About 433,000 viewers at a time—that’s what number of pairs of eyes have been fixated on final weekend’s DoorDash MLP Finals that pitted the underdog Columbus Sliders towards the no. 2 seed New Jersey 5s.
That quantity is critical for Main League Pickleball (MLP offered by DoorDash), because it makes this season’s Finals the second-most watched skilled pickleball match of all time on any community. On this case, the community was CBS, and it drew 433,000 common viewers, per Nielsen.
The Sliders finally got here out on prime, roaring again from a 0-1 deficit behind the spectacular play of Andrei Daescu and Parris Todd, who got here up huge within the second and third matches. That victory accomplished a Cinderella run of types for Columbus, who got here into the playoffs as simply the fifth seed, and have been “handpicked” by the top-seeded St. Louis Shock. However the Sliders turned the tables on the Shock, and the remaining was historical past.
It seems, the Finals they performed reverse the Anna Leigh Waters-led 5s simply made historical past, too.
The DoorDash MLP Finals was hosted at CityPickle at Wollman Rink in New York Metropolis’s Central Park, and performed in entrance of sell-out crowds all weekend, capping MLP’s 2025 season of 10 common season occasions, a Mid-Season Event, and two rounds of Playoffs, all from April to August.
League season-to-date highlights, as of the top of the common season, featured robust year-over-year development throughout a large number of enterprise and fan engagement areas, together with sponsor income (greater than double final 12 months’s complete), ticket income (+28%), social media impressions (+277%), YouTube views (+156%), complete minutes considered on Pickleballtv (+105%), and telecast hours (+83% on linear TV throughout nationwide, RSN, and native partnerships).
