Why Racquet Sports Can No Longer Be Planned in Silos

For many years, racquet sports have largely been developed in parallel rather than together. Squash had its own facilities, its own business logic, and its own networks. Padel and Pickleball have followed similar patterns, each growing within its own circle of operators, investors, suppliers, and governing bodies.

That approach may have made sense in earlier stages of development. Today, it is becoming increasingly outdated.

The future of racquet sports facility development will not be defined by separation, but by a better understanding of what these sports share — and where they can create stronger outcomes together than they can alone.

This does not mean that all racquet sports are the same. They are not. Each sport has its own identity, player profile, participation culture, and growth dynamic. But from a facility, business, and market development perspective, the similarities are too important to ignore.

The industry now needs a broader, more connected way of thinking.

The real issue is not the sport — it is the facility model

Too many conversations in the market still begin with the sport itself.

• Should this be a padel project?

• Would pickleball work here?

• Is squash still viable in this market?

These are valid questions, but they are not the first questions that should be asked.

Before choosing a sport mix, stakeholders need to understand the business model behind the facility. They need to look at the target groups, the local demand profile, the urban context, the revenue logic, the operating structure, and the role the venue is expected to play in its market.

A high-performance training venue, a social participation club, a commercial multi-activity site, and a hospitality-led concept may all include racquet sports — but they are not solving the same problem, and they should not be planned in the same way.

This is precisely why silo thinking has become limiting. It encourages stakeholders to focus too early on the sport, instead of first understanding the type of facility they are actually trying to build.

Different sports, similar operational realities

Although padel, pickleball and squash differ in format and culture, the facilities built around them often face strikingly similar questions.

• How much space is available, and how efficiently can it be used?

• What is the right balance between sport, social space, and commercial revenue?

• Which target groups are realistic in this location?

• How should programming be structured to increase utilization?

• What staffing model is sustainable?

• How should the venue position itself against competing leisure options?

• What level of investment can the local market truly support?

These are not sport-specific questions. They are facility questions.

That distinction matters. Once the conversation moves from isolated sport identity to shared facility logic, new opportunities appear. Experience becomes more transferable. Lessons from one market become more relevant to another. Operators begin to see patterns rather than isolated cases.

This is especially important in younger or rapidly expanding markets, where enthusiasm can outpace experience. In such environments, decisions are often made around trends, short-term demand signals, or imitation of other projects — sometimes without enough attention to long-term operational reality.

A more integrated view of racquet sports helps correct that. It creates a stronger basis for planning, comparison, and sustainable decision-making.

Complementarity is more important than competition

One of the most persistent misconceptions in the market is that racquet sports are primarily in competition with one another.

In reality, they often serve different user motivations and demographic profiles. One sport may appeal more strongly to performance-oriented players, another to social participation, another to ease of entry, and another to established club structures or school integration. In some contexts, they overlap. In many others, they complement one another.

This is how successful leisure markets evolve. They do not grow by forcing every activity into a zero-sum competition. They grow by understanding how different offers can coexist, reinforce one another, and broaden the overall appeal of a venue.

The comparison with larger fitness and wellness facilities is useful here. The strongest operators do not rely on one format alone. They combine training types, user journeys, age groups, and motivations within one coherent business model. Racquet sports facilities are moving in the same direction.

That does not mean every project should include every sport. That would be just another simplistic conclusion. The point is not forced combination. The point is better strategic evaluation.

The real question is not whether sports can be grouped together in theory. The real question is where and when a combined model creates more value than a single-sport concept — and under what conditions.

Racquet Sports Markets do not develop at the same speed

Another reason silo thinking no longer works is that countries and regions are moving through very different stages of maturity.

Some markets already have decades of experience with racquet sports facility development, membership structures, programming models, and operator learning. Others are only beginning to build a modern facility base. Some regions understand long-term retention and utilization patterns well. Others are still focused mainly on initial momentum and early market visibility.

This creates a major opportunity for cross-market learning.

Emerging markets do not need to repeat every mistake made by mature markets. At the same time, mature markets should not assume that their own models can simply be copied elsewhere without adaptation. Local context still matters — culture, affordability, climate, real estate economics, population density, and leisure behaviour all influence outcomes.

But the differences between markets are not an argument for isolation. They are an argument for more structured comparison.

The more connected the industry becomes, the more valuable it is to identify which lessons are truly transferable, which assumptions are market-specific, and which best practices need adjustment before they can work elsewhere.

That kind of structured learning becomes much harder when each sport remains locked inside its own silo.

The next stage of the industry requires shared intelligence

As racquet sports continue to grow, the industry will need better ways to connect experience, compare models, and guide decisions.

The challenge is no longer simply access to information. There is already a growing volume of opinions, examples, trends, and project claims in the market. The real challenge is how to interpret that information properly.

• What is relevant in this country may not be relevant in another.

• What works for one facility type may fail in another.

• What looks successful in the short term may not be sustainable in operation.

• What appears to be a sport trend may actually be a demographic or positioning issue.

This is why the next stage of the sector requires more than enthusiasm and more than fragmented know-how. It requires shared intelligence: a more structured understanding of how racquet sports facilities function across markets, across formats, and across strategic objectives.

That is where the conversation now needs to move.

Why this matters now

The racquet sports sector is entering a phase where facility decisions will become more complex, not less. More combinations will emerge. More investors will explore multi-sport concepts. More operators will need to decide how to position themselves in increasingly varied local markets. More stakeholders will ask what can be learned from other countries, other facility types, and other racquet sports.

Those questions cannot be answered well inside isolated silos.

They require a broader framework — one that respects the differences between sports, but also recognizes the shared business realities that connect them.

At the Racquet Sports Institute, this is one of the core ideas behind our work. We believe the future of racquet sports lies not in artificial separation, but in strategic collaboration, better comparison, and more informed decision-making across the sector.

This is also the thinking behind the Racquet Sports Institute AI Agent currently being developed. Its role is not to replace expertise or local judgment, but to make structured sector knowledge more accessible — and to help stakeholders assess questions in a way that reflects market maturity, facility type, orientation, and practical business logic.

Because in the end, better facilities are not built by asking which sport is fashionable.

They are built by asking better questions from the start.