Padel just crossed a real milestone in the United States: more than 1,000 courts nationwide, up from fewer than 20 in 2019. At the same time, the sport's participation numbers got tracked by a major national survey for the first time ever — and it turns out over a million Americans already play. If it feels like padel went from "what's that?" to "there's a court near me" in the space of a couple of years, you're not imagining it.
The Numbers Behind the Boom
The Sports & Fitness Industry Association tracked padel in its national participation survey for the first time in its 2026 Topline Participation Report, based on 2025 data. The result: 1,073,000 Americans played padel last year — 835,000 casual players (1 to 7 times a year) and 238,000 "core" players (8 or more times a year). Racquet sports as a category climbed from 19.7% to 20.5% of SFIA's 10-year participation tracking between 2024 and 2025, and padel is a real part of that shift. The United States Padel Association puts player growth at up 250% since 2022, with California, Florida, and Texas as the clearest hotspots.
The court-building numbers back it up. There were fewer than 20 padel courts in the entire country in 2019. By the second quarter of 2025, that had grown to roughly 688 courts across 31 states. By April 2026, the US crossed its 1,000th court — opened at the Thesis Hotel in Coral Gables, Miami — spread across more than 30 states. Club membership grew 51.5% year over year through 2025, and individual membership grew 53.5%, according to the United States Padel Association. This isn't a slow, steady climb. It's a sport building infrastructure faster than almost anything else in American recreational sports right now.
New York and Los Angeles are two of the cities feeling it most directly. New York now has multiple dedicated clubs within a few subway stops of each other — Padel Haus (which has also expanded to Nashville, Atlanta, and Denver), Mink Padel in Harlem, Court 16 in Downtown Brooklyn, and Reserve Padel near Hudson Yards. Los Angeles has been catching up fast too, anchored by Padel Up in Culver City and a wave of newer clubs opening across the city. A few years ago, finding a padel court in either city meant driving out to a converted tennis facility. Now it means picking which neighborhood's club to join.
A Good Time to Notice It
Padel's momentum has real money and real names behind it now, not just court counts. Premier Padel, one of the sport's two global pro tours, made its US debut in Miami in March 2025 — the first Premier Padel event ever held in the country — and returned to Miami in March 2026 as part of the tour's largest-ever season, 26 tournaments across 5 continents. On the domestic side, the Pro Padel League raised a $15 million Series A round led by Charlotte Hornets owner Rick Schnall, with team owners and investors including Carmelo Anthony, Daddy Yankee, Frances Tiafoe, Nacho Figueras, and Eva Longoria. Franchise valuations that started around $200,000 at the league's 2023 launch have since sold for $10 million and been valued as high as $25 million. None of that creates the boom by itself, but it's a reliable signal of where serious money thinks the sport is headed.
The Catch: Padel Still Needs Exactly Four People
Here's what the growth numbers don't solve. Padel is a doubles game — you need exactly four players and a court, and a new club opening near you doesn't hand you three regular partners to go with it. A packed schedule at your local club is actually bad news if you're trying to book a walk-in slot. And unlike a pickup basketball run or a casual kickabout, you can't just show up and find a game — padel is played on a dedicated, enclosed court, which means someone has to book it, and four specific people have to be free at the same time.
That's the real bottleneck as padel scales past a million American players. More courts and more clubs mean more places to play, but they don't automatically solve the coordination problem: finding three other people at your level, free at the same time, before someone else books the court first.
How to Find a Padel Partner or Group Near You
A few places consistently turn up real players and games:
- Your local club's members list or app. Most new padel clubs run their own booking app or member directory — ask the front desk if there's a way to see who else is looking for a fourth.
- Club-run social or mixer sessions. Many of the newer US clubs run "open play" or mixer nights specifically designed to match strangers into doubles groups by level — a fast way to build a regular rotation from scratch.
- Local Facebook and WhatsApp groups. Searching "[your city] padel" almost always turns up an active group by now — padel's US growth has been fast enough that most metro areas have at least one informal community.
- A sports coordination app like Wapp. Open the Around Me map to see actual padel players, groups, and open matches near you, and request to join or start your own. If you're near one of Wapp's cities, start with the local guide — New York City, home to clubs like Padel Haus, Mink Padel, and Court 16, or Los Angeles, where Padel Up and a wave of newer clubs are opening across the city.
Starting Your Own Padel Group
If there's a court near you but no group, padel is easier to bootstrap than it looks. You need four players at a similar level and one court booking — that's it. Recruit from people already circling the sport: tennis and squash players tend to adapt fastest, since the underlying racquet skills transfer, and a lot of new US padel players started exactly that way.
Fix a weekly slot and treat the four spots as fixed, not first-come-first-served chaos. Once a regular four exists, it tends to expand on its own — someone brings a partner, the partner brings a friend, and within a few weeks you have a rotation deep enough to run two courts instead of one.
Skill matching matters more in padel than in a lot of casual sports, because the enclosed court and glass walls make a serious mismatch more frustrating for everyone than it would be on an open pitch. Be upfront about level when you're recruiting — "complete beginners welcome" and "intermediate, come ready to rally" attract very different people, and mixing the two too early is the fastest way to lose a new player after one bad session.
If You're the One Organizing
Once you have a group, the hard part shifts from finding people to keeping the four spots reliably filled every week. A padel group that depends on a group chat falls apart the first time someone doesn't reply before the court booking window closes. Set it up as a real recurring event instead: a fixed day and time, a hard cap at four (or eight, for two courts), and a waitlist that automatically offers an open spot to the next person the moment someone drops — instead of a last-minute scramble that ends with an empty, already-booked court. A dedicated team organizing tool handles all of that automatically.
Wapp works the same way for padel as it does for every sport on the platform: create a group, post your session, and let RSVPs and attendance track themselves. Download it free on iOS or Android — find your fourth, and make sure your regular group never falls apart over an unanswered text.