries over, overlaps with Funamizu's story and makes the first step easier. Lend paddles and balls for a first visit, and design it so the rules are learned while playing. Arranging things so that the looks fun a broadcast creates becomes actually held a paddle within the same week is the dividing line that turns recognition into participation.
Summary
One night of Monitoring combined the ability of Yuta Funamizu, the Asian champion, with the reactions of Jun Mizutani, an Olympic gold medalist, and put pickleball on terrestrial television as a contest rather than an introduction. The sport's upper limit becoming widely known supports inflow from neighboring sports and a rise in people wanting to try it. What remains is how courts and instructors around the country are arranged to catch that interest. Beyond the entry point television opened, it is the turn of operators on the ground to design retention.
Sources:
Monitoring, September 3 broadcast contents (Kininaru)
Target: Jun Mizutani! Up against Yuta Funamizu!! Monitoring, 9/3 (Thu) [TBS]
Yuta Funamizu – Wikipedia
Pro pickleball: Yuta Funamizu becomes the first Japanese man to hold the No. 1 ranking in Asia (Visional)
