Make no mistake, the new documentary, Dreambreaker: A Pickleball Story, is not a story about Pickleball. It is a story about the business of pickleball and it will make you see the pro world in a whole new light.
The movie tells the stories of the so called “Pro-Pickleball” pioneers, two wealthy Texans, Steve Kuhn and Tom Dundon, battling it out to see who will reign over Professional Pickleball. As a movie about good intentions, bad intentions, greed and power, it is a compelling story with some humorous moments along the way.
This is not a celebration of the sport but an explanation, and a good one, of the power struggle that led to drama between the MLB and PPA. Watch it for the intrigue and the drama and you won’t be disappointed in the movie, but you may be disappointed in the state of affairs.
We first meet the founder of MLB, Steve Kuhn, an idealistic superfan, who ran a hedge fund and now just wants to “play pickleball and give to charity.” He says, “We have plenty of things in this country right now which are dividing them. No one’s talking about politics on a pickleball court. Everybody’s having fun.”
Sounds like we might at least dip a toe in the water of hearing about the love of the game and the players’ back stories. But, alas, what we learn instead is that professional pickleball players resemble Instagram influencers much more than they resemble any other sport’s professional athletes. The documentary exposes how pro players are lauded as much for their skills and win record as for their follower count and number of brand sponsors.
And the league and team owners seem more like venture capitalists throwing tons of money into a startup (sport) that has yet to make a profit and is struggling to get customers (viewers) in the hopes of hitting the jackpot.
Lee Whitwell, a professional player who was not drafted when the dust finally settled and the leagues merged, perfectly expressed the sentiment we felt after watching this film.
She said, “You’ve seen the evolution of pro sports before. We know that path that it’s going to take. It can either be smooth or bumpy, depending on the entities that are in the pro space, and how they decide to play nice in the sandbox or not. I hope none of that gets into the amateur recreational space, because it is a phenomenal space. And if that keeps going, then pickleball will survive.”
Luckily, we at the Fit Pickler know that every day in thousands of public parks across the country and across the globe, recreational players will do just that, keep that “phenomenal space” going, one game at a time.
To Watch DREAMBREAKER: A PICKLEBALL STORY Click HERE
