China could outgrow America’s staggering pickleball participation numbers by reaching “100 million players within five years,” according to a fascinating article by US sports business website Front Office Sports.
Author John Walters spoke to World Pickleball Federation founder Seymour Rifkind at a pickleball exhibition he organised at Beijing’s famous Water Cube last September. There, the Chicago-based pickleball ambassador said: “China wants to lead the world in pickleball – and they have the means to do it.”
He added: “The top sports officials in China have pledged to me that within five years they expect to have 10,000 courts and 100 million players.”
These playing numbers (although at the moment only forecasts) would dwarf America’s current world-leading statistics, with the Association of Pickleball Players (APP) estimating that 36 million Americans played the sport at least once last year. The US is, however, thought to have over 10,000 courts already.
Several Rifkind anecdotes about his pickleball promotion work in China stand out. “I visited South China Agricultural University [in Guangzhou, population 16 million] just before the pandemic,” Rifkind tells Front Office Sports. “A professor took me on a tour at night. The lights were on in the all-purpose gym. On the tennis courts. On the badminton courts. Everyone was playing pickleball.”
50,000 students attend the university and Rifkind was told half of them play pickleball.
Rifkind organised pickleball demonstrations in Dong Ying, Beijing and Hebei in the build-up to last autumn’s Asian Games. The event reportedly had 4.8 million views online. “Everywhere we went, it was a Super Bowl-like atmosphere,” said Rifkind.
China’s 1.425 billion population would obviously fast-track pickleball’s globalisation, but it also contextualised as a key element in its quest to become an Olympic sport. Authorities see it as another potential vehicle for five-ringed domination like table tennis, badminton and gymnastics.
Check out the full Front Office Sports article here.
