APP Tour – A Guide

The APP Tour — short for the Association of Pickleball Players — is the original USA Pickleball-sanctioned professional pickleball tour, founded in 2019. What makes it genuinely different from every other pro sports tour is this: amateurs compete alongside professionals at the same events. If you’re new to competitive pickleball and trying to make sense of the landscape, this is where you start.

Origins

Founding

Ken Herrmann launched the APP Tour out of Chicago in June 2019. It started modestly — originally floated as a regional Midwest/Southern competition series — before rebranding and achieving something no pickleball organization had managed before: becoming the first and only tour fully and officially sanctioned by USA Pickleball, the sport’s national governing body.

That distinction mattered. A lot. It gave the APP Tour a credibility anchor that no other entity could claim at the time.

The APP also became the first pickleball organization to establish an official headquarters and dedicated training facility. They call it “The Fort,” and it’s located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So right from the beginning, this wasn’t just a series of weekend tournaments — it was built as an institution.

USAP Sanction

Being officially sanctioned by USA Pickleball means more than a logo on a banner. Every APP event runs under standardized rules, with certified referees and results that count toward official player records. Whether you’re a pro competing for ranking points or an amateur playing your first tournament, the rules are the same and the officiating meets a consistent standard. That’s not something every tour can say.

Format

Pro Play

At the professional level, the APP runs individual bracket-style tournament competition. Pros compete across five main divisions:

• Men’s pro singles
• Women’s pro singles
• Men’s pro doubles
• Women’s pro doubles
• Mixed pro doubles

There’s also an AARP Champions Pro division for senior professionals. Crucially, the APP does not sign players to exclusive contracts. Any qualified professional can enter any event and compete for prize money. That open model stands in direct contrast to the PPA Tour, which holds exclusive deals with roughly 120 players — deals that prevent those athletes from competing in any non-PPA event.

Amateur Play

Here’s what sets the APP apart from almost every professional sports tour on the planet. Amateurs don’t just attend and watch — they compete. At the same venues, on the same courts, during the same event weekends. The amateur draws are organized by skill rating, and the format runs round-robin, guaranteeing every player a minimum of four to six matches. That’s meaningful court time, not just a single elimination shot in the dark.

Think about what that actually means: a 4.0 or 4.5 recreational player can genuinely say they competed at the same tournament as the top professionals in the world. That kind of access is rare in any sport.

Events

Event Types

The APP calendar runs across several distinct competition tiers:

• APP Tour stops: the flagship events featuring full professional draws and national TV coverage
• APP Signature events: curated competitions hosted at select partner venues
• APP Next Gen Series: a dedicated youth development track with seven events planned
• International competitions: expanding the tour beyond U.S. borders

In a single recent calendar year, the total event count grew to nearly 50 competitions — roughly doubling from the prior year. That’s a pretty clear signal about where the sport is heading.

Prize Money

Prize pools have scaled considerably since the tour’s early years. Annual prize money across the APP Tour crossed the $2 million mark by 2022. More recently, specialty team-based pro competitions offered $100,000 per event in prize money. Because the APP operates without exclusive contracts, those prize payouts are genuinely open — any qualifying player can earn them, not just those on a contracted roster.

Watching

TV Coverage

You don’t need a ticket to follow the action. The APP Tour has secured broadcast partnerships with CBS Sports, ESPN, and Fox Sports — three of the biggest sports media networks in the country. These deals came together progressively between 2023 and 2024. Live coverage has expanded significantly, with nationally televised events now a regular feature of the calendar.

If you’re trying to learn by watching the best play, there’s a real library of content accumulating across these platforms. Study the kitchen exchanges, the reset mechanics, the transition zone positioning — you’ll pick up more watching a few hours of pro play than most people realize.

APP vs MLP

MLP — Major League Pickleball — is a team-based franchise league. It has drafts, rosters, franchise ownership, and match formats designed around team competition. It’s the pro pickleball world closest in structure to an American sports league. The APP Tour, by contrast, is an individual tournament series. You enter, you compete, the best player wins. Cleaner. More traditional.

It’s worth knowing that MLP and the PPA Tour completed a formal merger in early 2024, creating a combined competitive entity that now draws from a large pool of contracted players. The APP Tour vs MLP dynamic, then, is really a question of philosophy: contracted team-sport drama on one side, open individual meritocracy on the other.

FAQs

Related Articles

• Pickleball Organizations
• Pickleball Tournaments
• Prize Money History
• DUPR Rating System
• How Rankings Work