Bowling Alone but Pickling Together: The Socio-Demographic Drivers of America’s Fastest Growing Sport

Much concern has been voiced about the growing alienation of Americans, with “Bowling Alone” being a particularly loud alarm bell signaling a shift away from institutional mainstays of community, such as churches and elective organizations like bowling leagues (Putnam 2000). Recent research drawing on the American Time Use Survey bears this out, showing a precipitous rise in leisure, work, exercise, religious, and other activities taking place in the home since 2003 (Sharkey 2024). Mental health crises tied to digital technologies and the mainstreaming of the smartphone has further exacerbated the loneliness epidemic (Twenge et al. 2021). Americans’ social networks are now significantly smaller and more politically homogeneous than at any other period in history (Lee and Bearman 2020), leading to high degrees of political partisanship that is itself linked to increased anxiety and poor health outcomes (Fraser et al. 2022).

Is the growing popularity of pickleball and other elective sporting communities a potential counter to these troubling trends? Pickleball has been named ‘the fastest growing sport in America’ for several years by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. It is easy to learn, attracting players from a range of generations, genders, fitness levels, and SES backgrounds. It is inherently social, as it is usually played in groups of four and games rotate across players who may not have had any prior social contact.

We argue that demographic trends such as delayed marriage and childbearing, childlessness among young adults, increases in single person households, empty nesters, and active baby-boomers moving into retirement are also key to understanding the rise of this sport. Using market-based statistical reports to examine the demographics of pickleball growth, life history interviews with players, and ethnographic observation of an urban and a rural pickleball community, we examine pickleball’s impact on the twin epidemics of loneliness and partisanship.