Opening a Padel Club in Australia: Is It Profitable?
Australia's padel market is moving fast enough that data from a few weeks ago already undersells it. This is a market worth evaluating city by city and even climate zone by climate zone rather than as a single national story, because the country's size and geographic spread make the usual one-size-fits-all country read less useful here than almost anywhere else on this list.
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A Market Growing by the Month, Not the Year
Australia had roughly 100 padel courts across 23 clubs as of April 2026. By late May 2026, that had jumped to 154 courts across 33 clubs, more than a 50% increase in courts in a single month. Growth this fast, this recently, is a stronger signal than most annual growth percentages quoted elsewhere on this list, and it suggests the market is still in the early, steep part of its curve rather than leveling off.
Sydney and Melbourne Lead, But the Map Is Already Wide
Sydney and Melbourne currently have the largest concentration of clubs, with Sydney offering some of the country's largest and most complete facilities and Melbourne emerging as a strong market for indoor and premium club experiences. But courts already exist across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, the ACT, and Tasmania, in cities like Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, and the Gold Coast, and even in regional towns like Albury and Coffs Harbour. Unlike the Gulf markets on this list, where growth concentrates in one or two cities, Australia's padel expansion is already geographically dispersed, which changes how you think about competition and site selection.
What a Court Actually Costs to Build and to Book
A complete padel court in Australia, fencing, glass, lighting, posts, net, and synthetic turf, runs roughly AUD 65,000 to 85,000 for a standard build, with competition-quality courts from full-service providers reaching AUD 85,000 to 150,000. Real booking data across Sydney and Melbourne puts court rental at roughly AUD 60 to 100 an hour per court, or AUD 15 to 25 per player once split four ways. That per-player figure is the number most often quoted online, but the whole-court rate is what actually drives a club's revenue model, and it's the one worth building a business plan around.
One Country, Several Climates
Few markets on this list span the climate range Australia does: tropical Queensland supports outdoor play through most of the year, while Melbourne and Tasmania have genuinely cold, wet winters that push serious operators toward indoor or covered courts. There's no single national answer to the indoor-versus-outdoor question here, the right build depends entirely on which part of the country you're in, and applying a Sydney or Brisbane climate assumption to a Melbourne or Hobart site would be a real planning mistake.
The FIRB Detail Most Investors Miss
Foreign investment in Australia goes through the Foreign Investment Review Board, and most padel investors won't trigger the large monetary thresholds that apply to acquiring an existing Australian business. The detail that actually matters is about land: vacant commercial land requires FIRB notification regardless of value, with a threshold of zero, while developed commercial real estate, an existing building you lease or buy, generally doesn't require approval below roughly AUD 330 million. In practical terms, leasing an existing building or buying an already-built site sidesteps a mandatory approval step that buying raw land to build a court complex from scratch does not, a structuring detail worth planning around from day one.
The Real Risk: A Scattered Market Without National Benchmarks
Because Australia's padel growth is already spread across dozens of cities and towns rather than concentrated in one or two hubs, the usual approach of benchmarking against "the national market" is less useful here. A strong Sydney occupancy number tells you very little about what to expect in Perth or the Gold Coast, and the real risk isn't a lack of demand nationally, it's assuming any single city's data applies to the one you're actually evaluating.
Is Australia Worth It Right Now?
For an operator willing to do genuinely local homework rather than lean on a national growth headline, Australia's combination of fast recent growth, geographic spread, and a still-open field outside Sydney and Melbourne makes for a genuinely strong case, provided the climate, the site, and the FIRB structuring are all matched to the specific city in question.
We help clients validate the right Australian city and climate fit, benchmark local pricing city by city, and structure the investment to avoid unnecessary FIRB delays. Tell us about your project below.
