Pickleball tournament going on now in GR, so how is the DeVos family connected?

The annual pickleball tournament that began in 2018 in Grand Rapids, also known as the Beer City Open, is taking place at the Belknap Park until Sunday, July 12.

Pickleball began as a sport for older adults because it required less running than tennis, but has not become a massive billion dollar sport that has it’s own professional league.

The main sponsor of the Beer City Open is AHC Hospitality, is a management company owned by the DeVos family and includes hotels, resorts, and restaurants. On the Beer City Open website it lists AHC Hospitality as the title sponsor and the official hotel partner, with links to the four DeVos-owned hotels in downtown Grand Rapids – JW Marriot Grand Rapids, AC Hotel Downtown Grand Rapids, Amway Grand Plaza Hotel and the Courtyard by Marriot Downtown.

The the thing about the DeVos family is that they are strategic, which is why they have been a major force in the creation of Grand Action 2.0, which brought us the Van Andel Arena, the Downtown Market, the Amphitheater and soon to be open Amway Soccer Stadium. All of these projects have relied on millions of public dollars, plus they increase tourism, thus the need for hotels, like the ones the DeVos family owns.

However, this is not the only connection the DeVos family has to pickleball. In 2024, WZZM 13 reported that Ryan DeVos, one of the son’s of Dick & Betsy DeVos, is the owner of the Orlando Squeeze, a Major League Pickleball franchise. In that article, DeVos said that he was working on getting the 30 million pickleball players to watch pickleball played on a professional level. Always thinking about capturing consumers.

Then there is the DeVos-owned Michigan Sports Academies that are located throughout West Michigan. The Michigan Sports Academies offers soccer, volleyball, basketball and pickleball leagues.

Ownership of the Orlando Squeeze and the Michigan Sports Academies is just part of the DeVos family’s larger portfolio of sports teams and sports complexes that they own. Having hotels on top of that works well, since the DeVos family is constantly thinking about ways to expand their wealth by controlling more of the economic, social and cultural dynamics in West Michigan.