The 10 Fastest Growing Sports Since 2000

Ask anyone to name the fastest growing sport and you will get ten different answers. That is because the question has no single answer. Fastest growing by what measure? New players joining last year? Total global audience size? Revenue generated? Commercial reach across countries? Each metric tells a different story, and every sport on this list qualifies for a different reason.

Here is the short version of what the data shows. Padel has added the most players globally since 2000. Pickleball is the dominant American growth story. MMA has undergone the most dramatic commercial transformation of any sport in this timeframe. Trail running and disc golf have grown quietly and steadily. Esports has rewritten what a sport audience looks like. T20 cricket now reaches a billion viewers in a three-and-a-half-hour window. Sport climbing, flag football, and Rugby Sevens have the clearest runways for the next decade.

This article covers all of it. The data runs from 2000 to 2025 wherever available, and every entry names its metric, its source, and its timeframe.

How We Measured Growth

Three categories drive every entry in this list.

Participation refers to the number of people who actively play or regularly engage with the sport. Sources include national governing bodies, international federations, and the SFIA (Sports & Fitness Industry Association).

Viewership and audience covers TV ratings, streaming figures, and global reach. Sources are broadcast partners, platform data, and federation reports.

Commercial and cultural footprint encompasses revenue, valuations, prize pools, geographic spread, and media presence. Sources are financial disclosures, acquisition records, and industry analyses.

The primary window is 2000 to 2025. When a sport lacks 2000 baseline data, the article states the actual measurement period and sources it explicitly.

1. Padel - The Fastest Global Expansion

Padel wins the global reach argument by almost any metric that counts players and courts.

The International Padel Federation (FIP) estimates approximately 35 million players worldwide as of 2025, up from roughly 15 million in 2017. That is more than a doubling in eight years, and the trajectory shows no sign of flattening. There are now 77,300 padel courts across 130 countries, up from 90 countries in 2021. In 2025 alone, 14,355 courts were built, which works out to more than three new courts every day of the year.

Spain leads with approximately 6 million players. Italy, Sweden, Argentina, and the Middle East are close behind. The gender split is notable for a racquet sport: 40% of regular padel players are female, which is high compared to tennis and most other competitive court sports.

Why padel grew so fast comes down to a simple combination. The court is smaller than a tennis court and enclosed by walls, which means the ball stays in play more often and beginners feel competent faster. Padel is almost always played in doubles, which makes it inherently social. Equipment costs are low. Most importantly, existing tennis clubs and facilities could add padel courts with minimal structural change, which accelerated infrastructure buildout across Europe and beyond.

2. Pickleball - The American Phenomenon

Pickleball is not a global story. It is a US story, and it is one of the most remarkable in American sports history.

The SFIA recorded 3.1 million US players in 2017. By 2020 that number had reached 4.2 million. In 2025 the figure stands at 24.3 million, per the SFIA’s 2025 report on sport participation. That is roughly an eightfold increase in eight years. The period from 2020 to 2025 alone saw 479% growth, and the SFIA has named pickleball the fastest-growing sport in America for four consecutive years, from 2021 through 2024.

The infrastructure has followed the participation curve. There were 82,613 pickleball courts across 18,258 US locations as of early 2026. The average player age has dropped to 34.8 years, which is a meaningful shift from the retirement-community reputation the sport carried a decade ago.

A few factors drove the 2020 surge specifically. The pandemic pushed people outdoors. Pickleball requires minimal equipment and even a repurposed driveway works. Tennis courts were converted at low cost. The sport is accessible to children and grandparents simultaneously, which is rare. Media coverage and professional tournaments gave it legitimacy beyond a backyard activity.

3. MMA / UFC - The Commercial Transformation

No sport on this list underwent a financial transformation as total as MMA.

In 2001, Rorion Gracie, Dana White, and Lorenzo Fertitta bought the UFC for $2 million. In 2016, Endeavor acquired the UFC as part of a deal valued at $4 billion. By 2023, analysts valued the UFC at $12.1 billion. Those numbers alone cover a 6,000x increase in 22 years.

Revenue tells a similar story. The UFC generated approximately $100 million in the early 2000s. In 2024, it posted record revenue of roughly $1.4 billion. The broadcast footprint is enormous: UFC content reaches 900 million households across more than 170 countries. An estimated 300 million people follow MMA closely as a sport.

MMA gym enrollments rose 192% year over year in early 2025, which is a participation signal that lags the commercial numbers by a few years.

What drove the commercial leap? The unified ruleset introduced in 2001 removed confusion for casual viewers. The 2011 Fox Sports deal gave UFC mainstream TV exposure. The rise of Conor McGregor as a crossover personality between 2015 and 2018 brought in audiences that had never watched a fight. The digital pay-per-view model turned a sport with a niche audience into a global pay-per-view business comparable to boxing.

4. T20 Cricket / IPL - The Billion-Viewer Format

Cricket existed long before 2000. This entry is about a format that barely existed at all.

T20 cricket was introduced in England in 2003. The Indian Premier League launched in 2008 with eight franchise teams. By 2025, the IPL drew 1 billion viewers across television and digital platforms, with accumulated watch time of 840 billion minutes for the season.

That billion-viewer figure deserves context. The IPL crossed 400 million average viewers around 2020. By 2026 it had reached over 600 million, representing 53% growth in six years. The IPL now generates more annual viewership than most Olympic sports accumulate across an entire Games cycle.

The format solved cricket’s core accessibility problem. A Test match lasts five days. A T20 match takes roughly three and a half hours. That shorter window opened cricket to viewers with limited time, to mobile-first audiences in India, and to the streaming platforms that drove Disney+ Hotstar to become one of the most-subscribed streaming services in Asia.

5. Esports - The Contested Category

Whether esports belongs on a list of sports is a debate this article will not resolve. What the data cannot dispute is the scale.

The global esports audience reached 640 million in 2025, up from approximately 215 million in 2020. That is roughly triple the audience in five years. Revenue in 2025 was approximately $1.79 billion, though broader market estimates depending on what is included in the definition run up to $5.34 billion.

The geographic distribution is heavily concentrated in Asia-Pacific, which accounts for 57% of global viewership. China and the Philippines together represent approximately 40% of the global fanbase, driven by smartphone penetration, high-speed internet access, and a gaming culture that normalized competitive gaming decades before Western markets caught up.

Key inflection points in the timeline: MLG (Major League Gaming) was founded in 2002. Twitch launched in 2011 and gave competitive gaming a broadcasting platform. The International (Dota 2) began offering prize pools exceeding $35 million. The Olympic Esports Series launched in 2023, which represents a formal acknowledgment from the Olympic movement that this audience is real and large.

The growth drivers are straightforward: streaming infrastructure removed the venue constraint that limits traditional sports viewership. Smartphone adoption in Southeast Asia and East Asia opened access to hundreds of millions of potential viewers. The pandemic kept people indoors and accelerated engagement across every digital platform. Prize pools attracted professional athletes who legitimized competitive gaming as a career.

6. Trail Running and Ultra Running - The Quiet Explosion

Trail running grew in ways that did not make headlines but show up clearly in the data.

RunRepeat analyzed participation data from 2001 to 2021 and found trail running grew 2,394% over that period. That number stands out precisely because it is not a curated or cherry-picked timeframe. It covers two full decades. Ultra running specifically grew 345% from 2014 to 2024: 137,000 yearly participations to 611,000.

In the United States, trail running participation went from 13.2 million in 2022 to 14.8 million in 2023, a 12.3% single-year increase that came after years of consistent growth. The gender shift is equally striking. Women represented approximately 13% of trail runners in 1997. By the mid-2020s that share was approaching 46%.

Several factors align to explain the growth. GPS watches and Strava gave runners tracking data and social accountability that was unavailable before the smartphone era. Events like the UTMB (Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc) built a world series circuit that gave the sport structure and aspirational events. The pandemic pushed people outdoors and toward activities that did not require a gym or an indoor space. There is also a cultural element: trail running satisfies a demand for natural environments and physical challenge that gym culture does not address.

7. Disc Golf - The Under-the-Radar Surge

Disc golf appears in almost no “fastest growing sports” articles. It should appear in most of them.

The Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) took 41 years, from its founding in 1976, to reach 100,000 members. It reached 200,000 members by December 2021. After that, it added 40,000 more members in under a year. The second 100,000 took less than two years, compared to four decades for the first.

In 2025, more than three new disc golf courses opened globally every single day. The total number of courses has tripled since 2015. UDisc, the leading scorekeeping app, recorded 21.2 million rounds played in 2025.

The growth model is unusual. Unlike most sports on this list, disc golf is essentially free to play. Public parks host permanent courses at minimal cost. The equipment required is a handful of plastic discs that cost between $10 and $20 each. This low barrier to entry means participation does not require club membership, court booking, or significant financial investment.

Media helped. Paul McBeth, a top-ranked professional, appeared on Netflix. Professional prize pools grew. YouTube and social media gave the sport a distribution channel that does not require television deals. The pandemic in 2020 and 2021 sent people outdoors looking for activities that were socially distanced by design, and disc golf courses filled that demand.

8. Sport Climbing - The Olympic Effect

Sport climbing had its global coming-out moment at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, held in 2021. It has not looked back.

Approximately 25 million people climb regularly worldwide. The sport made its Olympic debut in Tokyo and the field expanded from 40 athletes in 2021 to 68 at Paris 2024. That kind of field expansion in a single Olympic cycle reflects the global growth in competitive climbers.

The EY Sport Engagement Index 2023 is instructive. Climbing entered the top 20 for participation and engagement among 18 to 24 year olds for the first time. That is a demographic milestone that suggests the sport is not just growing overall but growing in exactly the way that sports federations care most about.

A striking statistic about the current climber base: 55% of regular climbers have been involved in the sport for two years or fewer. That new-entrant rate is extraordinary for a sport that requires physical infrastructure in the form of climbing walls. It means the existing infrastructure is absorbing new climbers at a pace that keeps them coming.

The growth story has two chapters. The first is the indoor climbing gym boom that started in the early 2000s and made the sport accessible to urban populations far from natural rock faces. The second is the Olympic moment, which gave the sport a broadcast audience and a legitimacy signal it had previously lacked.

9. Flag Football - The 2028 Catalyst

Flag football is on a different growth curve than the other sports in this list, and it knows it.

There are 620,000 youth athletes in the NFL FLAG program across all 50 US states. Girls’ high school flag football grew 105% from the 2022-23 school year to 2023-24, with 42,955 participants according to NFHS data. In 2017, flag football surpassed tackle football as the most common form of the sport for children aged 6 to 12 in the United States. Globally, approximately 20 million people play in more than 100 countries.

The single largest near-term catalyst is the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. Flag football debuts as an Olympic sport that year, and the NFL has been investing in international development of the game for over a decade. That investment is likely to accelerate in the lead-up to LA 2028.

Why is flag football growing? Safety is the primary driver. Parental concern about concussions and tackle-football injuries has pushed youth participation toward flag formats. The NFL has actively promoted flag football as a feeder program and an international growth vehicle, funding leagues and facilities in markets where American football has historically had no presence. The women’s and girls’ game has expanded significantly, with the sport offering a competitive pathway that tackle football does not for female athletes.

10. CrossFit - Rise, Peak, and Plateau

CrossFit belongs on this list because the 25-year arc it describes is remarkable, even if the most recent chapter involves decline.

In 2005 there were 13 CrossFit affiliates worldwide. By 2018 that number had reached 15,500, which represents one of the fastest affiliate growth curves in fitness industry history. Estimated global membership at peak was 4 million or more.

By early 2025, affiliate count had fallen to approximately 9,900. The decline tracks to a specific sequence of events. CrossFit HQ raised affiliate fees in 2020, which accelerated attrition among smaller, community-run boxes. A public controversy involving the founder’s social media presence in mid-2020 prompted major brand advertisers to withdraw from the CrossFit Games broadcast, which damaged the brand’s mainstream visibility. The pandemic simultaneously closed affiliated gyms and shifted consumer attention toward outdoor activities, which compounded the problem. New boutique fitness models, including Orangetheory, F45, and lituan gym chains that did not exist in 2010, entered the market as direct competitors.

Including CrossFit on this list is intentional. The story of explosive growth followed by plateau and contraction is more instructive than a pure growth narrative. CrossFit proved that a community-based, competition-forward, social-media-native fitness model could grow faster than any gym chain in history. The plateau does not erase that. It adds a chapter about what happens after the peak, and that chapter is relevant to every other sport on this list that is still in its growth phase.

Honorable Mentions

Rugby Sevens returned to the Olympics at Rio 2016 after a 92-year absence. Nielsen data shows 16.83 million new rugby fans were added in six markets following that return. Global participation is up 19% since 2007, with Africa up 33%, South America up 22%, and Asia up 18%.

Women’s Soccer and the NWSL posted a 567% viewership increase in 2024. Attendance reached 2 million for the season. This is a growth story about a league and a demographic, not about soccer as a sport from scratch, but the numbers are large enough to warrant attention.

Skateboarding and Surfing both gained Olympic status at Tokyo 2020. Participation data is thinner than for other entries on this list, but the Olympic visibility effect on youth participation in both sports is documented in federation reports.

What Drives Sports Growth? Common Patterns

Looking across these ten sports, several patterns appear repeatedly.

Low barrier to entry is the single most consistent predictor of participation growth. Disc golf, pickleball, and padel are all cheap to start, require minimal formal instruction, and do not demand expensive equipment or facility access. Sports that require $500 tennis rackets, club memberships, or specialized venues grow more slowly.

Olympic inclusion functions as a visibility catalyst. Sport climbing, skateboarding, surfing, and flag football (at LA 2028) all show this effect. The Olympics do not create growth from nothing, but they consistently accelerate it by giving a sport a mainstream broadcast moment and a legitimacy signal.

Streaming and social media have unlocked niche sports audiences at scale. MMA’s pay-per-view model, disc golf’s YouTube ecosystem, and esports’ entire viewer base are built on platforms that did not exist at scale in 2000.

The pandemic drove outsized growth in outdoor, physically distanced activities. Trail running, disc golf, and pickleball all saw their sharpest growth spurts between 2020 and 2022.

Women’s participation has grown as a share of almost every sport on this list. Trail running went from 13% to nearly 46% female participation in under 30 years. Pickleball has near-perfect gender balance. Flag football’s girls’ game is growing faster than the overall sport. This matters for growth trajectories: sports that capture female participation early tend to compound that advantage over time, because participants often introduce family members and children to the activities they already play.

FAQs

What is the fastest growing sport in the world right now?

By total new players added globally, padel is the strongest candidate. With approximately 35 million players across 130 countries and new courts opening at a rate of three per day, the growth trajectory is steeper than any other sport measured by raw participation volume.

What is the fastest growing sport in the United States?

Pickleball, according to the SFIA’s four consecutive years of naming it the fastest-growing US sport. The growth from 3.1 million players in 2017 to 24.3 million in 2025 is an eightfold increase in under a decade.

How do you measure fastest growing?

By participation headcount, viewership numbers, or commercial footprint. Each metric produces a different ranking. Padle leads by global player count. T20 cricket leads by audience size. MMA leads by valuation growth.

Did the Olympics help sports grow?

Yes, consistently. Sport climbing, skateboarding, and Rugby Sevens all show measurable participation and audience growth following Olympic inclusion. Flag football is expected to show a similar effect ahead of LA 2028.

Is pickleball or padel growing faster?

They are growing in different markets. Pickleball is a US story with 24.3 million players in a single country. Padel is a global story with 35 million players across 130 countries. By raw numbers, padel has added more total players globally. By per-capita growth rate within its core market, pickleball’s US numbers are unmatched.

Is CrossFit still growing?

The affiliate count peaked around 2018 and has declined since. CrossFit is not growing in the same way it grew from 2005 to 2018. The 15,500 affiliates of 2018 are not coming back under current conditions, but 9,900 affiliates remains a substantial global footprint for a fitness model that did not exist before 2000.

What sports are likely to grow the most in the next 10 years?

Flag football has the clearest near-term catalyst in LA 2028. Padel has the most infrastructure momentum. Esports will likely continue expanding in Asia-Pacific markets even as Western growth moderates. Trail running and ultra running are growing steadily with no signs of plateau in sight.