PBA U.S. Open vs. Pickleball: Which Event Is Which?
The PBA U.S. Open is bowling. Identify the pickleball event and understand its reported 2026 totals of 3,750 players and more than 55,000 fans.
The PBA U.S. Open is a bowling tournament, not the US Open Pickleball Championships. PBA stands for Professional Bowlers Association. Its 2026 Go Bowling U.S. Open was a PBA Tour major held at Royal Pin Woodland in Indianapolis, with the championship round on March 8. (PBA background, completed tournament recap)
If you meant pickleball, the event’s 2026 name was the Franklin US Open Pickleball Championships. It ran April 11–18 at East Naples Community Park in Naples, Florida. These are separate competitions; their dates, results and participation figures are not interchangeable. (Pickleball registration and dates)
The pickleball US Open’s 2026 numbers
The pickleball tournament’s organizer reports the following figures for its completed 2026 event—not projections for a future edition. (Official event recap)
| Reported metric | 2026 figure | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Players | 3,750 | The organizer’s reported tournament player total |
| Fans | More than 55,000 | The organizer’s reported fan total for the event week |
| U.S. states represented by players | 50 | Geographic reach within the United States |
| Countries represented by players | 53 | International reach of the tournament field |
These are organizer-reported event totals, not estimates from a national participation survey. The recap does not explain how the player total was deduplicated or whether the fan figure represents unique people, repeat visits or another attendance measure. It is therefore safer to retain the source’s wording—“more than 55,000 fans”—than to relabel it “55,000 unique spectators.”
The distinction matters when comparing tournament size. A player total measures the competing field; a fan total describes the audience. Adding them together would not establish a unique-person total, because the source does not explain whether those populations overlap. Our comparison of the biggest pickleball tournaments separates player counts, attendance and record claims for the same reason.
What the figures say about pickleball growth
The 3,750-player total documents the scale of one tournament in Naples. Representation from all 50 states and 53 countries shows the field’s geographic breadth, but it does not measure how common pickleball is in those places.
It also cannot establish the number of U.S. pickleball players: the field includes international participants and captures tournament competitors rather than everyone who plays recreationally. For that question, use national participation estimates and their survey definitions, not an event entry total.
The next pickleball edition
As of October 14, 2026, the organizer lists April 17–24, 2027, in Naples for the next US Open Pickleball Championships. Those are upcoming pickleball dates, not the PBA bowling schedule. (Official US Open website)