A growing market: Sports surfaces

By Emma Peterson. 

As sports like tennis and pickleball rise in popularity, the sport surfaces industry is creating innovative new products to support players. 

The recent rise in popularity of tennis and pickleball can be traced back to 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. As we all aimed to stay quarantined and safe, people turned to outdoor activities – ergo tennis and pickleball! Now, five years later, that wave of popularity is still rising. To learn more about what’s happening behind the scenes to handle the rising demand for court space, Karen Edwards spoke to Tom Magner from California Sport Surfaces in an episode of CoatingsCast®. 

Tom shared a little bit about the effects of this rising interest, saying, “Originally, pickleball would be lines on a tennis court and then they wanted standalone courts. Now enthusiasts of both sports are looking for their own facilities. There's a demand for it. There's certainly a lot of people going to municipalities asking for this sort of thing because there's only so much court space available. We're now seeing old mall spaces and retail spaces turned into makeshift courts.”  

As this demand continues to rise, companies like California Sport Surfaces are developing incredible and innovative products that make the game even more enjoyable. Tom gave an example, saying, “If you've watched some of the Grand Slam events, any tournament event, you see some of these matches that stretch into two, three hours. As they go on, you’ll notice the players getting tired, both from the exercise and simply being on the court surface, which is often 20-30 degrees warmer than the air temperature.” So, to address this issue, California Sports Surfaces developed their Cool Top coating. This coating utilizes a combination of pigments and additives that, when applied to a court, raises the surface’s solar reflectivity. In other words, it reduces how much heat sits on the court, making it a more comfortable space to play on! 

Read the transcript, Listen to the full episode or Watch the recording to learn more about the industry behind athletic courts for beloved games like pickleball and tennis.