Opening a Padel Club in Israel: Is It Profitable?
In most countries on this list, padel courts get built by sports operators chasing player demand. In Israel, a good share of new courts are being built by residential developers and hotel groups chasing buyers and guests. That's an unusual demand structure, and it changes who a new entrant is actually competing and partnering with.
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The Amenity That Displaced the Pool
Israel had roughly 130 padel courts operating by 2025, with another three dozen under construction, a fast pace for a sport that barely existed there a decade earlier. What stands out is who is building them: luxury residential projects are now marketing padel courts alongside pools, gyms, and co-working lounges as a standard amenity rather than a novelty. Dimri Yama, a residential development in Sde Dov, has confirmed a padel court in its amenity package alongside pools and spas, and buyers in premium developments increasingly ask whether a project has a padel court the same way they'd ask about a pool.
From Tennis Court to Padel Complex
Much of Israel's new supply is coming from converting or expanding existing tennis facilities rather than building on greenfield sites. Kfar Maccabiah in Ramat Gan, the sports and hotel complex tied to the Maccabiah Games, added eight padel courts alongside its eleven long-standing tennis courts, and the new courts quickly became some of the busiest in the country. In Herzliya, a sports center recently won planning approval to convert existing tennis courts into padel courts outright, a case likely to set a template other clubs follow, since padel courts generally generate meaningfully higher utilization and revenue per square meter than the tennis courts they replace.
Who's Actually Building: Chains, Municipalities, and Hotel Groups
Padel Israel, the country's leading network, now runs courts, lessons, and leagues across Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Petah Tikva, Rehovot, Rishon LeZion, Kfar Saba, and Caesarea. Ownership is diversifying beyond traditional sports operators too: the Maccabim Padel Club in Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut operates under the Fattal Group, a hospitality and real estate company best known for its hotel chain, and Ra'anana's municipality approved a 13-court rooftop complex on the Rananim Mall, an 8 million shekel, 6,000-square-meter project targeting an early 2026 opening, while a separate municipal tender is underway for a dedicated indoor center. Modi'in is separately building a five-court municipal complex next to its sports center. A new entrant here is competing with hotel groups and shopping mall landlords as much as with other padel operators.
What It Costs to Play
Court rental in Israel typically runs NIS 120 to 240 an hour per court, or roughly NIS 30 to 60 a person split four ways, with peak evening and weekend slots at the top of the range. Build costs are harder to pin down locally: the Ra'anana rooftop project works out to roughly NIS 615,000 per court, but that figure includes a full rooftop structural build on a shopping mall and shouldn't be read as a typical standalone court cost.
The Risk Factor Other Markets on This List Don't Have
Israel carries a country-risk dimension that doesn't apply to most of the other markets in this series: periodic security and geopolitical volatility that Israeli real estate advisors already factor into standard buyer guidance, covering everything from insurance costs to how tourism-linked revenue can swing. A padel club's core demand is domestic and recreational rather than tourism-dependent, which insulates it somewhat compared to hospitality businesses, but a serious financial model for an Israeli club should still stress-test for temporary disruptions rather than assume steady-state conditions year-round.
Is Israel Worth It Right Now?
Israel's padel market has a demand structure most of this series doesn't: real estate developers and hotel groups are already validating the sport's commercial value by building it into their own projects, which gives a new operator both competition and potential partnership routes that don't exist in more purely sports-operator-driven markets. Tennis-to-padel conversions are a proven, lower-capex path to supply, and pricing is healthy at NIS 120 to 240 an hour per court in the main urban centers. The trade-off is a country-risk profile that has to be modeled explicitly rather than assumed away, and a landscape where a new entrant may be competing against a hotel chain or a mall developer as much as another padel brand.
We help clients validate a specific Israeli city, structure partnerships with existing facility owners, and build a financial model that accounts for the country's specific risk profile. Tell us about your project below.
