MLP 2024 Draft Dates Announced, Changes Made to Challenger Format
Last Edited
Jun 06 2024
Category
News
Pro pickleball's team-style league, Major League Pickleball (MLP), will hold their 2024 Drafts for both Premier Level and Challenger Level early next month.
The news comes just about a week after the league announced their 2024 schedule of events.
The Premier Level draft will take place Tuesday, April 2 at 6 p.m. ET. The Challenger Level draft will go down on Wednesday, April 3 at 6 p.m. ET.
Both drafts will be held remotely.
Differences between Premier and Challenger drafts
The Premier Level draft of 48 players will, as always, feature four players per team with two men and two women on each roster.
Here's how the Premier process works:
- Interested teams submit bids for the first overall draft slot
- Teams may bid more than once
- The team with the largest financial commitment has three minutes to select any player from the available player pool
- The process will repeat for each pick until 48 players have been selected
"A unique dynamic bidding process will be used and teams will have a budget to spend on a total of four winning bids to develop their roster," according to an MLP press release.
Meanwhile, the Challenger team draft is a bit different this year.
This time, 72 total players will be drafted: six per team, three men and three women, allowing for lineup decisions and substitutions during events.
A snake format, where the draft order will reverse in even-numbered rounds, will be used for this draft.
Draft slots will be randomly assigned at least one week before the draft and teams will have three minutes to make each pick once they are on the clock, MLP says in their release.
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