Major League Pickleball (MLP) season 2025 is all set for kick off on Thursday in Orlando, with every Premier level team set to compete over four days at the USTA National Campus.
The new season brings into effect three rule changes: the introduction of side-out scoring, the implementation of four waiver periods at the Premier level, and the debut of a “Home Court Advantage” rule.The first two are the most talked-about rules. Under the side-out scoring system, a point will only be awarded when the server wins the rally. Meanwhile, the “Four Waiver Periods” rule means that Premier level teams will have four opportunities to acquire players on the waiver wire.While these two rules are widely discussed and anticipation continues to grow, the third rule, “Home Court Advantage,” has not received as much traction as the former two.So, what does that mean? And how does it work?According to the 2025 MLP Rules Guide: “Teams designated as the ‘Home’ team for a match will be responsible for submitting their player lineup for each match as well as each game lineup for women’s, men’s, mixed 1, mixed 2 and the DreamBreaker by 10 PM local time the night before scheduled matches. ‘Home’ teams will be able to see the opponent’s lineups and respond to the gender, mixed, and DreamBreaker lineups.”So, the “home advantage” comes into play here, giving teams the ability to set strategy and tactics after getting to know their opponents’ lineups in advance. This opportunity, however, will not be given to the non-home team.In 2024, the pre-match coin toss used to decide who would react to the mixed doubles pairings and DreamBreaker lineups, as well as which team would serve first and which side each team would start on. In that process, each team had a chance to make two of those four decisions, with the team that won the coin toss earning the right to make the first selection. Most of the time, teams chose to react to the mixed doubles pairings of their opponents. The argument was that reacting teams, in theory, had a lot more control over how the match would end, as they could set the mixed doubles matchups accordingly.If a team was already leading 2-0 after gender doubles, they could arrange for their top mixed doubles pairing to face off against their opponent’s weaker mixed doubles pairing to attempt to secure a regulation victory. Then, the DreamBreaker rule also came into effect. In 2024, the team that got to react to the mixed doubles pairings had to be the first one to submit its DreamBreaker lineup.Now, the designated “home” team will be able to react to both the mixed doubles lineup and the DreamBreaker lineup, giving that squad a huge advantage even before the start of the match.Distribution of Home MatchesThis season, every team will play 25 matches while participating in five of the ten regular season events. This means that they will play an unequal number of home and away matches.The same formula did not really matter in 2024 since there was no significant advantage to being the home or away team. But the new rule will have serious ramifications for teams.The 25 matches will be divided into 13 home and 12 away matches or vice versa. So, if Team A plays 13 home matches and Team B plays 12 home matches, then Team A will have a huge advantage of an extra home match over Team B.This trend will unfold throughout the season as not all teams will have the same schedule. There will be differences in terms of the number of matches and fixtures.This season, the New Jersey 5s have the easiest schedule (measured by the average win percentage of their past and future opponents), while the Columbus Sliders have the toughest schedule.Among several factors that were considered, one factor was strong: New Jersey went on to make the playoffs, while Columbus finished near the bottom of the standings.While this schedule will be tested throughout the season, it will be interesting to see whether teams with an extra home match can really reap the benefits. MLP, this season, decided not to release the individual team schedules in advance.