Major League Pickleball Finishes Off Its 2025 Regular Season Slate In Salt Lake City

Tyler Loong (L) shook off a hand injury and a blonde dye job to lead Utah to a 4-1 weekend at home.

MLP

Major League Pickleball (MLP) presented by DoorDash finished off its 2025 regular season slate with its 10th and final stop, this time heading to the home state of Connor Pardoe and his Utah Black Diamonds for The Picklr’s Salt Lake City MLP Tournament. The event was hosted at The Picklr’s Kaysville location just north of Salt Lake City, one of its marquee locations for a franchise that was built by founders Jorge Barragan and Austin Wood out of their first location in the same town. Now, 60-something locations later their flagship hosts the regular season finale of MLP.

There were several playoff spots up for grabs, especially in the premier, where the teams pushed for 8th, 9th, and 10th place all weekend.

Key Links for tracking the event this weekend, which featured livestreams from the two primary courts at the facility on MLP’s YouTube channel and on PickleballTV.com.

Transaction Recap

Ahead of the weekend, there were no real notable transactions, as the trade deadline had come and passed. Throughout the weekend we saw some regulars missing in action, ably covered by bench players as we’ll discuss in the event recap below.

News and Noteworthy

Ahead of the event, the big news on tour was the announcement that MLP has sold a 23rd Franchise; the Palm Beach Royals, to Zach Hunter and Taylor Meyer of Hyperspace Ventures. They say they bought at a “record valuation,” but do not give an amount. The last data point for sales was the Phoenix Flames selling at a $10M valuation. There are few details so far as to how the team will fit in for the 2026 season, but presumably with the Challenger playoff winner moving up the Palm Beach Royals will be the 6th Challenger team for 2026. Some chatter on social media also implied that perhaps we’ll see two teams rising (which only makes sense to keep even numbers of teams in each division), but that would need a 24th franchise sold in the immediate near term to make sense. More seems likely to come here.

Premier League Recap

Day 1 Observations

• Playing w/o star Alshon, Texas mounts a huge comeback from 0-2 down to salvage the DreamBreaker win to open the event over Chicago.
• In a shocking result, the depleted Miami team (who traded away its 2 best players) took out the playoff-seeking Chicago team 21-13 in the breaker as Japanese star Funemizu goes undefeated.

Day 2 Observations

• Utah helped secure a playoff berth with an important mid-table win over the tiring Chicago Slice 3-1.
• Texas exposed Orlando’s team makeup issues with a 3-1 win despite missing their top player.

Day 3 Observations

• NJ got a late start to the weekend but cruised to a win over Chicago 3-1 without much trouble to essentially wrap up 3rd place for the regular season.
• Orlando was pushed by Chicago, but ultimately survived in a 22-20 DB to lock up the 8th seed. Meanwhile, this loss officially eliminates Chicago, who cannot catch Miami for 10th place.
• Utah secured its playoff berth with the diving antics of Allyce Jones in a win over the eliminated Atlanta Bouncers.

Day 4 Observations

• Utah blasted a listless Orlando team to open the final day of the season.
• With their playoff spot secured, NJ sits its top player ALW but still sweeps Atlanta, who finishes in 13th place.
• Orlando brings out Goldin to sub for Frazier in a meaningless regular season finale, and they get a surprise win over NJ to end the regular season.

Challenger League Recap

Day 1 Observations

• DC’s MVP candidate De La Rosa got two wins in regulation and they held on for a 22-20 DB win over Bay Area
• The marquee Challenger matchup of the weekend went on early, as the two top seeds tussled once again. Nashville swept gender doubles to shock Las Vegas’ system, but they pulled back by sweeping mixed to force yet another DB between the teams. There, the superior LV DreamBreaker attack held firm and won 21-16. It’s the fourth DB between the teams this year, and they improve to 5-1 against the 2nd place team for the season.

Day 2 Observations

• In a shocker, California swept 2nd place Nashville behind new acquisition Martin Emmrich.
• Nashville rebounded after its sweep loss earlier to take out DC in one of the weekend’s marquee matches.

Day 3 Observations

• LV takes a rare loss, and looked bad doing so, losing the first three games and nearly getting swept at the hands of California.
• DC cruised to an easy win over Florida behind DLR’s two doubles wins.

Day 4 Observations

• The last grudge match between California and Bay Area went to DreamBreaker, as it should, with California prevailing 21-19.
• California sends DC off reeling, with two straight losses to send them into the playoffs with a bad taste. Meanwhile, California finishes off an undefeated weekend to put some interesting thoughts into its competition heading into the playoffs.
• Las Vegas finishes its season with a predictable sweep of last-place Florida to head into the playoffs on a high note.

Team Standings Update post Event

Here’s the teams who made moves up or down the Standings in this event.

In Premier

• There were no changes in the standings as a result of the last event of the season, but there was some tightening and some close calls.
• Texas’ 4-1 event nearly allowed them to catch the LA Mad Drops for 6th place, but they fall one point short. Not bad considering they used a sub all weekend.
• Utah’s 4-1 weekend brought them a ton closer to Orlando for 8th place, but in the end they remain in 9th. One has to think they’d be a favorite in an 8-9 round of 16 matchup, if it comes to pass.
• Miami just holds off Chicago for the last playoff spot, a huge surprise given that they traded away their two best players at the deadline.

In Challenger

• California’s 5-0 weekend vaulted them from 5th to 3rd place for the season.
• Las Vegas ends up winning the regular season by 14 points and had the title wrapped up early.

Player Standings/Stats Analysis

With the regular season done, here’s the notable season-long stat finishes for those with more than just a nominal number of games this regular season:

In Premier

• Jorja Johnson finishes the season with an astounding 51-7 overall, and won more than 70% of her points. She has to be the MVP for 2025.
• All four of St. Louis’ regulars were in the top 10, led by Hayden Patriquin’s 50-7 season.
• Unsurprisingly, Anna Leigh Waters is firmly in the top 10 as well, leading New Jersey with a 49-7 record and a stellar 68.66% of points won.

In Challenger

• Las Vegas’ Chao-Yi Wang finished atop the Challenger stat board, going 41-15 for the season and winning 58% of points won.
• The rest of the Night Owls all finished in the top 5, a testament to their dominance this year.
• Short-timer Martin Emmrich’s performance for California this weekend has him #2 in the standings, but the real shout-out goes to Anderson Scarpa, who went 33-22 to finish in 6th place for Nashville.

What did we learn this weekend?

What were our top three Takeaways from the competition this weekend?

1. Orlando has to be worried about its team chemistry and its future, based on the way they ended the season.
2. Las Vegas may have finished the season 21-4, but California looks really spunky for a playoff run.
3. Chicago spent heavily to buy a whole new team at the draft in January; they finished just 5-20 and missed out on a playoff spot that was easily within their grasp given the capitulation of several teams at the end of the season.

Media Pick’ Em Contest Update

MLP Super-Fan Matty Pickles (aka Matt Klitch) runs a season-long Media MLP Pick’em Contest on Twitter, where all the pundits in the sport are participating. Here’s how we did this week, and where we stand overall.

Summary: Despite missing the last three picks when Orlando decided to stop trying and New Jersey sat its star, I finished the season in 1st place over Jim “The Smartest Man in Pickleball” Kloss.

Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule , the PPA returns to action with the 2025 Bristol Open. There’s also a major Pickleball Conference Picklecon in Kansas City, which has a huge amateur event organized by The Kitchen.

Next up for the MLP? Their next event is the first round of the playoffs in two weeks’ time in San Diego. We’ll do a playoff-preview ahead of that event for sure.

All match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit picklewave.com for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 22,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours.

Also, a great thanks to The Dink’s Erik Tice, who maintains a fantastic MLP detailed data breakdown and makes it publicly available at this Google XLS link. Tice’s data has proved invaluable this year as MLP does not make match data available at this detailed level at present.