When starting a pickleball or padel facility, the default strategy for generating revenue often revolves around memberships. It’s a proven model: set up your courts, calculate your capacity, price your memberships to ensure profitability, and let the money churn month after month. Once you’ve dialed in the formula, you can replicate the model in new locations and scale your business.
This approach works for many clubs because it provides a predictable revenue stream, is relatively hands-off, and feels secure. But is it the optimal strategy, especially for smaller facilities or those in competitive markets? Let’s dig deeper.
The Standard Membership Model
Imagine you open a pickleball facility in a suburban area with six pristine indoor courts and some space for social events. You decide on a tiered membership model:
- Basic Membership: Low monthly fee, pay-as-you-go for lessons, clinics, and court rentals.
- Premium Membership: Higher monthly fee with unlimited court access and discounts on clinics and events.
At first, everything goes well. You sell memberships, courts fill up during prime time, and the club is buzzing. As demand grows, you hire more coaches, add clinics and open-play sessions to maximize court usage, and sell even more memberships. Your premium members enjoy the perks, but before long, frustration starts to build.
Courts are consistently booked during peak hours, leaving premium members—the ones paying the most—unable to secure spots to play with friends after work. You’re faced with tough decisions:
- Do you limit memberships? This caps your revenue potential.
- Do you cut back on clinics and open plays? This means fewer opportunities for your coaches, who may start looking elsewhere for work.
- Do you expand your facility? That’s a major investment, and your membership revenue may not cover the costs.
Now imagine it’s spring. Players start flocking to outdoor courts, and your once-packed facility empties out. Members freeze or cancel their subscriptions, and you scramble to fill the calendar with events and tournaments. By fall, a franchise with 24 courts opens nearby, and your competitive advantage evaporates.
The Alternative: A Flexible, Service-Based Model
What if you ditch—or at least rethink—your reliance on memberships? Instead of banking on a fixed, predictable income, you could build a more flexible, service-driven model. Here’s how it could look:
- No Memberships or Low-Cost Memberships: Drop memberships entirely, or keep them inexpensive with minimal perks, focusing on cultivating a larger base of regular customers rather than locking people into contracts.
- Service-Driven Revenue Streams: Fill your schedule with clinics, lessons, open-play sessions, and events designed for different skill levels and demographics. Padel will have to work harder to introduce more players to the sport.
- Dynamic Pricing: Adjust court rental, clinic, and lesson fees incrementally—$1 or $2 increases across these services can have a far greater impact on your revenue than a $10 bump in membership fees.
- Community-Focused Events: Offer social and corporate events, DUPR® or WPR-rated tournaments, and other programming that builds relationships and keeps people engaged.
This model allows you to attract a much larger customer base—think 800 regular players instead of capping memberships at 200—and maximize the use of your courts without the constraints of tiered access.
The Seasonal Advantage
This service-based approach also buffers your business against seasonal fluctuations. In summer, when members might pause their memberships to play outside, you can still count on players who value your facility’s clinics, expert coaching, and community-focused events—things public outdoor courts or a big franchise can’t replicate.
Rather than fighting the seasons, you’re adapting to them by emphasizing offerings that keep players engaged year-round.
A Hybrid Model: Best of Both Worlds
If your facility has eight or more courts, you may have the space to implement a hybrid model that combines the benefits of memberships with a robust service-based approach. By reserving some courts for member reservations and using others for lessons, clinics, and events, you can cater to both audiences effectively. For smaller facilities, however, a full-service model without traditional memberships may provide more flexibility and room for growth.
The Bottom Line: Think Beyond Memberships
Memberships are appealing because they offer predictable revenue. But as the pickleball and padel markets evolve, facilities that rely solely on memberships may find themselves boxed into a corner. High demand, limited court space, and seasonal slowdowns can make traditional membership models difficult to sustain—especially for smaller facilities.
A flexible, service-driven model allows you to attract a larger customer base, adapt to market trends, and build a resilient business. By focusing on clinics, lessons, events, and building a strong community, you can create a pickleball facility that players love—no matter the season or competition.
So, is membership really the best revenue driver for your pickleball or padel facility? It depends, but for many, it’s time to rethink the formula.
