The Top 14 Sports Trends of 2025

Pickleball surge inspires fresh formats

With a global audience and frequent spotlight in tournaments like the Olympics and Wimbledon, racket sports have been a cornerstone of athletics for over a century. Equipment sales alone are soon expected to hit $10 billion worldwide, and the category continues to generate new business opportunities.

However, the popularity of sports within it is rapidly shifting away from traditional disciplines like tennis and squash, giving way to new sports trends like pickleball, America’s fastest-growing sport for three consecutive years and the driver of rapid growth for businesses like Playtomic.

This shift is happening so quickly that Novak Djokovic, the most decorated male tennis player of all time, recently described his sport as “endangered.”

In Europe, the local equivalent to pickleball is padel. This tennis-squash hybrid is a popular participation sport, with over 52 million Instagram and Facebook accounts following padel-related content, and spectacular clips from the Premier Padel Tour regularly attracting attention region-wide.

Startups like Padel Smash are capitalizing on the trend with a portable outdoor game combining elements of padel and roundnet (Spikeball), offering a beginner-friendly and mobile alternative to the courts. This two-person company shot to fame on the popular TV show Shark Tank in 2023 when it raised $250,000. Just over a year down the line, the business is worth $3 million.

F1 fandom drives product sales

In 2017, a Private Equity firm bought the entire sport of Formula One for $4.6B, thinking the sport had huge untapped potential. One strategic change they made, to expand to a younger demographic, was simple: adding shorter races.

The new races are 1/3rd the duration of a traditional Grand Prix and have driven a surge in interest among the youth: F1 is now the fastest-growing large-scale sport on social media in terms of follower count.

The industry has also been pushing for more Hollywood marketing. The popular Netflix series “Drive to Survive”, in partnership with F1, was seen as a move to help sell the European sport to an American audience.

Unlike most other sports though, a surge in viewership doesn’t mean a corresponding surge in participants, as racing is prohibitively expensive for nearly everyone who watches it, especially the newly adopted youth demographic. This has led to a rise in driving simulators, a top gaming trend, which cost just a few hundred dollars; equivalent to the average price to race on a track for just a few hours.

Racing simulator products, including motorsport shoes, and racing hoodies have consequently taken off. Even when racing in a simulator, many say the shoes are necessary – their thin and flexible soles help maximize the driver’s feel of the petals and give them better control.

Some reviewers even say they bought it because they drive long hours for Uber and the shoes help them extend their comfortable working hours, letting them earn more in a given day.

Seniors drive etrike adoption

With the Baby Boomer generation now reaching retirement age, a huge number of over-65s are looking for a safe and comfortable way to get around. Many are turning to etrikes.

Electric bikes have taken off over the past few years as a convenient and green way to get around. Major cities have responded by providing bike lanes; New York already has a 650-mile network.

But for older citizens who may not have the best balance, two wheels can seem risky.

Top ebike manufacturers recognized this issue, and came up with a solution. Etrikes are similar to their two-wheeled relatives, but more stable.

Younger generations may not realize, but the etrike market is actually running hot. One particular model, the RadTrike, accounts for a quarter of the total cargo ebike market.

Seniors fuel pickleball’s rapid rise

Pickleball, the fastest growing sport in the U.S., is most popular among a surprising demographic: the elderly.

Unlike many other sports, pickleball – a mashup of badminton, tennis, and ping pong – doesn't give much of an edge to age or experience. It also takes far less time to play a full match than with other sports, so couples will schedule regular pickleball dates as a way to establish friendships within a community.

As pickleball grows in popularity among the 60+ demographic—especially as the population ages, something driving significant shifts in healthcare trends—retirement homes are increasingly adding the sport to their offerings and featuring it in their marketing.

While the volume is low for such long-tail keywords, searches like "pickleball retirement community" have as high as $10 CPCs on Google, meaning that retirement homes are paying up to $10 for every click they get on their ads shown to users in Google search results. Because the elderly don't switch retirement homes as frequently as younger generations switch housing, the retirement homes are willing to spend more on acquiring those customers.

Golf simulators win new players

Golf simulators were originally intended to help players practice, especially when weather made golfing itself less pleasant, but they’ve evolved into a sport in their own right. In fact, half of the users of golf simulators have never played the actual game. In this way, golf simulators were born as a training tool but turned into their own game.

Golf simulators offer simulated access to famous courses, some of which may be inconvenient to get to for players, or too expensive for them to visit. And simulators also offer fictional courses, which aren’t bound by the limits of geography.

The real-world course simulations mean better retention for companies that operate real-world courses; during the golf season, a golf simulator is a partial substitute for golfing, but over the course of a year it’s a complement, since it keeps players in the game even when they’re not on the course. Players can pay a virtual visit to their favorite course even in the middle of winter. When a product is unusable for a long period of time, maintaining users’ routines in the short term is key to retaining them over the long term.

Golf simulators have become one of the latest sports trends, showing seasonal spikes in search and online discussion as their popularity grows. This indicates that a healthy share of usage still comes from golfers who want to hone their skills off-season. Simulators are offered at a variety of price points, from minimalist products for under $300 to room-sized rigs that cost over $20,000. Recent usage has accelerated thanks to the pandemic, which has shut down some golf courses and also caused people to move away from cities and to more spacious suburbs and small towns, where they have enough indoor space for a golf simulator.

Golf is considered a rich person’s sport and, in contrast to many membership-based golf clubs, low-end golf simulators can help expand the market. In fact, golf’s high-end status originates, in part, from real estate. According to Census data, urban areas make up just 3% of land in the US, yet hold more than 80% of the population and a large proportion of the wealth. In order to carve out land for a golf course in an urban area, golf course companies must pay high costs which are then passed on to wealthy urban customers in the form of high membership fees.

New high-performance water sports lower the barrier to entry, expanding the market

Part of why high-performance water sports products have had relatively small markets is they require such high skill—a product like a wingfoil can help grow the market, introducing people to these sports in an easier context.

Windfoiling, a variant of windsurfing, is similar to pickleball–the fastest growing sport in the US– in the sense that by lowering a game’s difficulty to play, the market can be significantly grown.

Pickleball doesn't offer a big edge to people who are at a particular level of fitness or experience. Wingfoiling also benefits from having a larger available market than kitesurfing; since it needs less wind, there are more beaches where it can work and more days when it’s an option, making it a rising star among outdoor sports trends.

Mountain biking and cycle touring collide: the rise of bikepacking

Interest in bikepacking is surging, fueled not only by a growing appetite for adventure travel, but also by state governments who see it as a boon for the small towns that cyclists pass through along the way.

The sport — a cross between cycle touring and mountain biking — tends to take riders through rural areas where tourism dollars are otherwise scarce, particularly outside of snowmobiling season. Cyclists go slower than snowmobilers and therefore often spend more time and money in towns, giving legislators an incentive to maintain and expand these trail networks for year-round access.

As they do so, they help boost the growing bikepacking industry, which includes not just specialty bike shops, but also gear manufacturers, tour companies, content creators, rental services, and trail guide apps like Alltrails. The market for bikepacking bags in particular on marketplaces like Amazon has grown significantly in recent years as cyclists seek lighter, more technical gear to store their stuff.

Golf shoes get more traction as rainfall increases over the decades

U.S. rainfall has steadily increased since the 1900s, with the current decade being the wettest on record, according to NOAA. Even slightly wet golf courses can lead to slipping during swings, prompting more golfers to adopt spiked shoes for better grip. Since large-scale weather control isn’t feasible, spiked golf shoes are likely to become even more essential as rain becomes more common.

Golf is also seeing a surge in popularity among younger players, becoming one of the standout Gen Z sports trends. Spiked shoes offer extra stability, especially for newer players with less refined technique—making the game more accessible and fueling new golf trends.