While it resembles tennis and table tennis, pickleball has specific rules, paddles and court dimensions. The court is 44 feet (13.4m) long and 20 feet (6.1m) wide, and the paddle is larger than the one used in table tennis. The hard plastic ball used in pickleball produces less bounce than tennis balls.

On each side of the net is a 7-foot area (2.1 m) known as the non-volley zone (or the kitchen), where the ball must bounce before it is hit. The rules specify side-out scoring, where only the server can score a point. The minimal amount of bounce, the non-volley zones, and the underhanded stroke with which all serves are made, give the game a dynamic pace.

Pickleball is not an Olympic sporting event and is not yet represented in the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF). There are two pickleball federations with multiple national members, the International Federation of Pickleball (IFP) and the World Pickleball Federation (WPF). Both the IFP and WPF are pursuing efforts to have pickleball featured as an Olympic sport, possibly as a demonstration sport.

The IFP was established in 2010 by the USA Pickleball Association to serve as the World Governing Body of pickleball. The IFP had 70 member nations at the end of March 2022. The WPF was established in 2018 and had 37 member nations as of November 2022.

Sunil Valavalkar introduced pickleball in India in 2006 after playing the sport for the first time in Canada in 1999. All India Pickleball Association (AIPA) is the National governing body of pickleball in India. AIPA claims to have 16 affiliated state units and around 3000 registered players.