Report: Is U.S. Pickleball Participation Leveling Off?

According to a new mid-year report from SFIA, "Pickleball remains the fastest-growing sport, though early indicators suggest its explosive growth may be slowing."

Back in March, we told you that some 19.8 million people were playing pickleball in the U.S.—a 45.8% increase from 2023.

That figure represented an impressive 311% growth over the three years prior, crowning pickleball as the fastest-growing sport for the fourth year running.

The accolades came from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association's (SFIA), a sports market research firm based in Washington, DC., and its 2025 Topline Participation Report, the most comprehensive source available for pickleball participation data.

New this year, SFIA is checking in with its first-ever mid-year report, tracking the participation data of more than 30 sports, from baseball to lacrosse, surfing to yoga.

Pickleball's explosive growth slows down

Pickleball continues to dominate the headlines:

However, for what feels like the first time since the sport's mid-COVID explosion, there are signs of its momentum cooling off.

For perspective, here's a look at pickleball’s five-year trajectory heading into 2025:

• 2019: 3.46 million players
• 2020: 4.20 million players
• 2021: 4.82 million players
• 2022: 8.95 million players
• 2023: 13.58 million players
• 2024: 19.81 million players

Now, according to SFIA, while individual sports have shown a mixed performance so far in 2025. :

It's worth noting that SFIA extrapolates this data and related trends from a sample of roughly 20,000 online interviews conducted nationwide and weighted along several variables, including gender, age, income, ethnicity, household size, region, and population density.

As such, the SFIA states, "this is only an early snapshot. Because many sports and activities are seasonal, there is still time for these numbers to shift."

What’s next for Pickleball?

We predicted this participation slowdown back in March.

This isn't cause for any alarm; pickleball's popularity is here to stay.

And if recent MLP data is any indication—one Saturday match at the MLP Finals in NYC drew 433,000 average viewers on CBS—people aren't just playing pickleball at a voracious clip, they're starting to consume the professional product with more interest, too.

So far, our outlook remains the same: The next challenge isn’t convincing more people to play—they're hooked enough already—it’s building enough infrastructure to support the demand.

Feature image via Shutterstock