Celebrity-Backed Wiffle Ball Has Big-League Aspirations

Logan Rose was a bored 13-year-old when he started playing Wiffle ball in his Arizona backyard with friends and family during the COVID-19 pandemic. Six years later, the league he built has gone pro, featuring 10 teams with celebrity owners including actor Kevin Costner, 76ers and Devils part-owner David Adelman, and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk.

Big League Wiffle Ball started small. Rose and his friends would play in the backyard, film games, and post highlights and recaps on social media. By the following fall, there was a tournament at Scottsdale Stadium, where the San Francisco Giants hold spring training, with 25 teams.

For the next few years, Big League Wiffle Ball continued playing annual tournaments at Scottsdale Stadium. The league evolved—Rose and his friends developed a draft process and started to see people travel from out of state to compete. 

“It kind of took off,” Rose, now 19, tells Front Office Sports. “The tournament blew up.”

Anyone can register to join the league, and the athletes range from teens to 50-year-olds, Rose says. Last year, he “launched a test case” for making the league truly professional, with a series of tournaments across Arizona in the fall. 

Big League Wiffle Ball has been getting more attention, including from the Dallas Cowboys, who reached out to Rose and offered to host the league at AT&T Stadium. The Big League Wiffle Ball World Series was held there in December. Tournaments are typically livestreamed by the league, and the games are all posted on Big League Wiffle Ball’s YouTube after the fact.

Today, Big League Wiffle Ball has almost 84,000 followers on TikTok and more than 90,000 total followers across all social media platforms. 

As the league has grown, it’s begun attracting high-profile investors. Costner owns the Los Angeles Naturals, Adelman owns the Philadelphia Wiffle Club, and Vaynerchuk owns the New York Green Apples. Other celebrity owners include former Bucks owner Marc Lasry, whose team is the Las Vegas Scorpions, and comedy group Dude Perfect, which own the Dallas Pandas.

When the opportunity came across Vaynerchuk’s desk, he thought of a younger version of himself. “Rose is incredibly young and green, but so were so many things I invested in back in 2006 and 2007,” Vaynerchuk tells FOS. 

Today, through VaynerMedia and VaynerX, Vaynerchuk is invested in a host of emerging leagues, from 3-on-3 women’s basketball venture Unrivaled to Major League Pickleball, SailGP, and SlamBall. He says Big League Wiffle Ball has just as much potential to break through. “It fits my thesis, in that clips of crazy pitches and home runs are conducive to social media,” he says. “And everyone grew up playing Wiffle ball.”

In addition to owning the Green Apples, Vaynerchuk is an investor in the league itself. He and Rose declined to share financial details, but both feel the league has only just scratched the surface of its potential.

“I’m excited to help the league, but also, I very passionately would like to win a championship for New York,” Vaynerchuk says. “Eventually, this league will really start to cook and people will be coming from out of nowhere to apply to get drafted.”

For now, players do not receive salaries, although they do get their travel expenses fully covered, Rose says. He expects to begin paying athletes “in the near future.” The league draws revenue from deals with high-profile sponsors like the Arizona Diamondbacks, Gatorade, and aircraft company Pinnacle Aviation.

Rose is adamant the league is already made up of the best players in the world, and he says Wiffle ball is the perfect sport for the current generation because of its fast pace, especially compared to baseball. “Games are only an hour,” he says. “It’s a lot faster pace than baseball, and more action packed compared to some bigger sports.”

Armed with celebrity owners and a legion of social media followers, Vaynerchuk believes the league can ascend. “In 1987, you needed CBS, NBC, or ABC to say yes,” he tells FOS. “Today, with all the streaming services, YouTube, Twitch, etc., you can do it all yourself and gain traction, and all of a sudden, boom.”

Adelman noted during October’s inaugural FOS Asset Class summit in New York that there have been pro volleyball, pickleball, and sailing, so he sees opportunity for Big League Wiffle Ball to truly hit the big time. “Why not? We all enjoyed Wiffle ball as kids.”

Adelman also declined to disclose financials, but notes that Big League Wiffle Ball is the perfect example of an emerging sport that has a lower barrier to entry compared to major sports leagues like the NBA, MLB, NFL, and so on. “Not everybody can write the giant checks to pay $10 billion for the Lakers,” he said. “This gives you the ability to do something competitive—because we’re all competitive in business—and it’s affordable.”

Upcoming tournaments include one this January at UCLA, and another in February at the home stadium of the Frisco RoughRiders, a Double-A minor-league affiliate of the Texas Rangers. Just like past tournaments, there will be two divisions: competitive and recreational. Teams that aren’t part of the league are allowed to sign up for the competitive league and compete against the league’s permanent teams.

Rose says there are now about 25 states represented across the group of pro players. “We have a little over 50 of the best players in the entire country,” he says. Rose sees no reason his league can’t become the next pickleball. “The market for these smaller sports has really exploded. People want that other source of entertainment. Wiffle ball is a great way to provide that.”