Pickleball And Racquetball Parallels – Is Pickleball Here To Stay?

As I watch, and participate, in pickleball’s dramatic explosion into the sporting culture of the United States over the past few years, I cannot help but see some parallels in pickleball’s growth and acceptance in mainstream culture to another racquet sport experienced a similar meteoric rise in this country: racquetball.

Both sports exploded in popularity in a short amount of time, but as we speak racquetball is falling by the wayside in terms of participation nationally. So, the question is this: Is pickleball a fad, or does it have more “sticking power” than racquetball has turned out to have?

Racquetball as a participation sport went from a little known variant of paddleball in the early 1970s to become the biggest sports phenomenon in the country by the late 1970s. The sport took hold as a faster version of paddleball (or a less painful version of handball), and began drawing significant player interest and demand. This spurred a massive amount of investment in custom facilities, as club operators scrambled to build facilities to meet insane demand. Competing governing bodies popped up in the form of the International Racquetball Association and the National Racquetball Club, both vying to control the direction of the sport, and especially the direction of the pro tours. Celebrities and professional athletes were drawn to the sport and the covers of National Racquetball Magazine from the era featured famous faces on a monthly basis. The Men’s pro tour became dominated by a young, mercurial star in Marty Hogan, who nearly went undefeated in the 1976-1977 season at the age of 19 and became the brash face of the sport, even appearing on an episode of “The Superstars” in February, 1980. The sport evolved from a slow, methodical pace in its early days to a faster, power-driven sport by the late 1970s and the slower paced tacticians of the sport were quickly overmatched and driven from the sport, complaining on their way out that the game was now “too fast.”

Wow, does that previous paragraph sound familiar or what?

Consider what we’re seeing right now in pickleball:

• Participation explosion: We’re seeing pickleball go from a niche activity five years ago to being the fastest growing sport in the country, with 10% of the US population attempting it last year.
• Facility investment: We’re seeing massive investments in custom pickleball courts (or outright conversion of little-used tennis courts) right now. Nearly every day we hear a new announcement of a multi-million dollar facility or investment in existing parks.
• Competing Pro tours: the Association of Pickleball Professionals and the Professional Pickleball Association are both vying for control of the Pro game. We also have competing international NGBs in the International Federation of Pickleball and the World Pickleball Federation.
• Star Power Interest: Pickleball has appeared on the Today show, Major League Pickleball has procured investment from dozens of pro athletes and celebrities, and the internet is filled with stars from the NBA, the NFL, and the ATP playing and enjoying the sport.
• Top Young Stars: Replace “Marty Hogan” with Ben Johns and/or Anna Leigh Waters and you have your young, unbeatable superstar at the top of the current pro tour.
• Pace of Play: the sport is evolving in front of our eyes, becoming younger, faster, more athletic, and more power-driven. Everything used to be “third shot drops,” now its “3rd shot drives” and maybe a “5th shot drop” if you can’t drive it again. Older players now complain about “bangers,” and lament players who choose to attack instead of dink.

The parallels are pretty striking.

Similarity between the two sports is one thing; how about the bigger question? Is pickleball going to experience the same kind of growth and decline lifecycle that racquetball saw, or will it be more persistent in the American sporting culture?

While I do not have a crystal ball, my sense is that pickleball will stick around for the long run and will not fade out like racquetball is doing for one main reason: Ease of facility access.

A huge number of custom pickleball courts are being built in this country. A great many of them are in public parks, and those courts are not going anywhere anytime soon. In places without dedicated courts, players are lining the pickleball boundaries onto existing tennis courts or basketball courts that have been there for decades, and those flat tops aren’t going anywhere either. Recreation departments and public schools have maintained these tennis and basketball courts for decades, and now suddenly they’re getting a ton of new use. The barrier to entry to play pickleball is incredibly simple as compared to racquetball: all you need is a flat surface big enough to chalk out a court, a cheap plastic ball and a couple of paddles.

Racquetball’s big problem is that the court access is mostly dependent on private businesses building indoor courts in expensive per-square-foot locations. These courts are either owned by small business (many of which were bankrupted by Covid) or with within large chains (LA Fitness, Lifetime Fitness, Gold’s, and YMCA) who are in many cases deprioritizing the sport in favor of higher density usage of the space.

Racquetball courts remain in places like universities and in smaller numbers with existing chains, but they’re more of a novelty instead of a revenue driver, and there’s not enough courts to build large-scale programming. The one thing all of these racquetball courts have in common: membership requirements. You cannot generally just walk into any of these places and play; you have to either pay a monthly membership fee or be a student at a school with the courts already built.

Now look at pickleball: while there are some private clubs out there with courts, there’s tens of thousands of public tennis courts in existence that can host pickleball players for free. You don’t have to be a member of a $150/month club to play pickleball: all you need is a flat surface and a net. You can play pickleball indoors or outdoors, in warm weather and cold weather places.

There is a secondary reason behind both pickleball’s rise and racquetball’s fall, and that’s demographics. Racquetball is hard on the body, and players age out from a competitive stand point. Tennis is the same way, with ageing players eventually growing frustrated with the physical demands of covering a large tennis court. Guess where both sets of ageing players are now flocking to? Pickleball. Courts are filled with retirees playing all throughout the day, retirement communities in Florida like The Villages now boast thousands of players, and the 60+ and even 70+ draws at local tournaments are as packed as the 19+ draws. Pickleball requires less court coverage than tennis, is less physically demanding than competitive racquetball, and has a heavy emphasis on doubles play and social engagement that draws in both casual and competitive players alike.

Conclusion: Pickleball is rising fast, will continue to rise, and is here to stay.

(Disclosure: the author sits on the board of USA Racquetball and one of our main concerns is addressing declining participation numbers in our sport. I’ve also done a ton of historical research into the sport over the past 20 years for a project called Pro Racquetball Stats).