Asia Pickleball Summit 2.0 Recap: Bigger, Louder, and More Business Than the Year Before

Two years ago, a small group of people decided Asia needed its own pickleball summit. Last week at Hextar World Empire City in Petaling Jaya, that bet paid off in full.

Asia Pickleball Summit 2.0 (APS 2.0) ran for two days on 6 - 7 June 2026. By any measure, it was a different event from its 2025 predecessor. Bigger hall. More brands. More countries. More people who flew in with business cards and left with deals.

The question going in was whether the energy would match the ambition. It did.

Bigger Than Last Year - Every Metric Said So

The numbers set the tone before anything else.

1,500 participants came through across two days. Fourteen countries were represented in the speaker lineup alone. There were 40 international speakers, 18 panels and talks, and 26 exhibition booths spread across a floor large enough to need a map.

For context: last year's APS was held at One World Hotel in Petaling Jaya. Good event, intimate crowd. APS 2.0 at Hextar World was a scale jump.

YB Dr. Mohammed Taufiq bin Johari, Malaysia's Minister of Youth and Sports, attended as Guest of Honour together with YB Dr. Kelvin Yii, the political Secretary Minister of Entrepreneur and Cooperatives Development & Board of World Pickleball Federation (WPF) - a signal that pickleball is no longer operating at the fringes of Malaysian sport policy. When a minister shows up and gives a speech, it means something.

The event was led by Ken Lim the organizing chairperson of APS2.0, co-organised by three Malaysian outfits that each brought serious infrastructure to the table: ReSkills, Athletes For Athletes, and Asia Pickleball TV.

On the Floor: 20+ Brands, Two Live Courts, Zero Dead Time

What made APS 2.0 physically different from last year was the exhibition setup.

Twenty plus brands had booths. The range covered equipment, tech, apparel, court facilities, media, and lifestyle. Featuring Mehau and others ran paddle testing sessions on-site - two full courts with Pickle roller mat laid down, so players could actually hit before making up their minds. That is the right call. You cannot sell a paddle off a pamphlet.

I got time on court with the Mehau paddle brand and had a proper conversation with one of their partners (Hope, is the name). The gear is worth paying attention to - more on that in a separate piece.

The live courts changed the energy of the whole floor. Instead of people drifting in and out of booths, there was always a game going. Brands kept traffic within the exhibition area. That is the kind of design thinking that separates a serious industry event from a trade show.

The Reclub Slide: What Tony's Data Revealed

The numbers Tony Ho put up stopped the room.

Reclub's data - tracking unique players, active clubs, and activities across Asia over the last 12 months to May 2026 - showed six markets that are no longer emerging. They are already here.

The Philippines leads in raw scale: 180k unique players (up 1,174%), 8,056 active clubs (up 1,610%), and 210k activities. Those are not start-up numbers. That is a community.

Malaysia sits at number two in players - 120k (up 142%) - but the more important number is activities: 302k. That is 92,000 more activities than the Philippines, from 60,000 fewer players. Per player, Malaysians are organizing and showing up more than anyone else in the region. The market is not just big. It is engaged.

Indonesia is the number the room kept coming back to. Seventeen thousand unique players may look modest, but the growth rate is +1,505%. Active clubs up 1,580%. Activities up 2,529%. Indonesia was almost invisible on this chart 12 months ago. That level of acceleration does not mean a market is growing - it means a market is arriving.

Singapore added 285% more players with activities up 572%. Vietnam grew steadily to 53k players. Hong Kong followed a similar explosive arc to Indonesia, with activities up 1,667%.

Three Things The Data Makes Clear

1. The Philippines and Malaysia are the twin anchors of Asian pickleball right now. Any brand, platform, or tournament wanting regional reach starts here.

2. Indonesia is the next wave. The operators who move there first will define what Indonesian pickleball looks like for the next decade.

3. Malaysia's engagement ratio is a competitive advantage the local industry should own. 302k activities from 120k players means Malaysians keep coming back. That sustains leagues, memberships, coaching ecosystems, and premium programming - not just weekend casual games.

The People in the Room

One thing no recap can fully capture is who showed up.

I spent time talking to Ibrahim Gul, Founder of OnCourt Malaysia, Raymond H'ng, who runs AFA, Jin Tan the ReSkills founder was the energy in the forum - the kind of person who makes large events feel like they were someone's passion project, because they were.

Kailash from Pulse Society and the moderator, steady, sharp, and kept panels on track.

Beyond the names most people know: there were tournament directors, club founders, gear distributors, and coaches in attendance. The density of decision-makers in that hall was real.

That is the actual value of an event like this. Not the keynotes - the hallways.

What APS 2.0 Made Clear

Pickleball in Asia is no longer in the "is this for real?" phase. The questions at APS 2.0 were operational: how do you scale a court business, how do you build a coaching pipeline, how do you attract institutional investment, how do you integrate youth programs into school systems.

Those are the questions of an industry that has already decided it is here to stay.

Malaysia hosted it. Malaysia organised it. And 1,500 people from 14 countries came to be part of it.

APS 3.0 has an interesting problem to solve: how do you top this?

For now, the bar has been set. The Asian pickleball industry knows where to find each other. That is not a small thing.