Social media controversy encircles Tom Brady/LeBron James-backed pickleball league

Professional pickleball player Jillian Braverman fired off a tweetstorm Thursday ostensibly designed to shed light on the inner business workings of the United Pickleball Association (UPA), the the professional pickleball league that counts Tom Brady and LeBron James (among others) as team owners.

The first post in the thread has more than 600,000 views as of this writing:

Braverman's allegation that the UPA needed an "emergency" bridge loan was met with blowback from two UPA executives, Chief Strategy Officer Samin Odhwani and PPA Tour Founder & Commissioner Connor Pardoe. The whole thing played out on Twitter and turned a lightly covered sport into a national story.

What emerged from the dumpster fire? Some truth, a lot of bad blood, and a lesson the nascent league and its stakeholders apparently missed in business school.

Start with the truth. UPA is the result of a merger of two rival leagues, the PPA Tour and MLP. The merger was completed less than a year ago. The transition has been smooth by some accounts. CNBC reported in December that the merged entity saw growth in attendance, sponsorships, and player salaries in 2024.

Considering how early the UPA is in its existence, and the business acumen of its early investors (entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Gary Vaynerchuk also bought in pre-merger), not every speed bump in the transition should be cause for alarm.

Odhwani's response to Braverman's revelation of the $10 million bridge loan to the UPA tacitly acknowledges that yes, the league needs a $10 million bridge loan by Jan. 15 to meet its financial obligations. The bad blood starts to boil around the word "emergency."

"You clearly have the email about the bridge loan, but did you just invent the word “emergency”? It’s not in there," Odhwani wrote on Twitter/X. "What you didn’t mention is that the $10M is already funded by existing investors, showing how committed our team owners are to our growth."

In a follow-up post, Odhwani suggests that the financial obligations that required the loan arose from the particulars of the merger.

"The costs that we are now funding, which were outside of budget, are: 1) buying back two teams and 2) buying players out of contracts we inherited from the bidding wars," he writes. "These investments were made after board deliberation and with intentionality."

Braverman's thread lobbied other allegations. Odhwani and Pardoe's rebuttals are similarly accusatory in tone. TheDinkPickleball.com has the details.

Usually "the details" is where the devil lies. Perhaps that's the case here. When the merger was announced, the two leagues said in a press release that it was backed by "a $75 million investment from private equity firm SC Holdings, D.C. Pickleball Team owner Al Tylis, PPA Tour owners Tom Dundon and the Pardoe Family, and a roster of existing MLP team owners."

Braverman's most serious allegation refuted that detail of the press release. She cited anonymous sources who claimed "the amount was closer to $35mm, with 2024 year-end cash totaling only $2-4mm."

From 10,000 feet it's impossible to say who has the financial details right. Obtaining one internal company email, however detailed, isn't the same as a complete exposition of the league's financial records. At best, Braverman's tweetstorm is a reminder not to take every number contained in a press release as gospel (which CNBC is perhaps guilty of here, though that would hardly leave them alone in contemporary business reporting).

At worst, it's a biased rant containing credible nuggets of truth, all of which would seem to run counter to Braverman's self-interest. She is, ostensibly, a participant in the sport first and foremost. According to her biography on MajorLeaguePickleball.net, Braverman ranked as high as No. 3 in the world in singles and No. 16 in doubles by DUPR.

Rather than working with the UPA principals internally, Braverman seems to think her best option was to take the internal memo public, stick the word "emergency" in there, and air her grievances with the direction of the league. Maybe that was a calculated strategy on her part to keep a league with little media oversight honest. Maybe it just made for compelling content on her podcast.

Either way, it's an odd look for all parties involved. It's usually a bad idea to bite the hand that feeds you, especially in public. Braverman, Pardoe and Odhwani are all guilty of that to an extent. The best outcome for the league might be to hire a public relations arm — not to obfuscate the truth, but to clarify it for independent media who are confused by the last 24 hours of rage-baiting.

A professional pickleball league will only have "made it" when fans and independent podcasters are doing the rage-baiting on their behalf. In the meantime, it's best to keep family squabbles in-house.

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