Pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in the United States for four consecutive years, and the 2025 data confirms the trend has not slowed. According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA), 24.3 million Americans played pickleball in 2025, up 22.8 percent in a single year and 171.8 percent over three years.
This page collects the most useful pickleball participation and court statistics for 2026, with sources, and explains what the numbers mean for anyone planning a facility. The figures below come from the SFIA Topline Participation Report and the USA Pickleball court database, the two datasets the industry treats as authoritative.
Pickleball participation at a glance (2025 data)
| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total U.S. players (2025) | 24.3 million | SFIA |
| Year-over-year growth (2024 to 2025) | +22.8% | SFIA |
| Three-year growth (2022 to 2025) | +171.8% | SFIA |
| Casual players (1 to 7 times/year) | 16.8 million | SFIA |
| Core players (8+ times/year) | 7.48 million | SFIA |
| New players added in 2025 | roughly 4.5 million | SFIA |
| Known places to play (2025) | 18,258 locations | USA Pickleball |
| Total courts in the database | 82,613 | USA Pickleball |
| New courts added per day | roughly 39 | USA Pickleball |
How many people play pickleball?
24.3 million Americans played pickleball in 2025, according to SFIA. That total breaks into 16.8 million casual players, who play one to seven times a year, and 7.48 million core players, who play eight or more times a year. The core group is the one that drives demand for permanent, well-built courts, and it grew 20.4 percent year over year.
The sport added roughly 4.5 million new players in 2025 alone. For context, that single year of growth is larger than the total participant base of many established sports.
How fast is pickleball growing?
Growth has compounded rather than tapered. Participation rose 22.8 percent from 2024 to 2025, 171.8 percent over the three years from 2022 to 2025, and by some measures close to 479 percent over five years. SFIA has named pickleball the fastest-growing sport in the country for four years running.
A note of nuance for 2026: while participation continues to climb, some industry observers have flagged that the pace of new court construction may be starting to moderate in certain markets after the initial boom. The demand side, the number of people who want to play, remains strongly positive.
How many pickleball courts are there?
The USA Pickleball court database listed 82,613 courts across 18,258 locations as of 2025, after adding more than 2,300 new locations that year and 14,155 new courts in 2024. New courts are being added at a rate of roughly 39 per day.
Even at that pace, supply is behind demand. SFIA has estimated that keeping up with participation will require on the order of 25,000 additional courts and roughly 855 million dollars in construction investment over the next five to seven years. Florida (1,228 locations) and California (1,223) lead in places to play, while Arizona and Texas are expanding court counts more than 40 percent year over year.
Tennis court conversions
More than 4,000 tennis courts have been fully or partially converted to pickleball in the United States since 2021. A regulation pickleball court fits inside a tennis court with room to spare, which makes conversion one of the most common and cost-effective ways for a facility to add pickleball capacity. We cover the layout and trade-offs in the court layout options in converting a tennis court to pickleball.
What the numbers mean for facilities
Read together, the statistics describe a sport whose participation has outrun its infrastructure. Tens of millions of players, a court database growing by dozens of courts a day, and a multi-hundred-million-dollar construction backlog all point to the same conclusion: the constraint on pickleball is no longer interest. It is the quality and capacity of the places people play.
That is where the numbers stop being trivia and start being a planning problem. A court database that grows by 39 courts a day says nothing about how many of those courts were engineered for drainage, surface durability, or sound. The single most common reason new facilities face restricted hours or closure is not low demand. It is noise carried to neighboring properties from courts that were built without acoustic planning. The sport’s growth, in other words, is increasingly limited by how well the infrastructure supporting it is engineered.
For organizations acting on this demand, the useful question is not whether pickleball is popular. The statistics settle that. It is how a facility should be planned and engineered so that it performs, lasts, and stays open. We cover that in our guides to planning a pickleball facility, pickleball court construction, and reducing pickleball noise.
Frequently asked questions
How many people play pickleball in the United States?
24.3 million Americans played pickleball in 2025, according to the SFIA Topline Participation Report. That includes 16.8 million casual players and 7.48 million core players who play eight or more times a year.
Is pickleball still growing in 2026?
Yes. Participation grew 22.8 percent from 2024 to 2025 and 171.8 percent over three years, and SFIA has named pickleball the fastest-growing U.S. sport for four consecutive years. Some markets are seeing the pace of new court construction moderate even as player numbers keep rising.
How many pickleball courts are there in the U.S.?
The USA Pickleball court database listed 82,613 courts across 18,258 locations as of 2025, growing by roughly 39 courts per day. SFIA estimates another 25,000 courts and about 855 million dollars in investment are needed over the next five to seven years to meet demand.
How many tennis courts have been converted to pickleball?
More than 4,000 tennis courts have been fully or partially converted to pickleball in the U.S. since 2021. A pickleball court fits inside a tennis court footprint, which makes conversion a common, cost-effective way to add capacity.
