Entrepreneur and investor Gary Vaynerchuk hit back at people who doubt pickleball, saying they badly underrate the sport. He posted it on X (formerly Twitter) on September 8, 2026, arguing as a 50-year-old who has watched several sports move from niche to mainstream. He is a co-owner of the New Jersey 5s, who won their first MLP title in 2026, so this is not commentary from the sidelines but the word of someone with his own money in the game. For Japan, where participation is entering an expansion phase, the bullish case forces a question: is the current excitement the peak or the opening chapter?<\/p>\n
Vaynerchuk's argument is simple. The world badly undersells how much room more sports have to grow, and pickleball is one of them. He goes on to note that every sport that is huge today was once small and easy to dismiss. Against skeptics who see the boom as a fad, his framing is that writing off a sport's future because it is small has been proven wrong many times before.<\/p>\n
The view carries weight because he is putting investor money into pickleball. Unlike a commentator's optimism, he speaks from inside the business, running a team and managing top players, which separates it from simple cheerleading.<\/p>\n
The skeptics have grounds too. Facilities that expanded fast have tipped into oversupply, and sales are starting to appear in the US. A quick start does not guarantee that the sport takes root. Vaynerchuk's answer does not reject that caution outright; it narrows to one point, that dismissing the future on the basis of current size alone is premature. Overheating and taking root are different things, and it is worth judging coolly which phase the sport is in.<\/p>\n
To back his case, Vaynerchuk lines up precedents of now-huge sports that were brushed aside early on. All of them share one trait: they passed through a small phase on the way to the mainstream.<\/p>\n