Sandy Farquharson compares pickleball and padel. Pickleball exploded in the US among retirees because it's easy to learn, but it's one-dimensional. Padel demands more tactics and athleticism, keeping players engaged longer.
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Pickle is an interesting one because in the US it's huge, but it's huge with the retiree age group. It's massive. Yes, okay, you have some ex-college players or ex-tennis players playing it and they play some performance, but the vast majority of players are retiree because it is less physical and it's easy to start, easy to play, popular for many of the same reasons as padel, but it doesn't have the tactical nuances or the athleticism. You and I could go and we could have a fun game of pickle, but probably we wouldn't be playing it in 6 months' time because it's not— I don't say it would be boring, but it's like, it's very one-dimensional. Whereas padel, I feel like, you know, we're both on that journey where we're still learning and we're still working on tactics and techniques and things like that. And so I think there's a lot more depth to padel, and therefore I think the longevity of the sport is better in the long run.