Coming Soon - RacqI - Racquet Sports Intelligence

The industry's first common reference for racquet sports decisions

THE PROBLEM

Eleven sources, eleven answers, no shared truth — that's how decisions in racquet sports get made today. Operators, investors, planners and public bodies each work from incompatible numbers: none comparable, most unverified.

WHAT RACQI IS

RacqI is an expert-curated intelligence platform for everyone who makes commercial decisions in racquet sports. Years of curated research, 150,000+ facility profiles, and live connections to demographic, economic, climate and market data — assembled into one platform that turns a question into a defensible answer in minutes.

Every answer sourced.
Every number traceable.
Every assumption transparent.

For the people who decide what gets built, what gets priced, and what gets funded — across padel, pickleball, tennis, badminton and squash.

→ Read the Stakeholder Briefing below

How we read this industry.

Before the platform, there was the reading. These articles capture the market dynamics, operational lessons, and commercial logic the Racquet Sports Institute has been working with for years — the foundation RacqI is built on, and the perspective every answer comes from.

Bar chart of U.S. tennis players by yearly session frequency; regular plus avid players make up 28.6%, the highest engaged share of any racquet sport.

Tennis — The Real-Estate Giant Renovating in Three National Modes

Tennis has the most documented player base in racquet sports: 25.7 million U.S. players — 13.0 M core, 12.7 M casual. Regular plus avid players make up 28.6%, the highest engaged share of any racquet sport. It is also the only one whose core players (average age 43) are older than its casuals (33), with a balanced 53/47 gender split, +9.7 years of added life expectancy, and an 80% junior drop-out by 13 that still feeds a deep, multi-decade competitive core for operators and i

Infographic mapping world badminton by facility model: Asia's mass participation, France's engineered club base, Europe's casual public-hall play, Germany's commercial boom-and-bust, and no base at all in the US and Australia.

Badminton — Communal Sport, State Project, or Commercial Niche?

Badminton has the world's largest player base — over 220 million — yet the smallest commercial footprint. The reason is the series' core lesson: the sport is never the variable, the facility is. Asia built mass participation through public halls and schools; France engineered a durable club base; Britain runs a wide but casual public-hall game; Germany built a commercial base in the 1990s and lost it, exactly as squash did; the US and Australia built no base at all. One sport

Racquet Sports Institute chart "Squash — a tale of three trajectories": four major markets from the 1970s/80s peak to 2025. Egypt rises on Type 4 member-club mass participation, the USA holds steady on a Type 2/3 college pipeline, Europe and Australia/NZ both decline on the Type 1 commercial model — Australia at sharper pace.

Squash — A Tale of Three Trajectories Going Three Different Directions

For operators, investors and federations: four squash markets, three trajectories. Egypt's member-club system produces global elite dominance from 2,000–2,500 courts. The US builds a Type 2/3 college pipeline (65 varsity teams). Europe and Australia/NZ run Type 1 commercial models in erosion — England 4,200 courts; Australia 1,300→580 in 20 years. Facility type, not the sport, drives outcomes — and the strategic Brisbane 2032 case is the one the WSF isn't making.

Pickleball — The Public-Sector Wave Meets the Commercial Operator

Pickleball is the racquet sport where public-private tension is most visible globally. The US has built 82,613 mostly public courts colliding with a Picklr-style indoor commercial wave. Asia counts 812 million who have tried the sport against just 5,000–8,000 courts — the rare supply-constrained market. Europe arrived a decade late: tennis-club add-ons dominate, Type 1 commercial is essentially unborn. Three regions, same paddle, three radically different investment stories.

Padel — A Hospitality Product Tested in Three Geographies

Padel is the same sport everywhere — 20×10 metres, four players, glass walls — but the business is not. This article maps the global market through three lenses: maturity (Spain, Italy, Argentina), active growth (UK, France, Germany), and early stage (USA, MENA, India, Indonesia). Sweden's 4,200-court boom became a €500 million crash. The UK now leads the world in revenue per court. And headline player-per-court figures overstate real operational demand by a factor of three t

Diagram of a racquet sports facility shown as two businesses — an asset layer of tennis, pickleball, padel and squash courts above an operations layer of lounge, bar, kitchen, reception and lobby.

The Business of Racquet Sports: Why Most Investors Misread the Market — and How to Read It Right

Racquet sports are booming — 35M padel players, 220M badminton, 106M tennis — yet the decade has delivered the worst wave of facility failures in 40 years: 120 padel bankruptcies in Sweden, 27% squash decline in England, vanishing Munich courts. The reason: every facility is two businesses at once — a leisure operation and a real-estate asset — and most operators run only one. Article 1 lays out the framework: five sports, five tribes, the 100–150 players-per-court reality, m

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Roadmap & availability

Pre-beta access available now — see the platform in depth, on request.

Commercial launch: October 2026.

Join the tester list, free of charge, for early access — or contact us for a personal walkthrough.
info@RacquetSports.Institute

RacqI is being established as its own company in September 2026, holding the platform, the data and the brand. It reaches the market through the Racquet Sports Institute — four decades of domain expertise and the name the sector already knows.