RacquetX 2026 Is One Week Out. Here's What I'll Be Looking For.

The racquet sports industry is showing up in Fort Lauderdale with momentum. The harder question is whether it's showing up with structure.

Everyone will come back from the event talking about the energy. The momentum. The courts packed wall to wall.

I'll be watching something different.

I'll be at RacquetX 2026 March 13–15 in Fort Lauderdale — 5,000 attendees, 125 companies, every major player in the racquet sports industry under one roof. It's the best signal we have of where this industry actually is.

And here's my honest read going in:

The growth story is real. The structure question is still open.

What the RacquetX 2026 agenda tells me

Look at the RacquetX session list and you'll see the tension in plain text.

There's a session on turning padel demand into a predictable business — because the demand is there and the business model is still being figured out.

There's a panel on the future of pickleball regulation and global growth — because the sport is moving faster than the governance structures around it.

There's a session on the future of tennis coaching — because even the most established sport in the room is being asked to reinvent itself.

There's a Club Summit session on culture and retention — because clubs are filling courts and losing members at the same time.

There's a panel on what tech should exist but doesn't yet — because the tools haven't caught up to the growth.

And there's a session specifically about athletes and investors in padel, with this framing: execution, not enthusiasm, determines who will survive and scale.

That line should be on a banner above the entrance.

What I keep seeing

I spent the last several years inside this industry as CMO of the Racquet Sports Professionals Association, where we watched participation explode and organizational pressure build right alongside it.

The pattern is consistent: participation grows faster than the systems built to support it. Decision-making inside clubs and organizations gets harder, not easier, as momentum accelerates. Leaders who were great at building something from scratch hit a wall when the complexity of scale arrives.

Growth doesn't remove the hard problems. It surfaces them faster and makes them more expensive.

Three things I'm watching at RacquetX 2026

1. What club leaders say when they're being honest.

The hallway conversations are more valuable than the panel sessions. When someone is off the record, are they excited or stressed? Are they talking about programming strategy or staffing shortages? That gap tells you everything.

2. How the money conversations have changed.

A year ago, investors were chasing anything in the space. I want to know if that's matured — if the questions being asked are sharper, and if the businesses getting funded are the ones with real models behind them.

3. Whether anyone is talking about what to stop.

The hardest strategic question in a growth market isn't what to add. It's what to eliminate. Which sports get court time? Which programs get cut? Any organization navigating that clearly has done real strategic work.

The honest question underneath all of it

Racquet sports don't have a growth problem. They have a decision problem.

RacquetX will give me a read on how well the industry knows that.

If you're going to be there, I'd like to connect. And if you think my read is wrong, tell me — I mean that.