Padel is no longer a niche. Research by the KNLTB and EY shows that in 2025 around 876,000 people in the Netherlands played padel at least once. More than 424,000 of them play monthly. The total number of courts rose to 3,523, spread across 780 venues, an average of 4.5 courts per venue.
That scale is new. Five years ago padel was still a sport with a handful of venues and a mostly male, urban following. Now it is becoming a broad, mainstream sport, with players of every age and level.
Who are these players?
The research draws an interesting distinction in how people play. Roughly 60 percent of padel players play fewer than five times a year. They pick up a racket occasionally, but they are not committed club members. The other 40 percent play regularly and have a clear competitive or social need.
Within that second group, competitive play has grown fast. In three years the number of match players has nearly tripled to 91,196. These are players who actively take part in leagues, follow rankings and take their level seriously. In 2025 there were more than 18,000 competition teams active.
What this means for clubs
Those two groups call for a different offering. The occasional player wants to book easily, join a one-off session or an informal tournament. The regular player wants to know where they stand, who they can challenge, and how their level is developing.
Clubs that want to serve both groups find that they really have to organize two things at once. An open, accessible entry point for new and occasional players, and a structured competition layer for those who want more. That combination is the challenge, not the growth itself.
Tournaments as a barometer
The number of organized padel tournaments rose to 1,042 in 2025, a 35 percent increase. Nearly 68,000 players took part in at least one tournament, again more than 24 percent up on the year before. Tournaments are no longer a side event, but a structural part of what padel has to offer.
What stands out is that tournaments are growing faster than courts. Not that many new courts have been added, but a lot more is being organized. That means the organizational load per court and per volunteer is going up. Clubs that do not scale with it find their volunteers grinding to a halt.
Organization as the bottleneck
The numbers also show where the sport as a whole is heading. More players with a competitive mindset, more tournaments, more expectations around communication and transparency. That asks something of clubs that goes beyond courts and tennis balls.
It calls for a way of organizing that grows with you. A ladder competition that players can follow themselves. A tournament system that keeps the draw and standings up to date automatically. And working without spreadsheets once the numbers outgrow manual tracking.
The sport has reached critical mass. The next step is making the infrastructure fit.
