BBC News recently asked a simple question: “Padel is getting bigger and BIGGER… so why is it so expensive?”
Padel isn’t too expensive. It’s simply too young.
Whenever someone tells me padel is expensive, my first response is usually, “Compared to what?”
Golf? Skiing? Cycling? Horse riding?
Or compared to tennis, where many of us have grown accustomed to public courts, municipal clubs and infrastructure that has been built up over more than a century?
That’s an important distinction. Cost is always relative. We rarely judge a sport in isolation; we judge it against what we’re already familiar with. And in padel’s case, I think many comparisons are simply unfair.
I’ve studied padel clubs across Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia, and the difference is striking.
In Spain, court prices are often surprisingly affordable because supply has caught up with demand. In newer markets, the opposite is true. Courts are fully booked, land is expensive, operators are still recovering construction costs, and there simply aren’t enough facilities yet.
That isn’t a pricing problem….It’s a maturity problem.
Operators are trying to balance affordability for players with the reality of rising rents, staffing costs and significant upfront investment. It isn’t an easy equation to solve, and I dont envy anyone trying to make it work.
Every emerging sport follows a remarkably similar life cycle.
Initially, equipment is expensive, facilities are scarce, investors need returns, participation grows faster than infrastructure.
Eventually, competition increases, construction becomes more efficient and prices begin to fall.
We’ve seen it before with indoor climbing, CrossFit and even commercial gyms.
Padel isn’t unique.
It’s simply following the same economic curve.
The numbers support this. Europe now has over 42,000 padel courts, with thousands more being built each year as investment continues to accelerate. Meanwhile, Spain alone is estimated to have more than 6 million active padel players, creating an ecosystem where scale naturally drives down costs.
As more courts open, more operators enter the market and utilisation stabilises, pricing pressure will almost certainly increase. That’s how most successful sports industries evolve.
So, perhaps we shouldn’t be asking whether padel is too expensive but whether it is fair to be comparing it to sports that have had 100 years to mature – like Tennis which didn’t build its infrastructure overnight.
Neither will padel.
I suspect that in another ten years we’ll look back at today’s debate the same way we now look back at the early days of commercial gyms or indoor climbing centres. High prices weren’t a permanent feature of the sport. They were simply the cost of being early.
(Originally published on LinkedIn)
