DUPR, the global pickleball ratings system created in 2021 by Major League Pickleball founder Steve Kuhn, recently raised $8 million from a new ownership group that brings stability to the startup amidst the MLP’s ongoing merger attempt with the PPA Tour.
“DUPR has been kinda like this black box for a little bit. People didn’t understand what was going to happen to us, we were always seen as MLP’s nerdy sibling,” DUPR CEO Tito Machado told NoVolleys. “I think this is a great opportunity for DUPR to have a board that is focused on our growth and is more tech based,” he said, adding “we are the only child now.”
New board members and investors for DUPR include tennis legend Andre Agassi, Raine Ventures, Jay Farner of Ronin Capital Partners, Brian Yeager of The Champions Companies and R. Blane Walter of InChord Communications.
Real estate developer David Kass, who owns the Columbus Sliders franchise in MLP, will serve as DUPR’s new owner and chairman as the startup adds social features into its platform of more than 500,000 users.
New Social Features to Build Community, Transparency
The core of DUPR (Dynamic Pickleball Ratings System) is its ratings mechanism that analyzes match results to assign a rating from a 2.000 to 8.000 scale to evaluate players.
DUPR’s app recently updated its algorithm to consider the score of matches when calculating player ratings (a player who beat their opponent 11-0 previously received the same boost for beating their opponent 11-9, for example).
Its algorithm also now puts an added emphasis on the outcome of recent matches and total matches played. “We broke every record of engagement on the platform,” Machado says of DUPR’s activity following last week’s updates.
The introduction of DUPR Feeds now lets users follow their friends on the app, post pictures from their pickleball matches, tag players and clubs, and write comments. Machado compares DUPR’s new features to Strava, the popular social network for running, cycling and hiking.
“We’re really tackling the social aspect around the rating. And we’re gonna keep adding more and more features to get transparency around the rating. Engagement and transparency are the two things that we truly want to give the user,” Machado said.
DUPR Seeing Massive Growth in China
About 90% of DUPR’s half-million user base is in the U.S., but the company operates in more than 140 countries including China, India, Germany, the U.K., and across Latin America. DUPR announced its expansion into China in August 2023 with a tour that spanned five events.
“We ran the biggest [pickleball] event in China ever with 550 players and we have around 20 clubs in China already using the DUPR rating,” Machado said. “China has potentially been the fastest growing one I’ve seen so far in terms of the other countries.”
China and its population of 1.4 billion people “wants to lead the world in pickleball,” pickleball ambassador Seymour Rifkind recently told Front Office Sports. Rifkind said that China aims to have 10,000 courts and 100 million pickleball players in five years.
Becoming ‘the NCAA of Pickleball’
DUPR is very active in the U.S. college pickleball space, having hosted 12 regional college events leading up to its Collegiate National Championship which awarded more than $100,000 in scholarship money to student pickleballers. Nearly 500 players participated in the national championship and about 130 club college programs use DUPR’s rating system.
“We call ourselves the NCAA of pickleball,” Machado said.
Some colleges such as Utah Tech are now offering pickleball scholarships to students who come to the school to play on its club pickleball team.
“When is [pickleball] going to be adopted as an NCAA sport? Honestly, I think that’s a tough one,” Machado said. “Because we see more and more sports being cut from the NCAA and [with] all the complications from Title IX.”
