The Tennis Equipment Industry May Be Selling Players the Wrong Things

For an industry that spends enormous amounts of time talking about technology, specifications and professional player endorsements, we still know surprisingly little about what recreational tennis players are actually thinking when they reach the point of buying a new racket.

New research from Perfect Racket offers a particularly interesting window into that decision.

Its State of the Racket Report – Q2 2026 is based on 983 completed racket fittings involving 661 unique players between April and June 2026. Rather than asking consumers retrospectively what they bought, Perfect Racket captures information through its fitting process immediately before players make an equipment decision, asking about their game, physical characteristics and what they actually want from their equipment.

The sample comes with important caveats. Perfect Racket says it skews towards younger, socially sourced US players, while the findings measure pre-purchase intent rather than confirmed transactions. This is therefore not a definitive portrait of every tennis consumer.

But for anyone working in racket manufacturing, retail, coaching or club operations, the findings raise some important questions about whether the industry understands its customers quite as well as it thinks it does.

Players say they want control. So why does the industry keep selling power?

Perhaps the most commercially interesting statistic in the report concerns the fundamental reason players are shopping for a new racket.

Asked for their number-one priority, 35% selected control, followed by 28% wanting a balanced racket and 15% prioritising spin.

Only 14% selected power, while 8% chose quickness.

That creates an interesting disconnect between consumer demand and the language traditionally used to market tennis equipment.

Power has long been one of the easiest benefits to communicate. New racket technologies promise easier depth, bigger serves and additional pace, while elite-player endorsements naturally encourage brands to associate equipment with explosive performance.

Yet Perfect Racket's data suggests the consumer standing on the other side of that marketing message may increasingly be thinking about something quite different.

They want to keep the ball in the court.

For manufacturers, that could have implications stretching from product development to merchandising and advertising. A recreational player looking for consistency, predictability and confidence may respond more strongly to a message about reducing errors and improving placement than one promising another few miles per hour on a forehand.

It is a useful reminder that the aspirations of recreational consumers are not necessarily the same as the attributes demonstrated by professional athletes used to market products to them.

The industry may be overestimating how knowledgeable its customers are

Another statistic should be particularly interesting to specialist retailers.

Perfect Racket found that 24% of players could not name the racket they were currently using.

That is an extraordinary figure when considered from a customer-acquisition perspective.

Much of tennis equipment marketing assumes a relatively sophisticated consumer. Product reviews compare one frame with another; YouTube videos debate generations of individual racket lines; retailers organise products according to brands, specifications and technologies.

Yet approximately one quarter of Perfect Racket's sample effectively enters the buying process without even knowing the starting point.

These customers are unlikely to need another 15-minute comparison of two racket models.

They need guidance.

And therein lies a potentially significant business opportunity.

The traditional tennis retailer has often acted as an equipment expert, but ecommerce has increasingly moved the purchasing journey towards self-service. Perfect Racket's findings suggest the next stage of online tennis retail may need to put some of that expertise back into the transaction through digital fitting, recommendation engines, better questioning and personalised education.

The winning retailer may not be the one offering the largest number of rackets.

It may be the one making choosing between them easiest.

Brand loyalty might actually be brand familiarity

There is another finding that should attract the attention of equipment manufacturers.

Perfect Racket reports that Babolat, Wilson, Yonex and HEAD account for 89% of the rackets currently owned by players within its dataset.

On the surface, that demonstrates the extraordinary strength of tennis's major equipment brands.

But something interesting happens when brand recognition is partially removed from the decision.

According to Perfect Racket, when players are matched to rackets based upon their game and requirements, demand spreads towards challenger brands, while its click data indicates lesser-known frames can outperform household names when recommendations are accompanied by an explanation of why that product suits the individual player.

That raises an intriguing possibility.

Some of what the industry calls brand loyalty may actually be brand familiarity.

Consumers buy Wilson, HEAD, Yonex or Babolat partly because those are the brands they know, see professionals using and encounter most frequently in clubs and retail environments.

Give the same consumer a credible, personalised reason to consider something else and the competitive landscape may become considerably more fluid.

For smaller equipment companies this is encouraging. Trying to outspend the biggest manufacturers on athlete sponsorship and conventional advertising is almost impossible.

Competing on relevance, however, is different.

A sophisticated fitting ecosystem potentially gives challenger brands something they have historically struggled to obtain: a place in the consumer's consideration set.

Tennis has an arm-health problem — and perhaps a business opportunity

One of the most important sections of Perfect Racket's research has little to do with performance.

One in five players chose the arm-health pathway during the fitting process, and 70% of those players reported active pain. Elbow problems represented 45% of reported pain, followed by shoulder and wrist complaints.

Perhaps more revealingly, this was not simply an issue affecting older participants. Among arm-health users aged 18–25, 62% reported active pain, rising to 83% among 36–45-year-olds and 89% for those aged 66-plus. Perfect Racket appropriately describes the smaller sub-segments as directional rather than population-wide estimates.

This matters commercially because participation itself is expanding.

The ITF's latest Global Tennis Report counted almost 106 million tennis players worldwide, up from 84.4 million in 2019, an increase of 25.6%.

The US market is growing even faster. USTA figures show participation reached a record 27.3 million players in 2025, 54% higher than in 2019, while 14.5 million Americans are now classified as core players who play at least ten times annually. More than 616 million tennis playing occasions were recorded during 2025.

More people playing more frequently inevitably means more interaction with equipment.

It should also mean more opportunity for the industry to talk intelligently about comfort, racket weight, stiffness, strings and tension rather than treating injury-related equipment choices as a specialist niche.

Strings could be tennis retail's biggest missed opportunity

Perfect Racket's findings around strings are arguably even more revealing.

The question asking players what string they use produced more blank or uncertain responses than any other question in the fitting process, while many players also had no idea what tension their racket was strung at. Perfect Racket says the average tension recommended through its fittings is 52 lbs.

That should interest clubs and retailers because restringing has almost everything a good recurring-revenue product needs.

It is relatively inexpensive compared with buying another racket, it affects performance and comfort, it needs repeating, and it provides a natural reason for a customer to return to a retailer, coach or club.

Yet strings remain remarkably poorly understood by recreational players.

The result is an unusual commercial paradox: the tennis industry invests enormous effort persuading consumers to spend hundreds on new frames while arguably under-educating them about a considerably cheaper component that may materially change how their existing racket performs.

For clubs with pro shops and coaches with equipment partnerships, that gap represents an opportunity.

Imagine making a basic equipment assessment part of the onboarding process for every new coaching customer: racket, grip size, string type, tension, playing frequency and any comfort issues.

That conversation could improve the player's experience while simultaneously generating restringing, accessory and future equipment revenue.

It is service and commerce working together rather than one interrupting the other.

The most important customer may be the improving recreational player

The Perfect Racket data also provides a useful reminder of who actually buys tennis equipment.

Three quarters of its racket shoppers rated themselves between NTRP 3.0 and 4.0. Roughly half were under 36, and half reported playing at least three times per week.

This is the enormous middle of the tennis market: committed enough to care about improvement and spend money, but far removed from elite competition.

That group should become increasingly important as tennis participation expands.

The USTA recorded an all-time high 4.9 million first-time US players during 2025, while 80% of players from 2024 returned the following year, the highest retention rate in five years.

Those numbers create a substantial consumer funnel.

Today's beginner becomes tomorrow's improver. The improver takes lessons, plays more frequently, breaks strings, buys shoes, experiments with equipment and eventually replaces a racket.

For the tennis industry, therefore, participation growth is only the beginning of the commercial opportunity.

The bigger challenge is moving players along that journey.

From selling products to solving problems

There is a wider lesson here for the racket sports industry.

For decades, equipment businesses have largely operated around a product-first model: develop the racket, launch the technology, sign the athlete, advertise the product and persuade consumers that the innovation will improve their game.

Data-driven fitting reverses that sequence.

It starts with the player.

What level are you? How often do you play? What are you struggling with? Do you have pain? Do you want more control, spin or power? What are you currently using?

Only then does the product enter the conversation.

That distinction could become increasingly important as the global tennis equipment market grows. One recent industry estimate valued the market at $14.67 billion in 2025 and projects it could reach $23.37 billion by 2034.

There is therefore plenty worth competing for.

But increased participation does not automatically guarantee that every manufacturer, retailer or club benefits equally.

The businesses that win may increasingly be those that understand the individual consumer rather than simply shouting loudest about the product.

What should racket businesses take from the data?

For manufacturers, Perfect Racket's research suggests there is room to reconsider the language surrounding product launches. Control, consistency, confidence and comfort may resonate more strongly with the recreational majority than relentless promises of additional power.

For challenger brands, personalised fitting creates a potential route around the enormous marketing advantage enjoyed by the established manufacturers. If consumers can be persuaded by evidence that a lesser-known racket fits their game better, awareness does not have to be the final determinant of purchase.

For retailers, the opportunity is to move from catalogue to consultant. A customer who cannot name their current racket is unlikely to benefit from another wall containing 80 frames without meaningful guidance.

For coaches and clubs, equipment advice can become part of the player-development relationship. Helping somebody understand why their racket, string or tension does or does not suit them creates value for the player and potentially new recurring revenue for the business.

And for the wider industry, the arm-health findings deserve particular attention. If significant numbers of regular players are playing through discomfort while simultaneously using equipment they poorly understand, there is both a duty of care and an education opportunity.

The most interesting thing about Perfect Racket's research, therefore, may not be which racket consumers want.

It is what the findings tell us about how little many consumers actually know about the products they are buying — and how much opportunity exists for businesses willing to help them make better decisions.

Tennis has spent decades becoming extremely good at selling rackets.

The next competitive advantage may come from becoming much better at explaining which racket somebody should buy — and why.

Source note: The primary consumer findings in this article are drawn from Perfect Racket Research, The State of the Racket Report, Q2 2026. The dataset covers 983 completed fittings from 661 unique players between April 24 and June 29, 2026. Perfect Racket states that the panel skews younger, socially sourced and US-based, and measures pre-purchase intent rather than verified purchases. The figures should therefore be interpreted as insights into this particular consumer panel rather than estimates for the entire tennis-playing population.