AGM Update
There has been a lot going on in the pickleball world at the global level. Many countries have withdrawn from the IFP. WPF would like to unite the pickleball world and we will be proposing changes to our ByLaws for approval by member countries at the AGM. When we launched we didn’t have any member countries, so the Board was by appointment of the President. Now we want to move towards the member driven organisation model that was always envisioned. We will announce the rescheduled AGM date shortly. It will be no later than September 2022.
Our hearts go out to Ukraine
We have reached out to our colleagues at Ukrainian Pickleball Federation. The situation is heartbreaking. If you want to help in some way, click on the flag to be taken to a page with details of where you can send donations to.
Get ready for the third World Pickleball Day - lets make it bigger and better than 2021!
We were thrilled that 21 countries participated in the 2021 World Pickleball Day but we want to smash that in 2022.
We are preparing this year’s play book and tool box items and will let you know when they are available.
WPF World Pickleball Games is the first true team competition in pickleball, where each competing country’s federation selects a minimum of 8 players (4 men, 4 women) & maximum of 12 players plus a coach to represent their country in the competition.
This competition demonstrates that pickleball is getting ready for the Olympics.
The team format consists of men’s doubles and singles, women’s doubles and singles, along with mixed doubles.
Pickleball has always been represented by both men and women in tournaments. WPF will continue to reinforce this tradition in team competition as it is unique to pickleball.
The First World Pickleball Games are postponed to 2023.
In July 2021 we were ready to schedule our next World Pickleball Games Summit to share our progress, hotel arrangements, communication with pro-players, update on uniform policy and sponsorship template and guidance information. Ahead of signing contracts for the hotels, we held a Gate Review (Go/No Go decision). One of the key risks identified in the Gate Review was covid-19.
We originally scheduled the Games for May 2022 believing that International Travel will be back by then. Recent weeks have demonstrated that there isn’t a general opening up of travel and that the picture is becoming quite complex (new waves in different countries, complex outbound/inbound rules by country). We see this as a major barrier for the World Pickleball Games and to countries signing up.
Since we only host the first World Pickleball Games once, we do not want to sacrifice the success of our first Games. We are also aware that countries need more help on the sponsorship side of things to help fund their teams. We therefore, reluctantly recommended to the WPF Board that we postpone the World Pickleball Games until 2023. The Board approved this recommendation. The Board further approved that the 50+ players competition will be included in the 2023 event. There will also be an exhibition event for the Juniors.
More information on the next World Pickleball Games Summit will be shared here as soon as available.