Roots in Pickleball, Badminton and Table Tennis:
Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the US at 12% /yr*. Currently 2.8 million players in US* and is easy for beginners to acquire due to short length paddle and low body impact. A big plus for Pickleball is that it may be played outside or inside! A big minus for players (coming from other racquet sports) is the feel and sound of the hard Pickleball paddle compared with a strung racquet.
Tennis boasts 17.9 million players in the U.S. It takes a lot more time to gain the skills to keep a rally going in tennis than it does for Pickleball or Pickleminton.
There are 16 million table tennis players in the U.S. while China has 300 million, of which 10 million are competitive players. Table Tennis requires much less space at the recreational level than other racquet sports, and somewhat less space at the professional level. Two table tennis tables cold placed one each on either side of a badminton court comfortably (half a badminton court is 22ft X 20 ft not counting any outer spacing beyond the court boundaries.
There are 100 million badminton players in China, however just 1.3 million in the U.S. Badminton is less popular in the U.S. than in Asian and European countries, despite it’s high speed rallies, intense physical demand, challenging strategy, and dynamic variety during play.
We would like to acknowledge the unofficial predecessor game:
Pickleminton Phys ED activity module (Intermediate 3-5) By: Lisa Kushner, Briana Sullivan, Deedi Brown, Mike Smith, and Aaron Hart. Post was by AAron Hart in 2017: https://openphysed.org/curriculum_resources/pickleminton
This prior version however does not utilize the strung shorty racquet or oversize shuttle which are the hallmarks of official PickleMinton.
The first launch of Official PickleMinton is at Smashville Badminton in Pottstown, PA!