PPA Tour Takes Over Mesa’s 41-Court Pickleball Campus After Event Drew Nearly 19,000 Fans
- The Carvana PPA Tour is taking over year-round operations of all 41 pickleball courts at Arizona Athletic Grounds in Mesa, renaming the facility the PPA Campus and promising a “significant capital investment” in shade, seating and amateur programming.
- The 2025 Carvana Mesa Cup drew 18,965 fans across six days and sold out from Thursday through Sunday, generating more than $300,000 in ticket revenue and becoming the largest pickleball event the facility has hosted.
- The 41-court campus sits on land with a rocky financial past: the complex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023 with $366.7 million in liabilities before a new ownership group bought it out of bankruptcy for $25.8 million.
A Pro Tour Just Got A Permanent Home Court
The place where professional pickleball has already produced some of its biggest crowds is about to become something closer to a national headquarters. The Carvana Professional Pickleball Association Tour and Arizona Athletic Grounds announced a multi-decade partnership on September 17 that hands the PPA control of year-round pickleball operations at the sprawling Mesa, Arizona sports complex. The 41-court facility now carries a new name: the PPA Campus at Arizona Athletic Grounds. For a sport whose professional tour has spent most of its existence bouncing between temporary tournament sites, a dedicated, purpose-built campus is a meaningfully different kind of commitment, one that reaches well past the players competing this week and into training, junior development and everyday amateur play.
More Than A Name On A Sign
Under the agreement, the PPA Tour takes over year-round operations of AAG’s pickleball facility, which includes 41 courts, four medal courts with spectator seating and a covered Championship Stadium court that seats close to 2,000 fans. The Tour is also putting what both organizations describe as a “significant capital investment” into the campus. The improvements named specifically are additional shade and seating, upgrades players and fans will notice quickly in the Arizona heat. Beyond that, the deal points to more tournaments, year-round training for professionals and amateurs, junior programming and other initiatives neither side has detailed yet.
For the PPA, the arrangement solves a problem most traveling professional sports tours never get to solve: a large-scale, permanent campus it can program on its own schedule all year, rather than renting court time from a city or a private club for a single weekend.
Seven Months From A Two-Event Guarantee To Full Control
This deal escalates an already fast-moving relationship. In February 2026, AAG and the PPA agreed to a deal guaranteeing the facility at least two PPA Tour events annually through 2028, including the Carvana Mesa Cup. Seven months later, that arrangement has grown into a multi-decade partnership and a full operational takeover of the property’s pickleball footprint.
The numbers explain the acceleration. The 2025 Carvana Mesa Cup drew 18,965 fans over six days, which the PPA said made it the largest pickleball event in the facility’s history. Ticket revenue topped $300,000, and every session from Thursday through Sunday sold out. At the time, the PPA called it the Tour’s most successful event outside the World Championships in Dallas. AAG is hosting two PPA Tour events in the 2026 calendar year, including the Veolia Arizona Open that ran September 14 through 20.
“Our focus on partnering with the top sports organizations in the U.S. is unwavering,” AAG CEO Mike Burke said in announcing the agreement. “With the PPA’s incredible growth and programming expertise, and AAG’s state-of-the-art facilities and commitment to white-glove service, I firmly believe that the PPA Campus at Arizona Athletic Grounds will have an enormously positive impact on the local, regional, and national pickleball community.”
PPA founder and CEO Connor Pardoe pointed to the Tour’s track record in Mesa specifically. “Year after year, the success of Carvana PPA Tour events at Arizona Athletic Grounds underscores just how amazing the facility, its staff and the broader Mesa pickleball community are,” Pardoe said. There’s a bit of symmetry built into the deal, too: Mesa hosted the very first PPA Tour event back in February 2020, nearly two years before Arizona Athletic Grounds itself opened.
The Complex Survived A Bankruptcy To Get Here
The facility’s path to becoming a PPA showcase has been anything but smooth. The property began as Legacy Sports Park, a roughly $250 million project built on 320 acres of the former General Motors Proving Grounds in southeast Mesa, with construction breaking ground in 2020 on what was pitched as one of the largest youth sports and entertainment destinations in the country.
Before it opened, the complex struck a naming-rights deal and became Bell Bank Park, debuting in January 2022 with basketball and volleyball courts, soccer and lacrosse fields, baseball and softball diamonds and the 41 pickleball courts at the center of today’s news. The business ran into trouble almost immediately. By October 2022, the facility had defaulted on bond payments. Bell Bank walked away from its naming-rights deal, and the property reverted to the name Legacy Park in April 2023.
The bigger blow came weeks later. Legacy Cares, the nonprofit that owned the facility, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 1, 2023. Court filings at the time listed roughly $366.7 million in liabilities against $242.3 million in assets. The complex stayed open while a buyer was sought, and in December 2023, AZ Athletic Associates LLC completed a $25.8 million acquisition out of bankruptcy, rebranding the property Arizona Athletic Grounds.
The turnaround has been real. AAG reported more than 2.8 million visitors in 2025, a 16 percent increase over the year before, with visitors arriving from all 50 states. Pickleball has become one of the campus’s most visible draws, which is exactly the piece the PPA is now taking over.
What Players And Fans Could See By Next February
The first real test of the new campus arrives fast: the 2027 Carvana Mesa Cup is scheduled for February 15 through 21 at Arizona Athletic Grounds, less than five months after the partnership was announced. Neither organization has released a detailed construction timeline, so it’s too early to assume the full transformation lands by then, but the announcement specifically says many of the new initiatives are expected to launch in early 2027. That points to the Mesa Cup as the first real showcase, with additional shade and seating the most visible early changes, alongside the possibility of new branding, revised fan areas, expanded amateur experiences or details on year-round academies and training programs.
Why A Recreational Player Should Care Who Owns A Pro Facility
Deals like this one matter to more than the pros competing on television. When a tour takes direct control of a facility instead of just renting it for a weekend, the programming that follows tends to widen out past the tournament bracket. AAG’s announcement specifically names junior development and amateur programming alongside professional training, meaning the same 41 courts hosting Connor Pardoe’s Tour this month are also being positioned as a place recreational players and young competitors can train, take lessons or compete without a pro ticket. That kind of dual-purpose facility, built for both spectacle and everyday play, is becoming a template other cities and investors are watching as they decide where to put their own racket sport dollars.
Six years ago, Mesa was just another stop on a young tour’s calendar. Now it’s becoming a permanent piece of the PPA’s infrastructure, and pickleball players well outside the pro ranks stand to gain court access and programming from that shift.
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Image: Depositphotos
