What UK Pickleball Players Actually Spend on the Sport — A 500-Player Study
What UK Pickleball Players Actually Spend on the Sport — A 500-Player Study
If you’re a UK pickleball player, here is roughly what you have spent: £42 on your first paddle, £127 on the paddle in your bag right now, and £284 total once you add balls, shoes, a bag, and at least one questionable t-shirt with a paddle pun on it. 64% of you have upgraded your paddle in the last 12 months. 49% of you own two paddles or more. Almost a quarter (21%) own three or more.
In other words: pickleball might look like a £30 garden game, but the people who keep playing it spend like a serious sporting hobbyist within their first year.
We surveyed 500 UK pickleball players in March 2026 and asked them — line by line — exactly what they spend. Below is the full breakdown, plus the bits that made our researchers laugh out loud.
Key findings
- £42 average spend on first paddle
- £127 average value of current paddle
- £284 average total kit value
- £315 average annual spend on pickleball gear (median: £210)
- 64% have upgraded their paddle in the last 12 months
- 49% own two paddles or more
- 21% own three or more
- Joola is the most-owned brand (23%); Selkirk (18%) and Head (16%) follow
- 31% of players’ next planned purchase is a Joola paddle
The £42 → £127 trajectory
The single most striking pattern in the data is how quickly UK players outgrow their first paddle. Three-quarters of new players start with one of three things:
- A budget paddle bought from Decathlon, Sports Direct, or Amazon (median price £29)
- A “starter set” with two paddles and four balls (median price £49 — so ~£24/paddle)
- A borrowed paddle from a friend or club
But within their first year, they almost always upgrade — and they don’t upgrade by a small amount. The average jump from first paddle to current paddle is roughly 3× the original price.
| Stage | Avg paddle spend |
|---|---|
| First paddle | £42 |
| Current paddle (all players) | £127 |
| Current paddle (intermediate-rated players) | £174 |
| Current paddle (competitive-rated players) | £218 |
The leap from “first paddle” to “current paddle” is the steepest single line item in the entire UK racket-sport retail market right now. It is also a direct read on how seriously a player is taking the sport: 64% of players who started in the last 12 months have already replaced their first paddle.
The full kit cost
Here is what the average UK pickleball player has in their kit bag, and what it cost:
| Item | Avg owned value |
|---|---|
| Paddle | £127 |
| Balls (incl. spares) | £18 |
| Shoes | £63 |
| Bag / backpack | £38 |
| Apparel (the items they actively call “pickleball clothing”) | £29 |
| Accessories (grips, covers, eyewear, sweatbands) | £9 |
| Total | £284 |
Annualised spend — including upgrades and replacements — is £315 mean / £210 median. The mean is dragged up by the long tail of players spending £600+ a year (12% of the sample). The median is closer to the typical experience.
For context: that £210 median is about the same as a typical UK gym member spends on monthly fees in three months.
The brand picture
Joola is winning, on every metric.
| Brand owned today | Share |
|---|---|
| Joola | 23% |
| Selkirk | 18% |
| Head | 16% |
| Decathlon’s Artengo | 14% |
| Franklin | 9% |
| Other | 20% |
When we asked, “If you were buying your next paddle today, what brand would you pick?”, Joola opens its lead even further:
| Brand wanted next | Share |
|---|---|
| Joola | 31% |
| Selkirk | 21% |
| CRBN | 11% |
| Six Zero (6.0) | 8% |
| Head | 7% |
| Other | 22% |
Two readings of that data:
- Joola is the aspirational brand. It already has the largest installed base, and is the most-wanted next purchase. That’s the dream consumer position.
- CRBN and Six Zero punch far above their installed base. Both are direct-to-consumer brands with negligible UK retail presence today, yet sit ahead of Head — a global racket-sport giant with 60 years of UK distribution — on next-purchase intent. That is a flashing-red signal that the UK pickleball brand pecking order is being rewritten in real time.
- Decathlon’s Artengo is the budget gateway. 14% of players currently own an Artengo paddle, but only 1% of players say it would be their next purchase. Decathlon owns first-paddle. It does not own second-paddle.
The “obsessed” vs the “casuals”
We separated the sample into the 31% of players who self-describe as “obsessed” and the rest. The spend gap is huge.
| Cohort | Annual spend | Paddle value | Paddles owned |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Obsessed” players | £521 | £198 | 2.8 |
| Other players | £224 | £93 | 1.4 |
The obsessed cohort isn’t even particularly large in absolute terms — but they account for an outsized share of total UK pickleball retail revenue. Roughly: 31% of players generate ~52% of category spend.
For retailers, that is the segment-of-one worth obsessing about.
What this means for the UK pickleball market
A back-of-envelope calculation:
- ~130,000 monthly active UK pickleball players (our internal estimate, mid-2026).
- Average annual spend of £315.
- = roughly £41 million of UK pickleball gear retail spend, annualised, at current participation levels.
Even being conservative — discounting 30% of the sample’s spend as overstated, and using the median — the UK market is comfortably £25–35 million today, with a clear path to £100m+ as participation triples (which our boom report suggests it will, over the next 18 months).
This is no longer a hobbyist micro-niche. It’s a real category.
Methodology
PickleballOne UK Player Survey 2026, fielded 2 March – 6 April 2026. n = 500 UK-resident pickleball players who play at least once a month. Spend data self-reported; players asked to recall actual purchase prices, not estimates. Margin of error ±4.4 percentage points at 95% confidence. Full methodology and anonymised data available on request: press@pickleballone.co.uk.
Citation
Source: PickleballOne UK Player Survey 2026 (n=500). https://pickleballone.co.uk/blogs/learn/uk-pickleball-spend-survey-2026
Press contact
press@pickleballone.co.uk