Pickleball took the world by storm a few years ago, going mainstream during the Covid pandemic after over five decades of being the more obscure cousin of tennis.

It’s no wonder that a naturally socially distanced game with a low barrier to entry became popular during the pandemic, but the growth it experienced in such a short period was astounding.

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Its popularity led celebrity athletes, including Tom Brady, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Drew Brees, to invest in different aspects of the sport, according to Fox Business.

Now, The Picklr, one of the leading pickleball facility franchisors, is filing for bankruptcy just five years after its founding. Rather than going away, the company plans to reorganize and continue operating.

The Picklr took advantage of pickleball’s growing popularity

Pickleball became the fastest-growing sport in the United States between 2020 and 2025, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA). In 2025 alone, 24.3 million Americans played pickleball.

Between 2020 and 2025, pickleball participation grew by 479%, going from 4.2 million participants in 2020 to 24.3 million in 2025. That growth put it ahead of other popular Covid-era sports such as pilates training, cardio tennis, and climbing.

“As participation grows, so does interest from facility operators, sporting goods companies, and community leaders looking to understand the scale and trajectory of the sport,” the SFIA said.

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The Picklr was one of those facility operators.

Specializing in indoor pickleball facilities, The Picklr was founded in 2021 and began franchising locations two years later. Since then, it has opened facilities in Australia, Canada, and Japan.

But now, a recent business decision is coming back to haunt the company.

As Vinay Kolluru of BlueJay Capital explained in a TikTok video last year, the explosion in capital from the early years has given way to loan defaults on facilities that were just built.

“These developers thought that the sport would continue growing at the same rate, but this might be the beginning of the end of the sport’s dominance,” Kolluru said, while predicting that the sport would fade out of the mainstream within the next five years.

The Picklr plans to use the bankruptcy process to renegotiate lease agreements with franchisees.

MADS CLAUS RASMUSSEN / Getty Images

The Picklr files for bankruptcy, but has plan for recovery

The Picklr CEO Jorge Barragan recently told the Sports Business Journal exactly what is behind the company’s decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

According to Barragan, the company had agreed to be the guarantor for facility lease payments for some of its early franchisees. About 40 of The Picklr’s 70+ locations have such an agreement in place, and those deals have now become a financial burden for the company.

The Picklr plans to use the bankruptcy process to renegotiate lease agreements.

“We signed, unfortunately, too many corporate guarantees that landed on the holding company. And that’s on us. I own it,” Barragan told the SBJ.

“Utilizing [Chapter 11 bankruptcy] is going to allow all of us to work with these landlords to figure out how to create profitable businesses…. I think this is going to open up doors for a lot of people to renegotiate with the landlords and give people more success moving forward.”

Going forward, franchisee Tom Neale has committed $4.8 million in financing and would sponsor the company’s reorganization.

The bankruptcy filing comes after The Picklr already reduced staff, which Barragan described as a temporary measure to prepare for restructuring. No locations will close as a direct result of the filing, but the company does expect some contraction.

The Picklr’s finances are underwater

According to the financial statements viewed by SBJ, the Picklr had a net loss of $4.4 million on revenue of $10.3 million in 2025.

As of the end of Q1 2026, The Picklr’s total liabilities totaled $19 million, and its bankruptcy filing lists about $760,000 in creditor claims related to guarantees.

But Neale’s investment group, Dynamus Alliance, would sponsor the reorganization while becoming The Picklr’s lead investor. The $4.8 million in debtor-in-possession financing is intended to help cover both reorganization costs and operating expenses.

“While everyone’s opinion is not completely the same, there are a good many franchisees within the system, like me and our group that we’ve put together, who believe in the brand, who believe in the business and believe there’s a viable future going forward,” Neale said, according to SBJ.

“We’re convinced that the model works. It’s a matter of looking at some business realities and some headwinds that we collectively have faced and address[ing] those head on. And what this restructuring allows us is to have some meaningful conversations with landlords and franchisees, and hopefully those conversations provide positive outcomes.”

Meanwhile, Neale said investor and franchisee Drew Brees “will likely have involvement with us going forward.”

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