Partners: Inside Pickleball’s Most Volatile Season
By The Pickleball Weekly Editorial Team • Apr 15, 2026 • 7 min read
This isn’t the game you think it is
From the outside, professional pickleball looks controlled. Clean points. Fast hands. Quick resets. A handshake at the net.
What PARTNERS reveals is something far less predictable, a sport shaped as much by relationships and decisions as it is by what happens during a match.
It is a sport built on proximity. Players travel together, stay in the same hotels, practice on adjacent courts, and move through the same social circles week after week. There is no real separation between competition and daily life. Conversations carry. Decisions linger. Friendships form.
Then they step on the court, and everything changes.
With more than 25 players, coaches, and executives at the center of the story, the six-part reality and sports crossover docuseries captures a full season of the tour at a moment when the sport is expanding rapidly and the stakes are rising just as quickly.
PARTNERS is produced by Shutterstock Studios in association with Wavelength and in partnership with the Carvana® Professional Pickleball Association Tour. The series premiers May 5, 2026 across Prime Video in the U.S., the Carvana® PPA Tour YouTube channel, and PickleballTV.
Filmed Inside the Tour
The production follows the tour, not just the matches. Over an extended filming period, crews embedded themselves across multiple stops on the Carvana® PPA Tour, capturing the rhythm of the sport both on and off the court, a first for the PPA. The series includes footage from major tournament locations such as Dallas, Texas, during the World Championships, along with additional stops in Palm Springs, San Clemente, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Daytona Beach.
These locations provide more than visual backdrop. They reflect the scale of the sport’s growth and the environments where its most important moments now take place. Dallas, in particular, becomes a focal point. The World Championships setting brings together the top players under the highest pressure, where titles, rankings, and reputations are decided in real time.
The cameras extend beyond tournament play. They move into training sessions, travel routines, and private environments, capturing the full scope of what it means to compete professionally in a sport that is still defining its structure.
A Season Under Pressure
The timing of PARTNERS is not incidental. It documents a season where the trajectory of the sport begins to shift.
Less than five years after its founding, the Carvana® PPA Tour has grown into a professional circuit with more than 170 contracted players competing across 25 annual events, with prize money reaching into the tens of millions of dollars. The sport itself is now played in 78 countries, with nearly 20 million players in the U.S. alone.
That growth has created opportunity, but it has also introduced pressure. Players are no longer competing only for titles. They are competing for contracts, visibility, and long-term position within a sport that is still evolving.
“The Carvana® PPA Tour continues to showcase professional pickleball on the world’s biggest stages, and PARTNERS gives the world a front-row seat to everything that goes on behind the scenes,” said Connor Pardoe, Founder and CEO of the Carvana® PPA Tour. “The drama, the competition, the passion and much more.”
The series captures that tension without reducing it. It shows a league moving forward while still defining what professional pickleball will ultimately become.
The Players Driving the Story
At the center of PARTNERS are the players whose decisions shape the tour.
Anna Leigh Waters stands as the dominant force in the women’s game. Still in her teens, her position at the top is established, but her influence extends beyond performance. Decisions around partnerships and competition ripple through the field, forcing others to respond.
On the men’s side, Ben Johns faces a defining shift. After years of success alongside his brother, he moves in a different direction, forming a partnership with Gabe Tardio. The decision introduces both opportunity and uncertainty, reflecting how even the most established players must adapt.
Around them, the competitive landscape continues to shift. Anna Bright pushes toward the top position with a direct and aggressive approach, while Catherine Parenteau and Rachel Rohrabacher form a new pairing that quickly becomes relevant.
Additional PARTNERS’ storylines follow players such as Federico Staksrud and Hayden Patriquin as they compete at the highest level in Dallas, along with veterans and rising players working to establish themselves in an increasingly competitive field.
Each storyline reflects the same reality. Stability is limited, and adaptation is constant.
When the Personal Becomes Part of the Game
What separates PARTNERS from traditional sports coverage is its willingness to follow the personal side of the sport as closely as the competitive one.
Players do not operate in isolation. They train together, socialize together, and often build relationships that extend beyond the court. That environment creates connection, but it also creates tension. The same players sharing time off the court are often competing against each other the next day.
The series captures those dynamics directly. Relationships, rivalries, and personal decisions are not treated as separate from the sport. They are shown as part of it, influencing performance in ways that are often unseen.
According to Executive Producer Mark Infante of Shutterstock Studios, that level of access was central to the Partners project.
“The access we received from the Carvana® PPA Tour changed everything, placing us directly within the action—close to the players, decisions and the dynamics,” Infante said. “We’re telling real stories that core fans will recognize immediately, and new audiences can jump in without needing a primer.”
The result is a view of professional pickleball that feels less like coverage and more like participation.
Growth Brings Complexity
Partners does not avoid the reality of what growth brings.
As investment increases and sponsorship becomes more integrated into the sport, the environment shifts. Opportunities expand, but so do expectations. Players must balance performance with visibility, partnerships with results, and long-term positioning with immediate success.
“Our partnership with the PPA has given us a front-row seat to one of the fastest-growing sports in the country,” said Ryan Keeton, Chief Brand Officer at Carvana®. “PARTNERS offers a deeper look at the players and stories driving that growth.”
The sport is no longer defined only by participation. It is shaped by the systems forming around it, and by the decisions being made within those systems.
More Than the Matches
Matches remain the focal point, but they are not the full story. What happens between matches shapes what happens during them, and the outcome of a decision off the court can carry as much weight as a moment within a rally.
The PARTNERS series brings those elements together without separating them. Conversations, decisions, and relationships all move forward into competition, creating a version of the sport that is more complex than it appears from the outside.
It does not explain pickleball. It shows how it functions from within.
What Comes Next
By the end of the six-part docuseries, the takeaway is not a single storyline or outcome. It is a broader understanding of where the sport stands.
Professional pickleball is no longer just growing. It is evolving. It is becoming more competitive, more visible, and more structured, while still holding onto the community-driven foundation that brought it to this point.
For the first time, that full picture is visible.
What PARTNERS ultimately reveals is not just the game itself, but the environment surrounding it. The people, the decisions, and the pressures that define it.
And in doing so, it shows a sport that is no longer just being played.
It is being understood.
The Pickleball Editorial Team produces in-depth reporting and cover features that examine the sport’s growth, innovation, competition, and culture. With contributors who understand both the strategy of the game and the forces shaping its future, the team is committed to telling the full story of modern pickleball.
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