Celebrities Who Play Pickleball
Quick Answer: The celebrity pickleball roster runs from LeBron James, Tom Brady and Kevin Durant, who bought into Major League Pickleball teams, to George Clooney, Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Gates, who simply play. Tennis legends Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf, John McEnroe and Andy Roddick have turned it into a televised million-dollar rivalry.
Celebrity pickleball splits into two camps: famous people who play the game, and famous people who bought a piece of it.
Which celebrities own pickleball teams?
The team-owner list reads like a locker room Hall of Fame. When Major League Pickleball expanded in late 2022, the buyers included:
- LeBron James, whose LRMR Ventures led an ownership group joined by Draymond Green and Kevin Love
- Tom Brady, who bought in alongside tennis great Kim Clijsters; their team is today the Las Vegas Night Owls
- Kevin Durant, whose Thirty Five Ventures franchise is now the D.C. Pickleball Team
- Patrick Mahomes, part of the Miami Pickleball Club group with Naomi Osaka and Nick Kyrgios
Drake joined in 2024 as a minority investor in Durant’s franchise, alongside Michael B. Jordan. The wave of athlete money is a large part of how Major League Pickleball went from startup to 20 teams.
Which celebrities actually play?
The verified list is long and occasionally on camera. George Clooney told an interviewer in 2023 that he and Amal play against each other, singles, because it is more of a workout, and that he loses a lot. Ellen DeGeneres posts her games herself. In 2022, CBS aired an entire celebrity tournament, Pickled, hosted by Stephen Colbert, with Will Ferrell, Emma Watson, Kelly Rowland, Daniel Dae Kim and Sugar Ray Leonard competing.
Jamie Foxx is one of the sport’s most visible regulars, filmed playing often and a familiar face at celebrity pickleball events. The deepest cut is Bill Gates, who wrote on his own blog that he has played for over fifty years, having learned the game from its founders’ circle on Bainbridge Island, where his father knew the men who invented it.
What is the Pickleball Slam?
Tennis legends playing pickleball for a million dollars, on ESPN, annually since 2023. The running score:
- 2023: Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick beat John McEnroe and Michael Chang
- 2024: Agassi and Steffi Graf beat McEnroe and Maria Sharapova
- 2025: Agassi and Graf beat Roddick and Eugenie Bouchard
- 2026: Agassi and James Blake beat pickleball’s own Anna Leigh Waters and Bouchard
Four Slams, four Agassi wins, three of them alongside Graf or Roddick. The 2026 edition mattered for another reason: it put pickleball’s own top professional, Anna Leigh Waters, across the net from the tennis legends. The tennis-to-pickleball pipeline has a documentary angle too, explored in the tennis pro switch in The Dink.
Has any celebrity gone pro?
One, genuinely. Jack Sock, a former tennis world No. 8, retired from tennis in 2023 and signed on full-time with the PPA Tour, where he holds a world ranking in the twenties as of August 2026. He is the only crossover name competing against the sport’s real professionals rather than in exhibitions, and how those rankings work shows the ladder he is climbing.
Why do celebrities keep showing up in this sport?
The same reasons everyone else does, plus the business. The game is social, learnable in an afternoon and playable at any fitness level, which suits famous people who want a group activity without a film crew’s worth of skill development. On the money side, team valuations bought at startup prices in 2022 came with the fastest-growing sport in the country attached, a bet on the sport’s 24 million and climbing players.
FAQ
Which celebrities play pickleball?
Verified players include George Clooney, Ellen DeGeneres, Jamie Foxx, Bill Gates, and the celebrity field from CBS’s Pickled tournament, including Will Ferrell and Emma Watson. The owner list includes LeBron James, Tom Brady, Kevin Durant and Patrick Mahomes.
Does LeBron James own a pickleball team?
He led an ownership group that bought into Major League Pickleball in September 2022, with Draymond Green and Kevin Love among the partners.
What team does Tom Brady own?
Brady bought an MLP expansion team with Kim Clijsters in October 2022. The franchise plays today as the Las Vegas Night Owls.
Who has won the Pickleball Slam?
Andre Agassi, all four times: with Andy Roddick in 2023, Steffi Graf in 2024 and 2025, and James Blake in 2026.
Did any celebrity become a professional pickleball player?
Jack Sock made the real jump, from tennis world No. 8 to a full-time PPA Tour career starting in 2023.
Does Bill Gates really play pickleball?
By his own account, for more than fifty years. He grew up around the game’s Bainbridge Island founders and has written about it on his blog.
The celebrity courts are private, but the fun is not. The entertainment venues in our directory serve pickleball with food and music, no ownership stake required.
Written by the Pickler Junction Team.
