A collaboration between pickleball's top league and a global consultancy powerhouse could push the sport to new betting heights.
On Tuesday, Integrity Compliance 360 (IC360), a global technology and consultancy company that specializes in compliance and integrity solutions for sports and iGaming markets, announced a strategic partnership with the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA).
Using IC360’s ProhiBet platform, the partnership will enhance the integrity of the pickleball betting market by prohibiting individuals like coaches, athletes, and league officials from participating in sports wagering. Justin Mader, associate general counsel & gambling operations manager for the PPA Tour, says the partnership affirms the PPA’s “commitment to maintaining the integrity of professional pickleball.”
ProhiBet, a decentralized and fully encrypted cross-monitoring platform, was launched in 2023 to safeguard sports integrity by monitoring and preventing prohibited sports wagering. Alongside the ProhiBet platform, the partnership grants the PPA access to IC360’s proprietary dashboard, which analyzes data sets to recognize irregular betting patterns.
“The combination of ProhiBet's state-of- the-art encrypted data transfer system and the PPA Tour’s dedication to upholding the integrity of its quickly growing sport will undoubtedly enhance the transparency and trustworthiness of sports betting activities,” Matt Heap, managing director of prohiBet, told The Dink.
“This is a significant development for the global development of pickleball and our PPA Tour,” said PPA commissioner Connor Pardoe. “With this agreement with Genius Sports, pickleball and our PPA Tour events will be viewed by more people than ever. This will only further fuel the massive global growth of pickleball.”
A tennis-badminton hybrid, pickleball is a racket sport originally invented in the 1960s in which two or four players use paddles to hit a perforated plastic ball over a net. The slower game pace and low risk of injury make it a huge hit with older players. It's currently the fastest-growing sport in the U.S, having , it experienced a surge in popularity after the COVID-19 pandemic.
First introduced as a legal gambling market in August 2023, pickleball initially launched in ten U.S. states and received approval in Massachusetts shortly after.
