Can Pickleball Learn from FIFA?

When we think of football today, we picture national teams competing for world dominance under the banner of the FIFA World Cup. But that global unification didn’t happen overnight. It began regionally. In 1916, South America staged the inaugural South American Championship: today’s Copa América. It was modest but significant: Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay laying the foundation for what would become the world’s most universal sport.

As chair of Pickleball Americas (www.pickleballamericas.org), which represents countries from Canada down to Chile, I see strong parallels between football’s century-long journey and pickleball’s path today. Both sports share the same DNA: simplicity of play, accessibility across generations, and inclusivity that transcends class and geography. But the real lesson is about structure. Football only became the world’s game once it built a pyramid: national federations, regional tournaments, and a culminating global competition that attracted players, fans, and, critically, sponsors.

By the early 1900s, South America had caught football fever, but the rest of the world lagged. The breakthrough came in 1930 with the first FIFA World Cup in Uruguay. Suddenly, football wasn’t just a pastime: it became the global stage for competition, diplomacy, and commerce. National and Regional qualifiers fed into a World Cup that sponsors and broadcasters could confidently back at scale. FIFA’s genius was in unifying grassroots energy with international infrastructure.

The journey was not smooth. Wars interrupted tournaments. Cultural divides slowed expansion in Asia and Africa. Infrastructure lagged. Yet FIFA persisted: codifying rules, launching regional championships, and building a pipeline that allowed both amateur and professional pathways to flourish. By the 1990s, football’s global architecture was complete: a World Cup that drew billions of viewers and billions in sponsorships, broadcasting rights, and tourism revenue.

Pickleball is at a similar inflection point. In April 2026, the Americas Pickleball Cup (www.pickleballcup.com) in Mexico will unite the best national teams from across North and South America. This is our “Copa América moment”, the first regional consolidation of pickleball talent under a unified banner. Later that same month, Africa will follow suit, with national qualifiers in Southern, Northern, East, and West Africa leading into the Africa Pickleball Cup in South Africa. These events are not isolated tournaments; they are the scaffolding for an international structure; regional Cups feeding into a future global Cup.

Like Uruguay’s triumph in 1930, these first Cups are more than medals. They establish the governance, federation pathways, and commercial scale that will carry pickleball from a fast-growing recreational sport into a credible international discipline. They also give sponsors a reason to invest, not just in a single market, but across a continental and eventually global audience.

And pickleball offers something football never had at its inception: a lifestyle-driven, intergenerational demographic that bridges traditional sports and wellness culture. That makes it attractive not only to legacy sponsors like sportswear and beverage companies but also to non-endemic lifestyle brands seeking new, highly engaged communities.

If history remembers 1930 as football’s coming-out party, then 2026 may well be pickleball’s. With the Americas Cup in Mexico and the Africa Cup in South Africa, pickleball will test its ability to move beyond rapid recreational growth into lasting international infrastructure. The blueprint is clear: build federations, unify rules, stage regional Cups, and culminate in a global Cup that delivers scale for sponsors and visibility for athletes.

Pickleball now has the chance to write its own FIFA story, accessible, inclusive, and commercially powerful, cementing its place as the next global game.