There is a quiet revolution happening in sports clubs around the world, and tennis, one of the oldest and most prestigious sports on the planet, is on the losing side. Padel, a hybrid of tennis and squash played on a glass-walled enclosed court roughly a third of the size, is growing at a rate that is beginning to alarm even the sport’s greatest champions.
There are now more than 35 million padel players worldwide, with padel clubs increasing by 22% in 2024, and the sport is established in over 90 countries. In 2024 alone, the UK saw padel participation more than triple year-on-year. The pace of expansion is staggering, and it is happening at the direct expense of tennis.
Part of what is driving that growth is raw star power. David Beckham, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, and Zinedine Zidane have all been spotted on court, as have tennis legends Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, and Maria Sharapova. The celebrity involvement goes far beyond casual games, however. Zlatan Ibrahimović fell so deeply in love with the game that he invested in the Padel Zenter court-building chain across Sweden, with Paul Pogba flying over to join him on court at the first venue opening. David Beckham’s investments in padel infrastructure in Miami contributed to record membership numbers at clubs across the US in 2024, with prospective players flocking to courts eager to try the sport that their favourite celebrities are playing. When sport’s biggest names are not just playing but building, the message to the wider public is unmistakable.
The economic logic driving padel’s encroachment on tennis facilities is equally brutal and simple. As Novak Djokovic put it bluntly at Wimbledon: “Tennis is the king or queen of all the racket sports, that’s true. But on a club level, tennis is endangered — they’re gonna convert all the tennis clubs into padel and pickleball because it’s just more economical. You can build three padel courts inside one tennis court.” Boulevard Tennis and Padel Club in Florida converted a stadium tennis court that had hosted ten major events a year into three padel courts. With padel played in one-hour doubles sessions, the revenue-per-square-metre is simply incomparable.
The appeal of padel goes beyond economics. The sport has a reported 92% return rate, meaning almost everyone who tries it comes back. It is faster to learn than tennis, inherently social, and its enclosed court means beginners can sustain rallies from the very first session. Mentions of “#padel” on Instagram increased by 75% in 2024 compared to the previous year, largely driven by celebrity posts and lifestyle influencer content. The sport is not just growing — it is going viral.
Yet the story is not without cautionary notes. Sweden, once the epicentre of Europe’s padel boom, offers a sobering lesson. The number of courts skyrocketed between 2019 and 2022, but the boom dramatically outpaced demand, and by 2024, over 100 facilities had shut down or been repurposed. The lesson from Sweden is that hype alone does not sustain a sport. Community, coaching, and long-term investment do.
Tennis federations worldwide are now asking tough questions about the sport’s future identity. Djokovic himself has pointed to Formula 1 as a model, a sport that reinvented its marketing and storytelling to attract younger audiences. Neymar, Messi, Beckham, Deschamps, and Zidane are perfect examples of padel’s pull at the very top of global sport, with several having opened padel centres of their own. The irony is that padel and tennis need not be enemies; many clubs successfully offer both, and the skills transfer naturally. But the window for tennis to adapt is narrowing.
The ball, quite literally, is in tennis’s court.
By Hannah Kate Costello, Coeditor