The 2024 Major League Pickleball season gave us some memorable moments and some of the best pickleball matches of the year.

In 2025, pickleball’s beloved team format is going to look a little different.

You can find all the changes in the Competition Structure document here, but I’m going to use this article to go through some of the biggest modifications to note ahead of the upcoming season.

 

 

 

 

 

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First things first

There are now 16 teams at the Premier level and six at the Challenger level. This comes after the top four Challenger teams from 2024 earned promotions to Premier.

I'll talk about each one of these throughout this article, but here's an overview of some key dates for the 2025 season if you want to see them all in one place. 

Now, into the details.

Scoring

Arguably the biggest news here is that MLP doubles matches will now be played with side out scoring, meaning that teams can only score points while serving.

Doubles matches will be one game to 11 by side out scoring, where teams have to win by at least two points.

Rally scoring—the format that MLP has used since its inception where each rally results in a point—isn’t completely disappearing, however; DreamBreakers (the singles tiebreak competitions) will still be played with rally scoring rules to 21, with a freeze.

Player Eligibility

This will be a longer section, but it’s guided by one declaration: if you don’t have a United Pickleball Association contract, you can’t be on an MLP team.

This means that players on rosters from last season that do not have a contract with UPA will have to be dropped. This significantly impacts the following teams that have two or more players not currently under contract:

•                      Atlanta Bouncers (2 players under UPA contract)
•                      Chicago Slice (0 players under UPA contract)
•                      Miami Pickleball Club (2 players under UPA contract)
•                      SoCal Hard Eights (2 players under UPA contract)
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Speaking of dropping, every team is required to drop at least one player, even if each one of its players has a contract with the UPA. The deadline for teams to drop their designated player(s) is Feb. 16, 2025. Therefore, each team can ‘keep’ a maximum of three players from its 2024 roster. Two players can be kept for up to three years, and one player can be kept for up to two years.

There are some more stipulations here, though. To be eligible to be kept, a player must:

• 1.     Be under UPA contract through at least 2025
• 2.     Be one of the 88 originally drafted players from 2024
• 3.     Have ended the 2024 MLP season on a team roster
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These regulations would prohibit contracted players like Quang Duong and Genie Bouchard from being kept, as both of them were added from waivers.

In order to keep an eligible player, teams must pay MLP half the amount of draft capital spent to initially select that player in 2024.

For example, the Carolina Pickleball Club spent 840,000 draft points to take Ben Johns first overall in 2024. To keep him for this season, Carolina would need to pay $420,000 to the league.

Free Agency

This period of keeping and dropping players will culminate in the Free Agency Draft, where teams will be able to finalize their 2025 rosters.

These drafts—one for Premier and one for Challenger—will follow the same structure as 2024's Premier draft and feature a dynamic bidding process.

Thus, teams will ‘bid’ on each draft slot to be able to select the players that will round out their rosters.

As mentioned before, Premier squads will have six members (three men and three women), while Challenger teams will stay at four players (two men and two women).

The Premier draft will take place on Sunday, Mar. 2, and the Challenger draft will take place the next day, on Mar. 3. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Season Layout and Schedule

There are ten regular season events, with each one taking place in an MLP team’s host city.

All teams will participate in five of those events and play a total of 25 matches during the regular season.

Here are the breakdowns for points earned from each match result, which are the same as last year:

• 3 Points: Regulation win (i.e.: 3-1 or 4-0 win; no DreamBreaker needed)
• 2 Points: DreamBreaker win (i.e.: 3-2 win)
• 1 Point: DreamBreaker loss (i.e.: 2-3 loss)
• 0 Points: Regulation loss (i.e.: 1-3 or 0-4 loss; no DreamBreaker needed)
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The Mid-Season Tournament will again feature all 22 MLP teams competing in separate Premier and Challenger brackets. Unlike last year, standings points are up for grabs for the victors:

•          First Place: Six standings points
•          Second Place: Four standings points
•          Third Place: Two standings points
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Playoffs

The top ten teams at the Premier Level (based on regular season points) will qualify for the playoffs.

The first and second rounds of the playoffs will take place in San Diego, CA with single elimination matches. These matches will be followed by the semifinals and finals, which will take place a few weeks later in New York City and follow the best two-out-of-three series format from the 2024 season.

At the Challenger level, all six teams will make the playoffs. The first round of the playoffs will also take place in San Diego with single elimination matches before the semifinals and finals are again held in New York City.

Trades and Waiver Wire

There are two open trade windows in 2025. Trade Window 1 is currently underway and will run through Feb. 15, so it will end before teams are required to submit which players they are dropping.

During Trade Window 1, teams can exchange either players or cash compensation up to $200,000.

Trade Window 2 will run from the end of Premier and Challenger free agency (Mar. 3) through July 14, the day after the conclusion of the Mid-Season Tournament and the final day to make trades in 2025.

During Trade Window 2, teams can exchange players, cash compensation up to $200,000, or waiver wire selections.

Speaking of waiver wire selections, there is now only one Waiver Wire Period for the whole season, compared to the three that teams had last year.

This will take place after MLP Salt Lake City, which is the fifth regular season event of the year; the Premier Waiver Period will be on June 11, and the Challenger Waiver Period will take place on June 12.

Rosters and Starting Lineups

We’ve already established that Premier teams will have now have six players, while Challenger teams will remain at four players.

Still, only four players from each team are allowed to compete in a given match. This extends to DreamBreakers, too, since players must have competed in doubles to be eligible to participate in the singles competition of a given match.

As for lineups, teams are required to submit their four-player lineups the day before their matches. This means that teams can switch their lineups from day-to-day, but not match-to-match.

The MLP season will begin in the Sunshine State, with the opening event set to run April 24-27 at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, FL.