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ESPN Pickleball Slam Encore Lands Four Sponsors for 2024

barry m. bloom
·3 min read
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ESPN’s first televised Pickleball Slam event was so successful this past April, the Worldwide Leader is coming back with Slam 2 on Feb. 4 from Hard Rock Live at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla.

John McEnroe and Andre Agassi return for round two, and they’ll be joined this time by Stefanie Graf and Maria Sharapova—so four tennis icons will be once again competing for a prize purse of $1 million.

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Thanks to the popularity of the original event, key sponsors are lining up. Hard Rock, State Farm, Brighthouse Financial and Franklin Sports have all signed on as presenting sponsors of the 2024 version.

Horizon Sports & Experiences and InsideOut Sports + Entertainment made the announcement of that sponsorship lineup Wednesday.

All four sponsors will have significant individual branding rights on the court, benches, the non-volley zone near the net and the ball.

The original competition pitted McEnroe and Andy Roddick against Agassi and Michael Chang. The Agassi-Chang pairing squeezed out a doubles victory and thus won the coveted cash.

That matchup averaged 237,000 viewers among adults under 50. In doing so, it tied a Sunday NHL game on TNT between the Boston Bruins and St. Louis Blues as the day’s fifth-highest watched sporting event.

When viewed within the context of that entire programming week (March 27-April 2), the Slam out-delivered 13 nationally televised MLB games, seven NBA matchups and five NHL games.

The 2024 event is slated for a live broadcast at 8:30 p.m. ET, and tickets are $46 each.

“After our inaugural event drew a capacity crowd and scored impressive viewership and social media attention, we have experienced unprecedented interest for Slam 2, evident by the support we have from our four initial outstanding presenting partners,” Neal Gluckman, head of sales at Horizon Sports & Experiences, said.

David Levy, the former longtime head of Turner Broadcasting, concocted the Pickleball Slam via his Horizon Sports & Experiences, which he launched in November 2022 with former Momentum Worldwide CEO Chris Weil.

While at Turner, Levy was behind the inaugural The Match, a golf tournament that originally pitted Tiger Woods against Phil Mickelson in a winner-take-all showdown, and that continues today with new players participating in each iteration.

“We took that same concept with the best racket players in sports—McEnroe, Agassi, Roddick and Chang—and put them in the fastest-growing sport in America right now with great brand names, and I think we have a magic formula there as well,” Levy said.

The latest Slam will provide a new wrinkle by adding two of the greatest women’s tennis players in history to the mix.

Slam 2 will have a doubles match featuring the duo of McEnroe and Sharapova, with a total of 12 Grand Slam singles titles between them, playing against the husband-and-wife team of Agassi and Graf, who earned a combined 30 Grand Slam singles titles during their respective careers.

“We are excited to return to the court alongside this strong group of companies who believe in this one-of-a-kind branding and proven customer engagement opportunity that only our platform can provide to fans in person and watching at home,” Gluckman said.

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