Pickleball Meets Purpose: ABS-CBN Foundation, Pickleball Hub Hold Perfect Match Tournament
On the face of it, the Perfect Match Pickleball Tournament was a day of doubles matches and celebrity exhibitions. Look a little closer and it was something more meaningful than that.
Held on 12 April 2026, from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., the one-day fundraising event brought together around 100 players at Pickleball Hub for a full day of competition across three divisions—The Masters, The Prime, and The Next Gen—catering to different age groups and skill levels. The proceeds go directly to the ABS-CBN Foundation, supporting programmes in child protection, disaster response, environmental conservation, education, and sustainable livelihood.
Sport as a vehicle for advocacy. In the Philippines’ growing pickleball community, it turns out to be a natural fit.
Why Pickleball, Why Now
The pairing of pickleball and the ABS-CBN Foundation was not accidental. The sport’s rapid rise in the Philippines—one of the fastest-growing markets for pickleball in Southeast Asia — gives it a reach that few other activities can match right now, and the Foundation’s leadership was deliberate about using that momentum.
“At the Foundation, we’re really making an effort to spread awareness about our advocacies, and pickleball is such a popular sport nowadays,” said ABS-CBN Foundation Managing Director Roberta Lopez Feliciano. “It’s just a way to get people interested and to know about what we do. We want to do activities that will pull people in.”
Pickleball Hub Co-Founder Rob Henares framed the collaboration in similarly direct terms. “Isa sa mga objectives namin dito sa Pickleball Hub is makatulong sa mga Pilipino. And this is our small little way of doing that. And since this is a growing sport, we can invite the players to join while the proceeds go directly to the Foundation.”
What Was on the Line at the Perfect Match Pickleball Tournament
The tournament’s proceeds will benefit five of the Foundation’s key programmes:
- Bantay Bata 163 for child protection and development
- Sagip Kapamilya for disaster response
- Bantay Kalikasan for environmental conservation
- Programa Genio for education initiatives
- GaLing Pamayanan for sustainable livelihood efforts.
The day’s highlight was the Kapamilya Celebrity Exhibition—exclusive to Kapamilya artists and event sponsors—which drew players including Marc Solis, Tirso Cruz III, director Andoy Ranay, Cherry Pie Picache, Maika Rivera, Nikki Valdez, and Jervis Manahan. Tournament Director Pardner Azarcon oversaw the competitive side of the day’s proceedings.
The Bigger Picture
What the Perfect Match Tournament demonstrated is something the Philippine pickleball community has quietly been proving for a while now: the sport’s social infrastructure—its accessibility, its built-in community character, its cross-generational appeal—makes it an unusually effective platform for causes that need people to show up and care.
A hundred players on the court. Proceeds going directly to programmes that protect children, support disaster victims, and build sustainable communities. That is not a small thing to pull off in a single day.
The sport is growing. The Foundation found a way to grow with it—and to use that growth for something that matters.
