Pickleball Clubs Are Closing as Rent Outruns Court Revenue, and a Facility Consultant Lays Out the Math

• Facility consultant West Shaw says bad leases, and clubs sold as passive investments that need an owner on site, are behind pickleball club closures.
• Johns Design & Consulting data puts average monthly pickleball revenue at about $6,400 per court, and about $8,000 per court at facilities with 10 courts or fewer.
• Shaw expects the next wave of openings to be autonomous or semi-autonomous clubs with three to six courts, run by an active owner-operator.

Leases Signed at Retail Prices Are Sinking New Pickleball Clubs

Pickleball clubs are closing, and West Shaw has numbers on the reason. Shaw leads Heleus Holdings and serves as Global CEO of RPO. He laid out his case in an October 6 piece for The Dink, and his answer to the question of whether pickleball is dead is no. His diagnosis is financial. Two things sink clubs, he writes: bad leases, and owners who bought what was sold as a passive investment in a business that needs an owner on site.

Shaw says he has designed, built, consulted on, and operated pickleball facilities worldwide from March 2023. He also actively operates Johns Design & Consulting, a firm that right-sizes clubs for their markets. Heleus Holdings is the parent company of RPO, Johns Design & Consulting, Grow My Club, and StackEleven Marketing, so the author has a business stake in the advice he gives. The revenue figures in the piece come from Johns Design & Consulting.

Shaw’s math explains why he thinks some clubs will not make it, and what kind of club he expects to replace them.

How the Franchise Rush Set the Stage

In March 2023, when Shaw started his first club, no franchise pickleball facilities existed. He opened on August 1, 2023, five months later. By then three franchise brands were operating, and hundreds of franchise locations had been sold, most of them not yet built.

Shaw cites FRANdata figures on how hard national growth is. Only 18% of franchise concepts reach 100 locations, and the average time to get there is more than 10 years. Pickleball adds its own difficulty. Shaw calls it “a stubbornly local sport.” He names Naples, Dallas, and Chicago as markets that would each need a different club model.

Why Rent Climbed Before the First Ball Was Hit

After COVID, national retailers Nordstrom Rack and Barnes & Noble moved into stores of 20,000 to 40,000 square feet. That size suits a pickleball club. Few of those buildings have 30-foot column spacing and 18-foot ceilings, the features a club needs. On lease competition, Shaw writes: “Rents went up before a single ball was hit.”

He explains the pricing with a cap rate, which is yearly rent divided by sale price. A $600,000 yearly rent on a $10 million building is a 6% cap rate. A $50,000 monthly lease equals $600,000 a year.

Shaw sets two tenants side by side. With Chick-fil-A as the tenant, he cites a cap rate of 4.2% to 4.5%, which implies a building value of about $14 million. With a first-year pickleball club as the tenant, an investor would want 8% to 10%, which implies a value of $6 million to $7.5 million. His conclusion: “So a startup pickleball club should have paid less rent than a national retailer for the same box, not more.”

What a Pickleball Court Earns Each Month

Shaw turns to 2026 data from Johns Design & Consulting. The figures show average monthly pickleball revenue per court over 12 months. They exclude food, beverage, and other secondary revenue, and they cover indoor and outdoor facilities, staffed and autonomous.

• Small facilities, 10 courts or fewer: about $8,000 per court
• Large facilities, more than 10 courts: about $5,600 per court
• All facilities: about $6,400 per court

Courts at small facilities earn roughly 43% more than courts at large ones, and Shaw says the numbers stayed relatively consistent over the past year. Location moves them further. Rural three-court clients earn $12,000 to $14,000 per court each month, while urban clients earn more than $30,000. “Location decides most of that. The lease decides the rest,” Shaw writes.

The Break-Even Math on a 10-Court Club

Most 10-court clubs sign leases between $30,000 and $50,000 a month, Shaw says, and he has heard of $100,000 monthly leases. On a $50,000 lease, a club needs more than $1 million a year to break even, even with generous payroll. Many clubs spend $25,000 to $30,000 on payroll.

Against that target, the revenue averages fall short. A 10-court club earning the small-facility average takes in about $960,000 a year from pickleball. At the all-facilities average, it takes in about $768,000. Shaw compares the cost structure to another business: “At McDonald’s, the cost of goods is food. At a pickleball club, the cost of goods is rent, and rent is fixed.”

Memberships do not close the gap. Shaw runs the numbers on a plan that charges $50 a month for half-off court time against a $40 hourly court rate. Reaching $1 million that way takes 25,000 court hours a year, which means every court booked almost seven hours a day. On an unlimited-play plan at $119 a month, $1 million takes about 700 members, or 70 per court. Shaw says a club can hold about 50 members per court, which caps revenue at about $714,000.

Time of day tightens the limit. Ten courts supply 40 court hours per evening, and demand peaks from 5 to 9 pm. Gym economics do not carry over, Shaw says: “A gym makes money on members who never show up. Pickleball members show up every couple of days.”

What the Facility Audits Find

Johns Design & Consulting runs what Shaw calls a facility audit. It reviews the lease, payroll, revenue, programming, marketing, offers, staff training, and coaches. Nearly every facility Shaw visits is overstaffed, he says.

Programming draws a second criticism. Clubs often run a class to check a box, such as an “Intro to Pickleball” session, with no clear next step for the player who finishes it. “If there’s no path for a player to follow, you have nothing to offer them,” Shaw writes. That finding led to the founding of StackEleven Marketing, which Shaw’s piece describes as the company that fills clubs. RPO develops the pros who run them.

Where the Next Wave of Clubs Is Headed

Shaw expects clubs to try to renegotiate their leases. Some will close. He still backs the sport itself: “People love this sport. They just need a club that can afford to stay open.”

In his view, the next wave of openings will be autonomous or semi-autonomous clubs with three to six courts, run by an active owner-operator.

His closing advice is four steps: know your market, size the club to fit it, sign a lease the business can carry, and show up.

What the Numbers Say to Members

Shaw wrote for operators and investors, but the data tells members what he thinks keeps a club open: a lease the business can carry, a size that fits the market, and an owner who shows up. He also says programming needs a next step, so a player who finishes an introductory class has somewhere to go.

Shaw’s numbers are one operator’s view, drawn from his own firm’s data, and the article’s author bio lists his business roles. His claim is narrow and specific: the sport is not the problem, and the lease is.

Image: Depositphotos