Somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 per outdoor court in the United States, and the single biggest variable is whether you already have a slab to build on.
That range is wide because the honest answer is wide. Published estimates disagree with each other, sometimes within the same article, and anyone quoting you a single confident number before seeing your site is guessing.
Where the money goes
For a typical outdoor court, the line items break down roughly as follows:
- Court kit, the glass, steel, turf and net: $30,000 to $50,000
- Foundation and site preparation: $30,000 to $50,000, and close to nothing if a sound slab already exists
- Installation labour: $5,000 to $15,000
- LED lighting, four poles: figures vary from $2,000 to $18,000 depending on who you ask
- Engineering and permitting: $2,000 to $12,000, entirely dependent on your municipality
One widely cited industry calculator puts the typical US range at $39,076 to $99,920 per court, while its own FAQ on the same page says $20,000 to $200,000. Both figures are on the same website. That is not sloppiness so much as a sport where almost every build is bespoke.
Why indoor can cost less per court than outdoor
This surprises people. Estimates for indoor builds often come in lower per court, around $42,000 to $46,000, against $84,000 to $95,000 outdoor.
The reason is the foundation. An indoor project usually starts with a building that already has a floor, which removes the groundwork entirely. An outdoor project starts with earth.
The catch is that the indoor figure excludes the building. If you are leasing a warehouse, the rent is the cost, and it is a cost that arrives every month rather than once.
Building more than one court
Per-court cost falls as court count rises, because mobilisation, transport and crew time are spread across the project. Published sample estimates show outdoor costs dropping from roughly $91,000 per court for two courts to about $84,000 for eight.
That is a real saving but a modest one. Some suppliers claim 15 to 30% savings on multi-court builds. The sample figures do not support numbers that high, so treat that claim as a negotiating position rather than a fact.
The costs that are not in anyone's quote
Court construction quotes cover courts. A padel club is not only courts.
- Booking system, monthly, and the wrong choice costs you staff hours every week
- Insurance for the facility and for coaching
- Lighting and heating on the meter, which is the running cost people most consistently underestimate
- Staff, or the automation that lets you run without them
- Marketing, because an empty court costs exactly as much as a full one
That last point is the one worth sitting with. The courts are a fixed cost the day they are installed. Your mortgage, lease and lighting do not care whether anyone is playing. Everything after the build is about how many of those hours you actually sell.
A sensible way to think about the number
Work out your total build cost, then work out how many court hours a week you need to sell to cover it. Not how many you hope to sell. How many you need.
If that number requires your courts to be busy at 11am on a Tuesday, you do not have a construction problem. You have a demand problem, and that needs solving before the glass goes up, not after.
Most clubs that struggle did not overpay for courts. They opened with no plan for filling the quiet hours and spent the first year discovering how many of them there are.
