Major League Pickleball names new CEO and COO to capitalize on surging popularity
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Major League Pickleball is getting new leadership as it looks to capitalize on the rise of America's fastest-growing sport at the professional level. The team-based pro pickleball league announced Wednesday it has named finance and media executive Julio DePietro as its chief executive officer and former NFL executive Bruce Popko as chief operating officer. "The additions of Julio and Bruce signify another landmark step forward in the evolution of Major League Pickleball," said MLP founder Steve Kuhn. DePietro and Popko will be tasked with steering the league at a time when the sport of pickleball has seen explosive growth at the amateur level. "We're pretty confident that we have both the platform and the product. We're at just the beginning of this hockey-stick growth," DePietro told CNBC. DePietro was formerly a partner at Citadel, where he worked alongside Kuhn for many years. In 2022, he purchased a stake in the Florida Smash MLP team, c