Anna Leigh Waters Likely to Become Highest Paid Pickleball Athlete in 2024 With $3M Earnings

Pickleball‘s booming popularity has helped not just the sport reach the masses, but it means that the pro players are set for a massive paycheck with the continued rise of the game. Anna Leigh Waters began playing pickleball at a tender age when her family moved to Pennsylvania.

Waters was still very young when her family evacuated Florida because of Hurricane Irma in 2017. Back in the day, her grandfather introduced her to pickleball and she used to play the sport in her backyard, now she is set to become the highest-paid pickleball athlete in the world.

Anna Leigh Waters could earn approximately $3 million in the year 2024, according to her agent. What’s even more impressive is that she is still only 17, and the former tennis player has a long career ahead of her. Her agent Kelly Wolf told Forbes in a recent interview about the massive income rise of Waters, and how her on-field earnings and endorsement deals would rake in more money than other pickleball pros in the world.

“She will earn more than $3 million this year. She has become the face of pickleball and both the PPA Tour (Professional Pickleball Association) and MLP (Major League Pickleball) know that. There’s nobody else out there that has all these deals that she has right now. Anna Leigh is her own little cottage industry, to be quite honest,” Wolf was quoted as saying.

Waters, the number 1 ranked female athlete has surpassed her male counterpart, Ben Johns, who leads the PPA charts. He had earlier told CNBC in May that he could earn more than $2.5 million this year.

Anna Leigh Waters has a long list of endorsement deals as the face of the sport, she is associated with Fila, Paddletek, Shiseido, Cetaphil, Carvana, Biofreeze, and Pickleball4America among others.

The teenager turns 18 in January 2025, she was the youngest pickleball pro player at the age of 12 and stated that she still lives with her parents but earns seven figures in a year.

“I’m young, I’m still living with my parents, but I make over seven figures a year,” Anna Waters had told Forbes in an earlier interview.

Anna’s pro journey began when her mother asked her to partner in a pro tournament in Dallas six years ago, and since then she has witnessed a monumental rise. Despite a very hectic schedule, she completed her high school through online classes and managed to take out time for other aspects of life as well.

“But I also enjoy doing things outside of pickleball, like I love to cook, bake, hang out with my friends. But I think because I’ve been used to it, it’s just kind of a normal thing for me and anything else would be different,” said Leigh Waters.