Major League Pickleball Announces 2025 Updates

Major League Pickleball (MLP) owners meetings took place Monday, January 20th and Tuesday, January 21st. The owners, GMs, UPA staff, and other personnel met to finalize all the details for the 2025 MLP Season.

To provide some context on how much more efficient MLP is this year, today is January 22nd. There are 93 days left until MLP 2025 kicks off the season on April 24th. Last year, the 2024 Competition Structure was announced on May 7th - TWO DAYS prior to the season starting. With over three months before play starts, we are already starting off 2025 with a bang!

The 2025 MLP by Margaritaville season schedule will consist of 14 total weeks of events

• Ten (10) Regular Season events (April-August), all hosted in MLP team markets for the first time
• 2025 Mid-Season Tournament (July)
• Two (2) weekends for 2025 MLP Playoffs (August)
• 2025 MLP Cup (November)

ALL teams will participate in five of the 10 MLP regular season events. Every team will play a total of 25 matches throughout the 2025 regular season. Each team will usually play between four and six matches per event they play.

There are MANY updates to the MLP format for 2025, and I want to break this article up into a few different sections:

• Important Dates
• Player Personnel and Roster Construction
• Keepers and free agency draft
• Scoring, Scheduling, and Standings
• Playoffs

Important Dates

Wednesday, January 22nd - Sunday, February 15th - trade window is open

This gives teams 25 days to work through all possible pre free agency trade options.

Sunday, February 16th - All teams declare free agents and keepers - trade window closes

Teams have to declare their keepers and then have two weeks to prepare for the free agency draft

Sunday, March 2nd - Premier Level Free Agency Draft

Monday, March 3rd - Challenger Level Free Agency Draft & trade window re-opens

April 24th - April 27th - First MLP event of 2025 takes place in Orlando at the USTA National Campus, hosted by the Orlando Squeeze

Monday, June 9th - MLP notifies teams of waiver period order

Wednesday, June 11th - Premier Level Waivers

In 2024, there were four waiver periods. In 2025 there is only one waiver period. 

Thursday, June 12th - Challenger Level Waivers

Monday, July 14th - 10pm is the trade deadline (this is the day after the Mid-Season Tournament)

Player Personnel and Roster Construction

There are 16 teams in Premier Level and 6 in Challenger Level

In 2024, there were 12 teams in Premier Level and 10 teams in Challenger Level. The four semi-finalists in the Challenger Level playoffs were granted promotion to Premier Level this year. Those four teams were the Chicago Slice, SoCal Hard Eights, Miami Pickleball Club, and Atlanta Bouncers. After the 2025 season, the six Challenger Level teams will be promoted to Premier Level. In 2026, all 22 franchises will be in the Premier Level.

Premier Level Rosters Expanding to Six (6) Players

Premier Level rosters are expanding to six players, and there must be three women and three men. This is a huge change from only having four players on a team to six. Note, this change is only for Premier Level teams - Challenger Level teams will still maintain four roster spots. 

Players that are not exclusively signed with the UPA are not allowed to play MLP in 2025

In 2024, if a team drafted or acquired an unsigned UPA player, it cost them $20,000. $10,000 went to the league and $10,000 went to the player as a salary. Players acquired in the middle of the season had this dollar amount prorated based on how many events were left in the season.

The league hasn’t really made announcements as to who has or has not signed a UPA contract since the end of the tour wars, so it is a little difficult to know who is or is not signed.

Note: with the 16 Premier Level teams having six roster sports and the six Challenger Level teams having four roster spots, MLP will have 120 players in 2025. In 2024, there were only 88. So the number of MLP roster spots has increased by 32. By my count (I could be off by one or two) there were 14 players on rosters at the end of 2024, who are not signed to the UPA, and therefore not eligible to play MLP in 2025.

Lineups must be submitted to MLP the day before play

All teams must set their daily lineup the day before play. The exact process of how each team needs to set their lineup will be explained at a later date. 

Only one waiver period for 2025

• Each level’s waiver order will be shared with teams on Monday, June 9, with the selection order determined by points earned per match played to date
• Teams can make up to two (2) waiver selections; Round 1 and Round 2 selection order will stay the same
  • Only players under UPA contract are eligible to be claimed on waivers; teams may no longer claim a player not under UPA contract
  • Players that were not drafted in 2024 or signed during 2025 MLP Free Agency - but were selected on waivers - will not be eligible to be kept in future years
• Waiver slots can be utilized in trades or used to make a selection by the teams

Loaning players is no longer allowed

With the expanded roster sizes, Challenger Level teams are no longer allowed to loan their players to Premier Level teams. If a player is injured, a team can just sub in another player.

Since Challenger Level rosters are staying the same at four, there will still be on-site alternates at all the events. If a Challenger Level player is injured during an event, the Challenger Level team can choose a replacement from the on-site alternates. 

In the case of an injury during an event, a Premier Level team is to use their bench player of the same gender as an injury replacement

In this scenario, the injury replacement must play in all team matches for the remainder of that day, in addition to all team matches on the following day.

Injured Reserve roster slot still available

If a player is placed on IR, a team can pick up a UPA signed player that is currently not on an MLP roster to replace that player. A player placed on IR cannot play for the remainder of the season. The IR slot is now really only for players with season ending injuries. If a player is injured, but will be back in two events, the team will probably just keep them rostered, and play those two events with the remaining team members.

Keepers & Free Agency Draft

Player Keepers

Players must meet these requirements in order to be eligible to be kept by a team for the 2025 MLP season: was one of the 88 originally drafted players by either a Premier or Challenger team in 2024, ended the 2024 MLP season on a team roster, AND is under UPA contract through at least 2025.

Teams may keep eligible players under the following parameters: two (2) players can be kept for up to three (3) years and one (1) player can be kept for up to two (2) years. For the sake of clarity, every team will be required to drop at least one player from their 2024 season-ending roster by the keeper deadline of Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025.

Again, the keeper deadline date is February 16th - all teams need to have their keepers/drops in to the league by this date.

A player’s draft year counts as the first year of their keeper status (i.e., 2024 draftees kept for three years would play for their team in 2024, 2025, and 2026).

Players that were drafted and traded - either during the 2024 MLP season or the 2024-2025 MLP off season - and meet all of the above eligibility requirements CAN be kept by their acquiring team (i.e., Jane Doe was drafted by a Challenger Level team and traded to a Premier Level team during the 2024 season; Jane may be kept by the team that traded for her). This means a player like Rafa Hewett, who was drafted by the California Black Bears and then traded to the Las Vegas Night Owls, can be kept by the Night Owls.

A player that was drafted in 2024, waived during the season, later claimed by and finished the 2024 season with a new team, and is under UPA contract through at least 2025 can not be kept. Once a player was dropped by a team via the waivers - they are ineligible to be kept. This affects players like Martin and Tammy Emmrich, who were both dropped by their original teams and then subsequently picked up. Their teams CANNOT keep them.

All 2024 season waiver wire pickups of players that were not originally drafted are not eligible to be kept and can count as a team’s dropped player. Quang Duong is the best example of this. The Texas Ranchers cannot keep Quang Duong because they picked him up in the first waiver period in 2024.

Scoring, Scheduling, and Standings

Scoring is drastically changing for 2025 - Side out scoring is here for the first time in MLP

Games go to 11 points and a team must win by two.

Dreambreakers will still be played to 21, and remain rally scoring, win on your serve, and win by two.

25 Total Matches over 5 Events for Each Team

Each team will play a total of 5 regular season events - in addition to the mid-season tournament and the MLP Playoffs (for those that qualify). In order to make the competition format fair, each team will play exactly 25 matches during their five regular season events.

Teams can trade three things of value in 2025

• Players - This is the obvious one - and trades are allowed to be made from Premier to Premier, Premier to Challenger, and all of those types of combinations
• Cash - Up to $200,000 in cash compensation is allowed in trade propositions - all of that money goes to the team who made the trade (no trade money goes to the league or the player)
• Waiver Wire Slot - If a team wants to pick up a waiver wire player, but they know their waiver slot is high because they have a lot of points, they could send cash to a team who isn’t going to use their waiver slot and move up in the upcoming waiver wire selection. Waiver wire slots can only be traded within the same Level - Premier to Premier or Challenger to Challenger. Additionally, Waiver wire slots can only be traded within that particular year. Teams cannot trade for another team’s waiver wire slot in 2026 during 2025.

Points Structure Stays the same for Year End Standings with one BIG exception

The points structure that was introduced in 2024 is the exact same for 2025. It goes as follows:

• 3 Points for a win in regulation (either win the match 3-1 or 4-0)
• 2 Points for a win in a Dreambreaker
• 1 Point for a loss in a Dreambreaker
• 0 Points for a loss in regulation

The Mid-Season Tournament will now have regular season standings implications. The winner of the Mid-Season Tournament will receive six standings points, second place will receive four regular season standings points, and the third place team will receive two standings points.

Premier & Challenger Level Free Agency will be operated by dynamic bidding 

• Team free agent spending will not be capped; however, there will be a minimum of 10,000 draft points for every draft slot

• Premier Free Agency will have teams will draft a roster of six on Sunday, Mar. 2
  • All Premier Level teams will acquire between three (3) and six (6) players during Free Agency - depending on how many players they keep - and all teams must maintain a roster of three (3) men and three (3) women at all times

• Challenger Free Agency will take place on Monday, Mar. 3 - the day following Premier Free Agency - and teams will fill out their rosters of four; for the sake of clarity, Challenger teams will not have rosters of six
  • All Challenger Level teams will acquire between one (1) and four (4) players during Free Agency - depending on how many players they keep - and all teams must maintain a roster of two (2) men and two (2) women at all times

• All players acquired via 2025 Free Agency will be eligible to be kept for up to three years, with 2025 counting as Year One
  • Players acquired via 2025 Free Agency can be kept in eligible future years for a dollar amount equal to the number of Free Agency points spent on their selection (note that this is different from the 50% rule for 2024 drafted player keepers)

Playoffs

Premier Level 

The top 10 Premier Level teams will qualify for the playoffs and be seeded, 1-10.

Round 1 - San Diego - August 15 

ONE Single Elimination Match

The 7 seed will be able to choose their opponent - either the 9 or 10 seed. The 7 seed also gets to choose all four coin toss selections (side, serve or return, which gender doubles goes first, and react in mixed doubles) AND they get to react in the Dreambreaker. The 8 seed will play whichever team the 7 seed didn’t choose, and the 8 seed gets all the benefits the 7 seed had. The two teams that advance will be re-seeded as the 7 and 8 seeds, respectively, according to regular season standings.

Round 2 - San Diego - August 16 & 17

The top 6 seeds and the winners of Round 1 will face off in the best two out of three match series. The 1 seed gets to pick their opponent from the 5–8 seeds, and they get all four coin toss options, plus react in the Dreambreaker, in the first two matches. If a series goes to a third match, regular coin toss rules apply.

Semi-Finals - New York - August 22 - 24

This is exactly the same as the 2024 rules. The best seed gets to choose their opponent from the worst two remaining seeds. They get all four coin toss options and react in a Dreambreaker for the first two matches. If a series goes to a third match, regular coin toss rules apply.

Finals - New York - August 22 - 24

The best seed gets all four coin toss options and react in a Dreambreaker for the first two matches. If the series goes to a third match, regular coin toss rules apply.

Challenger Level 

All six teams will make the Challenger Level playoffs.

Round 1 - San Diego - August 15

ONE Single Elimination Match

The 3 seed will be able to choose their opponent - either the 5 or 6 seed. The 3 seed also gets to choose all four coin toss selections (side, serve or return, which gender doubles goes first, and react in mixed doubles) AND they get to react in the Dreambreaker. The 4 seed will play whichever team the 3 seed didn’t choose, and the 4 seed gets all the benefits the 3 seed had. 

Semi-Finals - San Diego - August 16  & 17

This is exactly the same as the 2024 rules. The best seed gets to choose their opponent from the worst two remaining seeds. They get all four coin toss options and react in a Dreambreaker for the first two matches. If a series goes to a third match, regular coin toss rules apply.

Finals - New York - August 22 - 24

The best seed gets all four coin toss options and react in a Dreambreaker for the first two matches. If the series goes to a third match, regular coin toss rules apply.

Biggest Takeaways

Moving to side out scoring is a huge deal for MLP. If I had to guess, I think this is related to gambling and being able to create accurate betting lines.

Moving to six players in Premier Level is huge. GMs and coaches are going to have more strategic decisions to make. 

Not allowing unsigned UPA players is a big deal. There are around 15 players from the 2024 MLP season that are now not going to be eligible to play in 2025. With roster sizes expanding, this could water down the talent pool significantly, especially on the women’s side.

The 2025 MLP Season is set to be the best ever and I am looking forward to it!