Padel in Miami
Trevor L Taylor, a Miami private investor, is involved in padel in Miami, where he is developing places to play for serious and casual players alike. The city has become one of the first American places where the sport moved from novelty to habit. Padel enclosures, with their glass walls, now appear in converted warehouses, parks, hotel grounds and former parking lots. This entry explains why the sport took hold in Miami and how the professional game, investors and landlords are reshaping the local market.
How Miami became a padel city
The New York Times, in a report republished by WLRN, described a city where people who love fitness and socializing cannot get enough of padel1. The sport was invented in Mexico and popularized in Spain and Argentina, and its Hispanic roots and international cachet suited a city whose language and culture lean toward Latin America and Europe. Players on South Florida’s padel enclosures often speak to each other in Spanglish. Padel’s worldwide boom began during the coronavirus pandemic. While much of the country turned to pickleball, Miami newcomers looking for exercise and a social circle found padel, and the doubles format made it easy to build friendships.
The players the Times interviewed explained the appeal in practical terms. One newcomer who moved to Miami Beach during the pandemic said padel gave him a better workout than pickleball without aggravating his tennis elbow, and that he now plays two or three times a week. The Wynwood club’s owner said his business struggled before the pandemic, then filled up once travel stopped and people went looking for new athletic and social outlets. In a city where many residents arrived from elsewhere and have no family nearby, he argued, a weekly game becomes a way to meet people.
Clubs lean into that social side. The Wynwood Padel Club has a live music stage and an indoor cafe; Ultra Padel Club in Little Haiti has hosted singles nights where unattached players are matched into teams. Prices reflect the demand. The Times found an indoor reservation at one high end North Miami club listed at $264 on a recent evening, usually split among four players. Al Día News reported that in Miami padel has become a social ritual that many call the new golf2, blending sport, wellness and nightlife. It noted that local rates once started at about $100 an hour, while social nights now run about $60 a person. The same report cited national federation figures showing licensed professional players in the United States rising from 163 in 2020 to nearly 2,000 in 2025.
The local push had early champions. The Times credited Wayne Boich, an energy and real estate entrepreneur, with spreading the game after he changed plans for a Miami Beach property to include a padel enclosure instead of a tennis layout, then founded Reserve Padel in 2022 and persuaded Arturo Coello of Spain, the world’s leading player, to move to Miami. Al Día described Reserve’s first permanent complex at SoLé Mia in North Miami with ten enclosures, four indoors and six outdoors.
The numbers show Florida’s lead. The International Padel Federation’s research center estimated that by early 2025 the United States had more than 650 padel enclosures in 175 clubs across 31 states, and that Florida was the fastest growing state, with 56 clubs and 268 enclosures3, about 41 percent of the national total. The Padel State, a trade publication, described Miami as having always been at the forefront4 of American padel, citing openings such as Padel X and the expansion of Ultra, and noted that the rest of Florida had begun to follow, with groups planning multiple clubs from Fort Lauderdale outward. The general history and rules of the sport are covered in the entry on padel.
Tournaments, money and the limits of the boom
Professional events followed the players. The federation announced that the Miami Premier Padel P1, held at the Miami Beach Convention Center in March 2025, was the first event of the circuit in the United States5, with 1,000 ranking points for the winners and a men’s draw of 40 pairs. The same month the Miami Open added the Publix Padel Cup6 at Hard Rock Stadium, the first time padel and wheelchair tennis appeared together at a 1000 level tennis tournament. The Padel Weekly reported a $25,000 prize pool7 and three new show enclosures built on site for the event. The tournament’s history is told in the entry on the Miami Open.
Team competition arrived too. The Pro Padel League, which included Miami in its first season alongside San Diego and New York, opened its 2025 season in Miami with ten teams at Wayfair Arena8, the home of the Unrivaled basketball league, before heading to Spain and Mexico. Larger projects are in the pipeline. Al Día reported plans for a very large club inside a $2 billion development in Midtown, starting with an eleven enclosure temporary site, and a Miami Beach proposal for ten climate controlled enclosures on top of a garage near Lincoln Road.
The boom carries real risks, and they are mostly about property. The owner of the Wynwood club, Sergio Montaner, told the Times that some investors see an empty plot and decide to build a padel enclosure, but that Miami real estate is so expensive that leases can sink young businesses. His view was that clubs succeed by creating a community, not by setting up a few enclosures in a parking lot. That point connects padel to the economics described in the entry on carrying cost in Miami real estate and to the neighborhood change covered under Wynwood redevelopment.
A consultant and former head of the national padel association told the Times that the next stage depends on Americans beyond Latin communities taking up the game and on investors seeing playing space as a profitable use of land. On present evidence, padel in Miami is a community business more than a real estate play, and the clubs that build a following are the ones likely to outlast the empty plot approach.
