Pro Pickleball Pay in 2026: What Each Tier Earns, Spends and Keeps
Pro pickleball has no public salary data. Contracts are private, sponsorship deals are confidential, and prize money is only a small part of what most top players earn. That is why a recent breakdown from Zane Navratil, a professional player who worked as an auditor and CPA at Deloitte before turning pro, drew attention. He built a tier-by-tier income and expense model for the pro game and was open that some of his numbers are published and some are educated estimates from conversations with other pros. This article walks through that model, sets it against the prize-money data that is public, and flags what nobody outside the contracts can confirm.
Prize money is the visible part, and it is not the main part
The one thing that can be checked is tournament prize money. The tracker DinkBank, which counts prize money only and excludes contract guarantees, appearance fees and endorsements, lists the all-time career leaders as of October 31, 2026:
| Rank | Player | Career prize money | Events |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Leigh Waters | $7,854,295 | 189 |
| 2 | Ben Johns | $6,658,720 | 179 |
| 3 | Anna Bright | $3,395,822 | 158 |
| 4 | Gabriel Tardio | $2,801,176 | 138 |
| 5 | Federico Staksrud | $2,778,076 | 215 |
Those are career totals across many seasons. DinkBank's earlier reporting put the combined prize money it tracks across all tours at roughly $3.1 million in 2023, $3.6 million in 2024 and $3.6 million in 2025, with a mix of confirmed and estimated figures. Compare that with the roughly $33 million a year in player compensation that Navratil says the Union Pickleball Association (UPA) committed to when the PPA and MLP merged after the 2023 "tour wars". Prize money is a small fraction of the pay pool.
Where the money comes from
Navratil lists five main sources: contracts with the league, sponsorships, tournament prize money, appearance and teaching income, and a long tail of smaller items. His estimates by tier, which are his own and not audited, look like this.
| Tier | Who | League contract (est.) | Paddle deal (est.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| S | Ben Johns, Anna Leigh Waters | At least $1.5M each | About $1M plus royalties for Johns; about $10M over three years for Waters |
| A | About 10 men and 10 women, the most marketable after the top two | About $750K | About $250K |
| B | Next 25 men and 25 women | About $250K | About $75K |
| C | Remaining contracted players, about 80 | About $30K | About $25K |
| D | Non-contracted qualifier players | None, prize money only | Usually none |
Two details explain why contract size varies so much. First, he says a player's league deal depends largely on how marketable they were around the start of the tour wars in August 2023, not only on how good they are today. Second, he notes that when an MLP team drafts a player for a large fee, that money goes to the league, not to the player.
Paddle companies are the biggest sponsors by far. Other deals (clothing, shoes, hydration, ball machines, facilities) add up to roughly the same amount again for most tiers, with Waters as the exception, where he guesses about $1.5 million. Appearance and teaching income is smaller: he estimates around $300,000 a year for the top two from six corporate appearances, $100,000 for A tier, $30,000 for B tier and $15,000 for C tier.
What it costs to be a pro
This is the part most fans never see. Signed players get their entry fees covered. Non-contracted players do not, and Navratil puts the entry cost of a full schedule at about $15,625 a year. Travel is the largest expense for most. He reports spending $43,300 on travel in a year, covering flights, rentals, lodging and meals, and estimates these annual travel budgets by tier:
- S tier: about $250,000 (buses, better hotels, first-class flights)
- A tier: about $100,000
- B tier: about $50,000
- C tier: about $40,000
- D tier: about $25,000
On top of that come agents (he estimates about 5 percent of deals for Waters, nothing for Johns, who works with family, and up to 20 percent lower down), lawyers and accountants, social media and content help, and taxes. Most players are independent contractors, so self-employment taxes apply. He uses effective tax rates of 31 percent for the top two, 27 percent for A tier, 22 percent for B tier and 15 percent for C tier. He says he spent $81,000 last year on content and social media alone.
The result: gross versus what players keep
| Tier | Gross income (est.) | Take-home after costs and tax (est.) |
|---|---|---|
| Anna Leigh Waters | About $6.6M | Almost $4M |
| Ben Johns | About $4.8M | Almost $3M |
| A tier | About $1.35M | Almost $750K |
| B tier | About $430K | Almost $200K |
| C tier | About $95K | About $15K to $17K |
| D tier | About $11K | A loss of over $30K for a full schedule |
The pattern is steep. The top two do very well, the next 20 or so do well, and the middle of the tour earns a decent living. Below that the numbers fall off fast: a contracted C-tier player keeps about as much as a full-time minimum wage worker, and a non-contracted player chasing a full schedule loses money.
How reliable are these numbers?
- Verified: career prize money from DinkBank. It excludes contracts and sponsorships by design.
- Reported by the players involved: in 2024, Johns told CNBC he earned $2.5 million a year, and Waters' agent told Forbes she would earn $3 million that year, according to Navratil. Both figures predate the newer sponsorship deals.
- Estimates: everything else in the tables above, including every contract, paddle deal and tax figure. Navratil says so himself, and he cannot disclose his own contract because of confidentiality clauses. Treat the tiers as a model, not a payroll record.
- Dated reports: in late 2023, The Dink reported that MLP proposed cutting guaranteed pay by about 40 percent and reducing contract days from 200 to 120. That report relied on an email the outlet obtained and was not confirmed by the leagues in the article, and the structure has changed since.
What this means if you play for fun
The takeaway for a recreational player is mostly perspective. The best players in the world earn well, most pros do not, and the equipment you see on court is often a paid endorsement. If you are choosing a paddle, our pro tour pages show what the pros play, but the best paddle for you comes from your own game. Use the paddle finder or our best paddles of 2026 guide instead of copying a sponsored setup. For earlier background on how pro tournaments pay out, see our older post on how much professional pickleball players can make, which uses figures from 2019 to 2023. And if you want to see the sport's top teams in action, our write-up of the MLP Nations Cup covers this weekend's event.
