$5 fee fight erupts across The City’s pickleball courts

The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department calls it a reservation fee, but pickleball players call it a use tax.

Whichever way you slice it, the $5-per-hour ‘pay-to-play’ fee that commissioners unanimously approved last week has pickleball players up in arms. It now goes to the Board of Supervisors for approval in June, and pickleballers are protesting with petitions and letters to elected officials in an effort to keep court access free.

San Francisco resident Hayley Tsang frequents Presidio Wall, one of 24 courts in The City that would no longer be free if the measure passes. She was playing there on an unseasonably warm Tuesday morning with at least a dozen others.

“The courts are completely full,” she told The Examiner. “This is something our city should be overjoyed about — their public courts are popular and well-used by the public. Instead, they are making us pay the price.”

It’s a price that not everyone can pay, she said, as her playing group includes a mix of adolescents and elderly people.

“The whole point of pickleball and its popularity is that it’s all ages, all income levels,” she said. “And many people, especially seniors, are on fixed income.”

Rec and Park said the fee is meant to discourage “no-shows,” or people who reserve courts online but don’t show up to play, which has led to conflicts at The City’s busiest tennis and pickleball locations.

Lilian Kim Lynch, a board member with San Francisco Tennis Coalition — which supports the measure — said that because RPD’s reservation system had no consequence for cancelling, it has been subject to abuse.

“A lot of people have multiple accounts, with different emails, booking more courts than they intend on playing,” she said. “The empty courts that I see are often courts that have been booked, but the person who booked them is not showing up. So the $5-an-hour fee, we’re hoping will minimize that problem.”

But pickleball player Suzy Safdie said that parks officials are unfairly grouping pickleball and tennis players together.

“RPD has never been able to track, and has no current capabilities for tracking, no-shows,” she said.

Safdie and others started a petition May 10 to stop the fee proposal from moving forward. As of Wednesday, the petition was about 300 signatures shy of its 1,500 goal.

For many of these players, the fee sets a negative precedent — especially as The City is trying to draw its residents to use and frequent public spaces.

“The City has never imposed a fee for an individual sport that does not have on-site personnel,” Peter Mueller, who plays every week at Presidio Wall, told The Examiner. “This is new.”

It also “feels like [RPD] is monetizing” pickleball’s popularity, he said.

The sport — a cross between tennis, badminton and pingpong — skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic throughout The City and beyond. A 2023 report by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association said that pickleball was America’s fastest-growing sport for the third year in a row.

A $5-per-hour fee for one pickleball court could generate a lot of money for the department over the course of a single day.

Lynch said the fee, as proposed, offers flexibility because it would apply to only a portion of public courts. More than half of all courts will be available for walk-up play on a first-come, first-served basis, and RPD said free courts are strategically dispersed geographically , minimizing travel distances for players.

“Nearly half the tennis courts in the city will remain [free], so the Rec and Park proposal offers a balance for those seeking a guaranteed time, and those who have more flexibility with their schedules,” Lynch said.

Many other cities charge even higher fees to reserve courts, Rec and Park Communications Director Tamara Aparton said.

“All of the cities we looked at — and we looked at virtually all of them — charge for court reservations,” she said. “Some examples include Santa Cruz County, which charges $13 an hour and San Jose, starting at $8 per hour. [The proposed fee] is the very lowest end of the spectrum.”

Aparton told The Examiner that the department would use reservation fees to pay for the reservation system, as well as “policy and cost analysis, ranger time to monitor courts and enforce system policies, buying and maintaining nets, and resurfacing courts.”

But those who oppose the fee might have found an ally in Supervisor Connie Chan, who also chairs The City’s budget committee.

Chan wrote a letter to Rec and Parks General Manager Phil Ginsburg, reviewed by The Examiner, in which she shared her concerns about the fee.

“Neighborhood tennis and pickleball courts are important spaces for gathering and recreational wellness for the community,” she wrote. “Many constituents have expressed their dismay at the hardship the hourly court reservation fee would pose, preventing residents from being able to play the sport in our public parks.”

Chan said the fee is inequitable, and that “establishing and charging reservation fees would pose a disproportionate hardship for older adults, and those on fixed incomes who do not have the luxury to be able to set aside expenses” to play on The City’s tennis and pickleball courts.

In her letter, Chan also wrote the proposal is “perplexing” considering that Rec and Park “has received $6M over the existing funding baseline” and therefore does not need to incur a fee for operational costs.

Tsang said she is tired of the drama between pickleball players and city officials.

“We are seriously thinking that Rec and Park is trying to snuff out pickleball in our city by implementing new rules every month that make it harder and harder for us to play our games,” she said.