Will Pickleball Broadcast Rights Score for QVC?

QVC reached an agreement to become the exclusive retail industry partner and broadcaster of USA Pickleball, the national governing body of the sport.

As “the first free streaming service to mix live streaming sports and commerce,” QVC said its new partnership will offer:

• Exclusive broadcast rights to select USA Pickleball Golden Ticket Tournaments throughout the year and the Nationals held each November
• Behind-the-scenes content
• On-site activities featuring program hosts and products
• A new pickleball shopping online storefront, On the Court, which includes official USA Pickleball-approved products

QVC, owned by Qurate Retail Group, noted that pickleball has been named the fastest-growing sport in the U.S. for three consecutive years, with over 5 million women over the age of 45 actively playing pickleball.

With pickleball proving to be popular with older adults, the multiyear partnership aligns with the launch earlier this year of QVC’s new brand platform, “Age of Possibility,” which celebrates the accomplishments of women over 50 and encourages them to “live their best lives and have the confidence to try new things.”

As part of the “Age of Possibility” initiative, QVC introduced the Quintessential 50 (Q50), a collective of inspiring women over the age of 50 that included Jennifer Dawson, who retired from a successful 30-year career as a tennis pro and coach and took up pickleball. At the age of 50, she became the world’s first-ever Triple Crown professional pickleball champion and continues to play at an elite level.

“We’re always looking to support women 50+, and pickleball is quickly becoming one of the most played sports among this age group,” said Annette Dunleavy, VP of brand marketing at QVC.

Other retailers have also sought to position themselves around the booming growth and broad appeal of the sport of pickleball, including Walmart partnering to provide Walmart+ members with free access to pickleball courts and Target introducing a limited-time pickleball collection with tennis brand Prince. Earlier this year, Lululemon also signed on as the official apparel partner for pickleball and tennis for Life Time, the largest operator of pickleball courts — both indoor and outdoor.

The QVC deal also showcases the media industry’s continued gravitation toward live sports, which attracts some of the largest audiences on both traditional TV and streaming platforms. The ability of live sports and live events in general to engage viewers in real time is particularly appealing to advertisers, as many streaming options enable couch potatoes to skip ads.

Amazon has been aggressively investing in live sports, recently partnering with Disney’s ESPN and Comcast’s NBC on media rights for NBA games after scoring deals with the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, and NASCAR. Mike Proulx, a research director at Forrester, said at the time the NBA deal was announced, “Live sports can draw big, captive audiences — the exact kind of audiences that brands crave in an era of fractured attention.”

The move into live sports comes as the real-time product demonstrations and limited-time offers that TV shopping was built on faces a heap of competition from shoppable livestreaming in various forms across social media.

Pickleball game broadcasts will build on QVC’s other experiments with live shows and events, including its “The Ultimate Gift Wrapping Challenge” series and actress Busy Philipps’ late-night talk show, “Busy This Week.”

“As you look at what those relevant, highly successful examples of media have been, it’s live sports,” Stacie Tedesco, vice president of streaming at Qurate Retail Group, told CNBC. “It was really that perfect next place to go.”