The UPA-A Is Open-Sourcing a Counter-Attack on Counterfeit Paddle Brands

'This issue has evolved into an existential threat to both the game and the legitimate business of paddle manufacturing' – Jason Aspes, President, UPA-A

The United Pickleball Association of America (UPA-A), the governing body of U.S. professional pickleball, is taking the fight against counterfeit paddles directly to the source.

UPA-A President Jason Aspes sent an email to all sanctioned paddle manufacturers on November 27, punctuating the severity of the issue and laying out some steps the industry can take to start regaining control.

"Counterfeit and knockoff paddles have become an increasing concern within our sport, threatening player safety, brand integrity, and the long-term health of the pickleball industry," it said.

This issue has evolved into an existential threat to both the game and the legitimate business of paddle manufacturing.

By consolidating best practices into a shared, public document, the UPA-A hopes to bring not just awareness to the issue, but an informed plan to address it before it spirals out of control.

Regulatory Whac-A-Mole

As we reported just last month, the counterfeit pickleball paddle market is thriving.

Clones or fakes of popular paddles from respected brands like Selkirk, JOOLA, CRBN, Six Zero and more are littered across sites like Alibaba, Temu, and Facebook.

Sometimes they look like a cheap knockoff. Other times they appear to be identical.

But without fail, they're offered for prices that seem too good to be true because they are:

If you see a $333 Selkirk Boomstik for sale on Temu for $28, you're not getting a deal; you're getting a shoddily made knockoff masquerading as the real thing.

And yet, consumers are happy to buy them, knowingly or not.

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For paddle brands, it's become a massive game of regulatory Whac-A-Mole.

Immense amounts of time, money, and effort go into manufacturing innovative paddles at a mass scale.

When a counterfeit brand decides to sell a knockoff – often going so far as to copy exact model names or product images – the onus falls on the targeted brand to protect its work. That can be expensive and extremely time-consuming.

Some brands have even been forced to dedicate people entirely to protecting their IP from counterfeit sellers.

Stronger Together: A Unified Response

What Aspes and the UPA-A are proposing is a unified, open-sourced approach to better understand the scale of the problem and the best tactics to counter-attack the bad actors most at fault.

"This is a problem that can be more efficiently handled if we can do so in a consolidated manner as opposed to each brand having to navigate this unfortunate situation on their own," Aspes said in his email to paddle brands.

The UPA-A is in the process of compiling a list of specific steps, technologies, and practices paddle brands have implemented to help prevent counterfeiting, whether through authentication measures, supply chain controls, digital verification, or legal enforcement.

The resulting list will be compiled into a “Best Practices for Combating Counterfeit Paddles” document that will be be shared publicly with the industry.

"Our goal is to create a unified and proactive framework to help all brands safeguard their products and collectively protect the integrity of pickleball," said Aspes.

The "Best Practices" list is the first move in a larger coordinated campaign the UPA-A is levying against the increasing threat of counterfeit paddles.

Stay tuned for more.