05/29/2026
Tennis claims 87 million active players worldwide. Padel claims 25 million active players. There is no number pickleball claims to have. It has been range bound to 20-50 million for a few years in searches. Further the definition of active is left to governing agencies in each sport. Padel is targeted for 2032 Olympics. Padel began just three years after pickleball in 1968. Those courts are 50-100% more than pickleball courts. The conversion rate of a tennis court to Padel is 3:1. How could that happen with about 3.5 active tennis:padel players? Very few tennis courts are being converted to pickleball anymore unless they are demolished. Building new pickleball and padel courts are preferred to optimize rather than compromise. Public courts are ball control compromised in widely varying degrees. We could convert two pickleball courts to one padel court. That membership cost would need to be far more than pickleball. The conditional use permit at the PCC prohibits outdoor play. But if anyone wanted to build an outdoor padel court they could plan and fundraise for that. Could be free or pay to play. I'm sure most PCC members would try it. I doubt many would join the active 25 million players.
Finally the average value of a soccer club is $2.66 billion. The market value of padel is stated as $2.0 billion. Pickleball is $2.2-3.1 billion this year. Big old tennis is $30-51 billion. And for our table tennis friends your market at $5.16 is larger than padel and pickleball combined. Selkirk revenues are estimated at $.1 billion. PCC revenues this year are $.0001 billion.
If you made it this far your pickleball situational awareness has been upgraded to 2.0.
