US Padel is Ass-Backward (& How We’re Missing the Point Entirely)

I can't unsee what I saw, so now I'm sharing some thoughts. Disclaimer: I'm not an expert and still learning, just like you :)

A quick note on “mental liquidity” before we dive in: I love this concept from Morgan Housel—it’s the ability to quickly abandon previous beliefs when the world changes or when you encounter new information. So much of what people call “conviction” is actually a willful disregard for facts that might change their minds. The strategy of having strong beliefs, weakly held, is often helpful. That’s the spirit of this piece.

---

Imo, padel in the US is a mess. Not because we can’t afford it, not because Americans don’t get the sport… but because we’ve fundamentally misunderstood what makes padel work.

Opportunity has allowed me to play the sport in Argentina, Spain, Panama, Germany, Italy, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Colombia, Greece, and many more places throughout our planet. Every time I come back to the US, I’m reminded of the same painful truth: We’re treating padel like a luxury product when it should just be infrastructure.

We’re Building a Status Symbol, Not a Sport

Here’s the thing: US padel is failing because of a fundamental business model error. Developers and hospitality groups (not actual padel players) are driving the rollout. As a result, facilities are bundled into hyper-exclusive “lifestyle concepts”: rooftop clubs, wellness memberships, restaurant partnerships.

Let me give you some examples of what I mean:

Reserve Padel: Founded by billionaire Wayne Boich, this “premier luxury padel brand” has locations in Miami’s Design District and NYC. It’s members-only, features “athletic elegance,” and welcomes guests arriving by seaplane. They host celebrities like David Beckham and Dwyane Wade.

Padel Haus: Billing itself as “the largest premium padel club in the United States” with locations in NYC, Nashville, Atlanta, and Denver. Spa-like locker rooms, “luxury padel experience,” state-of-the-art everything. Also charging $65 per player per hour in NYC… that’s $260 for one hour of doubles.

Kith Ivy: A private padel club charging $36,000 in initiation fees plus an annual payment of $7,000 to access a grand total of *3* padel courts, an in-house Erewhon, a state-of-the-art gym, and an exclusive restaurant.

This is the archetype we’re building around: finance bros, stay-at-home moms, and nepo socialites treating padel like the next exclusive thing to collect. Meanwhile, in Spain and Argentina, your Uber driver plays. The professor plays. Your neighbor’s grandma plays. That’s how you build a real ecosystem.

The Facilities Suck

And for those premium prices? You’re getting too many facilities that often don’t even meet basic playability standards.

You see places in America’s most cosmopolitan cities charge an arm and a leg for court time, only to play on courts like these. 🤮 I’ve also seen a plethora of indoor facilities with absurdly low ceilings (we’re talking 20-30 feet)… 🤦‍♂ you literally cannot play the game properly. It’s like building a basketball court with 9-foot ceilings.

These developers don’t know the sport, don’t play the sport, and it shows. They’re optimizing for “luxury optics,” not throughput or quality of play. The problem is there’s no scalable operating blueprint, so the market defaults to high-margin, low-volume vanity projects.

Sure, the Economics Are a Bit Harder, But That’s Not an Excuse

Look, I’m not going to pretend the unit economics are identical. They’re not.

Building a padel court in the US costs $20,000-80,000, with most quality setups running $24,000-65,000. Land costs, zoning, and liability insurance in US cities are genuinely an order of magnitude higher than in Europe or Latin America.

But here’s the thing: Spain didn’t become a padel powerhouse through premium pricing. They did it with modest margins and high occupancy. Spanish and Italian facilities charge €5-9 per person per hour on average and still make excellent returns.

Why? Because their courts are full. When padel is accessible and positioned as a community sport rather than a luxury experience, a lot more people actually play. Courts get booked 12-16 hours a day because there’s real demand from a broad player base.

In the US, we’re doing the opposite: keeping prices high, supply low, and wondering why courts sit empty outside peak hours. We’ve created a supply problem by positioning the sport as exclusive, which suppresses demand, which then “justifies” keeping prices high. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.

The fix isn’t just “charge less”… though yes, we need to charge less. The fix is business model innovation:

• Modular or seasonal courts on underutilized land (parking lots, parks, warehouse conversions)

• Public-private partnerships with parks departments

• Tiered membership models mixing social play with pay-per-play

• Partnerships with gyms or coworking spaces to amortize overhead

• Higher volume, lower margin operations focused on maximizing court occupancy

Can we get to $10-15/hour in major US cities? Maybe not everywhere. But we can definitely do way better than $60-90/hour.

In Panama, for example, you can play for free at a public court along the Cinta Costera

We’re Creating a Cultural Problem

Fair point: padel isn’t embedded in US leisure culture yet the way pickup basketball or tennis is. Cultural adoption takes time, and accessibility alone won’t create demand overnight.

But we’re actively working against cultural adoption by making it feel exclusive and inaccessible. Every “members only” sign, every $200 match, every rooftop cocktail partnership reinforces that this sport isn’t “for” regular people.

And here’s the thing about building padel as a status symbol: status symbols aren’t sustainable. In The Art of Spending Money (fantastic read btw), Morgan Housel (yes I’m referencing him again, no he’s not paying me lol) nails exactly why this approach is doomed:

“It’s nearly impossible to ‘win’ the status game. What’s unique and enviable in one period becomes common and bland in the next... What makes something high status is the fact that others don’t have it. Once they eventually get their hands on that thing, it’s no longer high status.”

He also gives Rob Henderson’s recount of Yale students who loved Hamilton on Broadway, but immediately lost interest once it hit Disney+ and became accessible to everyone. They didn’t care about the play. They cared about exclusivity.

This is exactly what’s happening with US padel right now. We’re positioning it as the next “in” thing for a narrow demographic. And the second it becomes accessible (which it will, because that’s how everything eventually goes), those status-seekers will move on to the next exclusive thing. Then what? You’ve built an entire ecosystem around a temporarily trendy vanity product instead of a lasting community sport.

Compare that to Spain and Argentina, where padel isn’t a status symbol. It’s just something people do. It’s infrastructure, not performative aspiration. That’s why it’s lasted. That’s why it’s grown. That’s why entire generations have grown up with it as part of their social fabric.

If we want padel to be a fun, community-building sport that brings people together like it does in tons of other places throughout the world, we need to fundamentally rethink our priorities. And yes, facility operators still need to make money. I get it. But the path to sustainable profitability is through volume and community, not exclusivity and margin.

Here’s what else kills me: more inclusivity means more players, which means better competition. If we actually want US padel to be good (i.e., we develop world-class players and competitive depth), we need a massive player base. You can’t build elite-level competition from 100,000 players scattered across a few metros playing $90/hour matches.

Look, there will always be premium padel spots in the US, just like there are premium tennis clubs. That’s fine. That’s inevitable. But just like tennis, there needs to be way more accessibility too. Public courts, affordable facilities, community programs. That’s how you build a real sporting culture, not a fleeting country club trend.

In Argentina, kids play padel the way American kids play pickup basketball. That’s how you develop talent. That’s how you build a movement. We’re currently building something that looks more like an exclusive gym membership than a sport… and exclusive gym memberships have notoriously high churn rates for a reason.

In Paraguay, my buddy @facha_crack frequently plays 5-hour padel sessions in his local competitive men’s group, followed by a communal asado (see gigantic piece of meat in the middle 😂)

A Glimmer of Hope: Someone Actually Gets It

Fortunately, not everyone is missing the point. Epic Padel, a Virginia-based startup that raised $10 million earlier this fall, seems to actually get it.

Per the “Our Vision” section on their website:

“We’re shaping a new era of padel in North America, driven by inclusivity, innovation, and community, creating vibrant clubs that bring people together and make the sport accessible to everyone.”

To make sure this wasn’t some marketing baloney, I did some further digging. Happy to say that Epic is indeed putting their money where their mouth is:

• They’re explicitly rejecting the luxury model. The team’s leadership mentioned they want to be “more middle class versus upper class” in pricing and accessibility.

• They’re using underutilized spaces efficiently. Their “Hybrid Clubs” concept transforms parking lots and parks into 4-6 court facilities with seasonal roll-out canopies. This is smart, scalable infrastructure.

• They’re targeting “mid-tier” markets. They already have a club in Charlotte and are planning locations in Milwaukee, South Carolina, and Utah.

• Reasonable membership pricing. Their Charlotte founding membership is $149/month with unlimited court bookings.

I’m incredibly bullish on these folks. They’re playing the long game and have high potential to be real winners in the US padel scene. Their mission to “build inclusive and connected communities where players of all backgrounds feel welcome” is precisely what US padel needs to grow rapidly and sustainably.

What Needs to Happen

Beyond the Epic Padels of the world, US padel as a whole is still building a boutique product when we should be building infrastructure. Until operators start treating courts like community resources instead of lifestyle branding opportunities, we’ll stay stuck in boutique purgatory.

The good news? Some operators get it. The bad news? They’re fighting against a market that’s set up to reward high-margin, low-volume thinking.

We need:

1. Scalable operating blueprints that prioritize throughput over luxury optics

2. Creative partnerships that reduce overhead (public-private, gym integrations, adaptive reuse)

3. Cultural repositioning away from exclusivity toward mass participation

4. Better facilities at fair prices (not perfection, just courts where you can actually lob and play the game properly)

5. A fundamental mindset shift from “how do we extract maximum revenue per player within this exclusive pool of members?” to “how do we get maximum court occupancy?” Focus on the latter, and the rest will naturally follow.

The crazy part? The blueprint already exists. Spain, Argentina, Italy, Germany (list goes on)… they’ve all done this. We just have to stop pretending we’re special and learn from places where padel actually works.

Why I Actually Care

I want to establish myself in the padel space as a global ambassador who’s seen how this works everywhere else. Every time I’m back in the US, I’m faced with a choice: pay $60-90 for a subpar court, or just... play significantly less.

So I choose to play significantly less. And I know I’m not alone.

We’re taking something beautiful (aka a sport that genuinely brings people together across all walks of life) and turning it into another way to signal status. It’s a waste of potential, and it’s genuinely heartbreaking to watch.

The US has all the resources to make padel massive. We just need to stop throwing money at the wrong problems and start building the sport, not the brand.

---

What’s your take? Have you experienced the same frustrations, or am I missing something? Drop your thoughts below. I’d love to hear from people actually playing (or trying to play) in the US.

If you care about making US padel better, hit subscribe and follow @padelyanqui on Instagram. More stories on the sport from a native perspective, and real talk about what’s working, what’s not, and how we can actually fix this coming soon.