Sansan launches Japan's first corporate-owned pickleball league, with ASICS and Mercari as team owners
Sansan has launched PX LEAGUE, a pickleball team league it calls Japan's first with corporate team owners, putting ASICS, TBS, Mercari and three others in charge of teams that will play out of Sansan's own Ikebukuro courts from October.
Sansan, the Tokyo-based business-card and data-management company, has launched PX LEAGUE, which it describes as Japan's first pickleball team league built around corporate team ownership, according to the company's official newsroom. The league sits under Sansan's 'Pickleball X' player-development project.
Six teams compete under six corporate owners: Sansan itself (Sansan Passions), ASICS (ASICS Sevens), Globeride (GLOBERIDE TEALS), TBS Television (TBS Lucky Cats), transcosmos (transcosmos NEXUS) and Mercari (Mercari Pickleball Club). Each roster carries six players, three men and three women, competing across five formats — men's and women's singles and doubles, plus mixed doubles — in a mixed-gender team format, the company said.
Matches are held at Sansan Pickleball Court Ikebukuro, the company's own facility, with the season opening October 14 and running through five regular-season rounds plus playoffs to April 2027. Sansan said it received around 250 player applications and that the Japan Pickleball Federation has endorsed the league, which counts 23 sponsor and partner companies in total.
Corporate team ownership is a new lever in Japan's pickleball push, layered onto a wave of court openings at hotels, resorts and city clubs over the past year. Putting ASICS and Mercari in the owner's seat, rather than just as sponsors, ties the sport more tightly to each company's own consumer base — a cheaper way to build a retail-adjacent community than opening a store.