The move continues a pattern of wealth management and other financial firms sponsoring sports teams and individuals as part of their brand development.

Dynasty Connect, which is a service of Florida-based Dynasty Financial Partners, will be sponsoring Anna Leigh Waters, the world’s top-ranked professional women’s pickleball player. The decision is another example of how wealth managers are building brands and networks via sports sponsorship. 

Waters, who lives in Delray Beach, Florida, became the youngest-ever professional pickleball player at age 12 and – before turning 13 – the sport’s youngest-ever titleholder. She is now 16 years old and ranked number one in the world in all three divisions of professional pickleball: gender doubles, mixed doubles, and singles. Pickleball, a mashup of badminton, ping pong, and tennis, is the fastest-growing sport in the US, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association.

Dynasty is also working on a project with Major League Baseball’s reigning Rookie of the Year, Julio Rodriguez. The firm has worked with a wide variety of sports figures in the past – spanning top nationally-known athletes to those focused on ties to Dynasty’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The deal is an example of the kind of commercial sponsorship for sports that wealth managers undertake. Within motor racing, UBS is global sponsor of Formula One. Earlier last year, Dynasty Financial Partners, the US wealth management group that moved its headquarters to St Petersburg from New York in 2019, agreed to sponsor local motor racing legend Sebastien Bourdais. In 2022, iCapital, a tech platform for alternative assets, inked a three-year brand ambassador partnership with LPGA major tournament champion and two-time Olympian Lexi Thompson. In January this year, it signed a four-year ambassador partnership with Cameron Young, the 2021-22 PGA Tour “Rookie of the Year."