Tennis players already move across clubs, across memberships, and across old boundaries. The clubs, for the most part, still write as if none of this has happened.
A few hundred metres apart in Asker there are two tennis clubs. Both have good courts. Both have paying members. Both send out annual reports describing activity, finances and plans. But neither has written a single word about the other.
That is actually quite remarkable. Because the players are already doing it — they swap, they match, they find each other across club boundaries. It happens in silence, without anyone having named it, and without a single club having made it part of a strategy.
We have reviewed annual reports and strategy documents from twelve of the largest tennis clubs in Oslo and Bærum. None mention artificial intelligence. None have a plan for the player who wants to play across clubs. And none have articulated what everyone knows: that padel grows by 30–40 percent per year in the same region, and that the traditional club model was not designed for the reality we are in now.
The problem is not that players have changed. The problem is that the clubs have not admitted it.
In the early 1990s, a woman ran a small pub in Bergen. The place was called Nansen Pub and was not exactly on the main thoroughfare. There was nothing obvious about anyone finding their way there. But Elina Krantz had understood something most venues had not: empty chairs are not filled by advertising. They are filled by something worth experiencing.
So she set up a small stage. Together with comedian Dagfinn Lyngbø, she began organising evenings where he stood on it and told stories. There was barely a stand-up tradition in Norway at the time. But people came. And they came back. What she built was not a pub. It was an environment. Later she founded Stand Up Norge in 1997, and in 2004 she opened Latter at Aker Brygge — today Norway's leading comedy venue. The route there did not go through better premises or more marketing. It went through a decision to create culture rather than wait for it.
This analysis began in much the same way. We wanted to advertise Konglungen in Budstikka. It was too expensive. Then the thought came: what if we wrote a debate piece instead? It was free. The first was clumsy. The second was better. Eventually people started reading them — and responding. It turned out that the constraint was not an obstacle. It was the entrance.
I run Konglungen Tennis Club. One court, out in Vettre in Asker, far from where most people pass by. If you want to play with us, you make that decision — it does not happen by accident. That forces us to do something other than sit still and hope people show up. And it has taught us something the larger clubs perhaps do not need to learn — because they have never been forced to.
People are not drawn to courts. They are drawn to places where something happens.
We create events that build meeting points. We think collaboration where others think territory. We have built a tool — CourtBuddy — to solve a problem all of Norwegian tennis has, but that no one else has addressed. And we do it from a single red clay court with a view over the Oslo Fjord.
That is not a bad starting point for having opinions about what Norwegian tennis is missing.
On the people around the court, club culture and why tennis clubs are built from the outside in.
Read PDF →On open debate, loyalty, volunteer culture and why strong clubs are built by people who dare to disagree.
Read PDF →Additional reference material: Tennis Norge · Budstikka 2024
Norwegian tennis still builds as though this were not true. The next big question is not about courts. It is about what kind of places we build — and for whom. Four cases illustrate this with different outcomes.
A few years ago there was broad enthusiasm for a large new tennis hall at Stavanger Forum. Today the project is either delayed or outside the club's control — the 2025/2026 annual report barely mentions it. Membership has fallen from 1,018 to 992, the 2026 budget is lower than 2025, and the project has meanwhile grown into a far larger and more complex multi-use arena. What began as a tennis hall is becoming something else entirely. The market responded before the plan was finished. And the project is still framed as a tennis hall and competition arena — not tennis, padel and social meeting place. That is precisely where the weakness lies.
The story here is more nuanced — and more instructive. Kolbotn Tennis Club has a new four-court indoor hall, growing membership and a strategy plan for 2026–2028 that is among the best we have seen from a Norwegian tennis club. Tidy, grounded, with a clear vision and concrete priorities. It bears the hallmark of a chairman who has built structure layer by layer over several years, not painted a fine facade on a tent. As an internal organisational strategy, it is impressive. But the plan is written to develop a traditional tennis club further. It has no answers on padel, no plan for players who want to play across clubs, no thinking about flexible and social use outside the season-slot model. In three to seven years they may face the same challenge as others — not because they have done anything wrong, but because the market around them changes regardless.
OTK is building on a large and ambitious scale. That is good. But they are building without padel. This may prove to be like erecting a new library without Wi-Fi — not because books are wrong, but because people expect both. If they wait three to five years they risk padel communities being established elsewhere, younger players finding belonging elsewhere, and retrofitting becoming substantially more expensive. They do not need to build four padel courts and remake the entire club. But one or two courts now would give them experience, signal and an offer to the members who are already looking at alternatives. The smart strategy is to plant the tree while the ground is still soft.
A new regional facility in Heggedal has a real chance — but only if it does not become a traditional tennis club with newer walls and a more expensive roof. A facility combining four to six tennis courts, two to four padel courts, a good café, social zones and space for tournaments, corporate events and evening activities is not a club. It is a living small square. A sort of sports village inn with rackets on the wall. That model is far more robust against changed player behaviour than anything called "tennis club" in its articles and nothing else in practice. Norway's Tennis and Padel Federation itself notes that facilities that succeed going forward must think tennis and padel as part of the same development.
The clubs that understand this early enough have a head start. Those who wait will one day have to break up asphalt to recover what they could have planted as a seed.
It is tennis and padel, in the same building, with the same people and the same cup of coffee afterwards. The clubs that understand this early enough have a head start. Those who wait will one day have to break up asphalt to recover what they could have planted as a seed.
We have reviewed annual reports, accounts and strategy documents from eight of the region's largest tennis clubs — Ullern, Asker, BSTK, Holmen, Holmenkollen, Kolbotn, Njård and Nordstrand — immediately after they all held their ordinary annual meetings in March 2026. The figures below are taken directly from the official documents.
The question we asked of each document was simple: is there any plan for what is actually changing in players' everyday lives? The answer was consistently no.
Not a single club addressed what players actually do — the gap between strategy documents and daily reality has never been wider.
Holmenkollen TK lost 148 members in one year — from 880 to 732. This is not minor attrition, it is a collapse. Yet the documents for this year's annual meeting did not contain a single proposal to analyse the cause, change the club model or cooperate with neighbouring clubs to solve the problem. The only submitted proposal concerned exploring a heat pump for the bubble hall..
We have done a "revealed strategy" analysis of the four largest padel operators in the Oslo region: InterPadel, PDL Center, Nordic Padel & Golf Arena og LeDap. None of them publish official strategy documents. But the strategy can be read between the lines, like footprints in wet clay.
It set out to build 500 courts in Norway in three years. It went bankrupt with NOK 80 million in debt in 2023. But the model was right: take the best locations, build large destinations, own the habit. Those who survived the bankruptcies still operate profitably.
Rødtvet and Økern are not padel centres. They are leisure destinations. Padel, golf, personal training, corporate events, children's programmes and sponsor partnerships under one roof. The question they answer is: "What should I do after work?" not "Should I play padel?"
It started as Just Padel and was acquired into the European LeDap group. The strategy is to buy or gather local centres under one brand. Economies of scale in booking, operations and marketing. Less local identity, more resilience.
InterPadel publishes no strategy, but the model is crystal clear: fixed memberships, Matchi as the booking platform, broad social media communication aimed at all age groups, and one overriding principle: make it easy to try. No committees. No bylaws on the front page. Just "book a court."
What all these operators have understood — that Norwegian tennis clubs have not yet — can be summarised in five sentences:
Loyalty is not an entry requirement. It is the result of a good experience repeated many times.
Whoever solves the coordination problem between players owns the relationship. Whoever owns the relationship owns the future.
Booking, matching, communication and insight happen digitally. The physical facility is just where the physical activity happens.
Not an add-on in a newsletter. Padel is popular because you meet new people, not because the sport itself is better than tennis.
NOK 80 million in debt and bankruptcy show that courts alone are not the answer. The network between players is more valuable than the square metres they play on.
"Tennis does not need to become padel. But tennis must learn from why padel feels simpler, faster and more alive. If not, clubs will be left as fine lighthouses on a coast where the boats have chosen another harbour."
In addition to the annual reports, we systematically reviewed the websites of all 13 clubs, and it turns out that more is happening in practice than the strategy documents suggest. Five clubs have active digital matching systems. Two of them, VBTK and Asker, have in fact already solved the challenge of cross-club play. But none of these measures are anchored in board documents, annual reports or strategy plans. They exist as quiet operational adaptations, not as conscious strategic choices.
One pattern across the material is worth stating explicitly: the problem is not always a lack of analysis. Some clubs have, over time, produced thoughtful internal strategy documents that identify exactly the right challenges: weak knowledge of how members actually use the facility, too little data on capacity and demand, and a need for more professional leadership. These are solid observations. But the same problems appear again in the next review, the next year, the next strategy. It is like describing the leak precisely without tightening the pipe. There is a clear and consistent gap between seeing what should happen and carrying it out. And that gap is not a document problem. It is a leadership problem.
A further aspect reinforces this: many medium-sized clubs are caught in a hybrid position. They are large enough to have employees, loans and millions in turnover, yet they are still run with much of the informal structure of volunteerism. When the CEO position is vacant, board members step into operational management. That is human and loyal. But it blurs the line between governance and executive function, and over time weakens both. The board loses its oversight role. Operations lose continuity. It is a sailing boat that has been given an engine but is still steered as though the wind alone will sort everything out.
Another pattern is just as striking: the strategies think in terms of facilities, while the members are missing culture. The analyses are full of courts, halls, capacity and finances. But what is actually being asked for is something else: someone to play with, social activities, clear communication, a sense of club identity. It is the same divide that runs through this entire document. A club is not primarily a building with courts. It is a small community. And that is where most strategies have not yet begun to think.
An important clarification: many clubs do have strategy documents. They are simply not publicly available. Stabekk TK is the exception: they published their 2024–2026 strategy and action plan openly. Most of the others keep their strategic work internal, in board minutes and working groups that are not accessible to outsiders. This means that our analysis is based on the public layer, and that the picture may be more nuanced than it appears. That in itself is an important point: good strategy should be able to stand in the light of day.
Asker Tennis's club ladder explicitly mentions matching with players fromKonglungen TK and Holmen TK. VBTK writes openly: "Spread the word further, also to those who are not members of VBTK!" Both use the Clubmatch/SportConnexions platform. Cross-club play is already happening, quietly, without strategic anchoring and without anyone in the boardrooms seeming to have called it what it is.
| Club | Padel | Digital matching | Crossklubbing | Recreational Player Strategy | AI / digital | Plattform |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ullern Tennis | ✓ Active | ✓ Internal ladder | No | Partly | No | Clubmatch/SportConnexions + MATCHi |
| VBTK | No | ✓ Singles + doubles | ✓ Stabekk + BSTK + non-members | ✓ Brtoad offer | No | Clubmatch/SportConnexions |
| Asker Tennis | No | ✓ All 12+ | ✓ Konglungen + Holmen explicitly | Partly | No | Clubmatch/SportConnexions |
| Stabekk TK | No | ✓ Ladderplay + UTR Flex | Partly (VBTK-partner) | ✓ "A club for life" | No | MATCHi / UTR |
| Holmen TK | Unknown (404) | ✓ Clubladder | Unknown | ✓ Drop-in, CardioTennis, UTR | No | Unknown |
| OTK, NTK, HTK, KTK, Njård, Nesøya IL, Snarøya, BSTK, BTA — none of these have matching, cross-club play, padel or AI on their website. Nesøya IL is a multi-sport club in which tennis is one of nine sports; the tennis economy is vulnerable, as illustrated when the bubble hall collapsed in January 2025, and the board is planning a transition to an insulated indoor hall. Otherwise, the offer consists only of standard coaching programmes and court booking. | ||||||
Source: Systematic review of 13 clubs' websites, Cowork/Claude, 31 March 2026. BSTK is a partner in VBTK's ladder, but has no own page about this.
None of the 13 clubs reviewed mentions artificial intelligence, digital transformation, automation or AI anywhere — neither on the website, in the news, in strategy documents or in board papers. Not a single hit across all searches. Everyone is already using digital tools such as MATCHi, Clubmatch/SportConnexions, Spond and Shopify, yet no one reflects on this as a form of strategic digitalisation. The competence gap is real and consistent.
"The gap between what clubs do in practice and what they anchor in strategy is perhaps the most surprising finding. Some clubs have already started painting new lines on the court — they just do not know it themselves."
From 880 to 732 members (2024→2025). Annual result +NOK 293k, but the board is not satisfied. Only proposal to the AGM: investigate a heat pump for the bubble. No proposals on strategy, collaboration or player development.
Deficit in 2025 after major facility investments (NOK 2.75 million in maintenance/renovation). Revenue increased to NOK 13.5 million. 834 active members, down from 849. The women's team won national gold. Leadership change in May 2026, with Marin Draganja coming in as CEO.
907 members as of 31.12.2025. Annual result +NOK 762k. New head coach appointed. Bubble not erected 25/26 due to energy prices. Approx. 200 in organised training (140 children, 60 adults). No proposals submitted to the AGM.
Adopted new strategy plan "Tennis for everyone" (2025–2028) at 2025 AGM. Annual result +NOK 217k. "The Meeting Place" contributes positively to revenues. Pure "Ullern Final" in men's nationals. Membership fee increased 10% for 2026.
389 paying members in 2024 (up from 354). Surplus NOK 347k. Refinanced loan from DNB to KLP. Switched to Tripletex. Energy efficiency measures kept energy costs down. Junior tennis budget down NOK 190k for 2026. "Team BSTK" nearly doubled.
Holmen TK is a good example of the middle position many Norwegian tennis clubs find themselves in: large enough to have employees, loans and millions in turnover — but still governed by much of the informal structures of the volunteer model. Inntektene vokser (ca. 7,1 MNOK i 2024, up from 6,6 MNOK i 2022), men two consecutive years of negative results and a wage cost trajectory that is difficult to explain from the public picture, points to a gap between what is reported and what is actually driving costs. The CEO position has been vacant at times — with the result that the board has stepped into operational management, something that blurs the line between governing and executive function. A classic pattern: the analysis is sound, the insight is there, but the gap between seeing what should happen and executing it is real and consistent. Fjordbyen Holmen — a major urban development plan right next to the facility — is an existential strategic question the club does not appear to have addressed formally in its public material.
2025 was the first full year of operation for the new hall. Annual result: minus NOK 125k. Debt in Kommunalbanken was reduced from NOK 40 million to NOK 33 million after a VAT refund. Buffer: NOK 3 million in Nordea. New chair Einar Granlien was elected. Strategy: "A tennis club for life."
Operating result +NOK 162k. Tennis school and adult courses have waiting lists. Ended "Tenniskids" partnership in favour of internal social activities. Women's team promoted to the Elite Series. Drop-in generated NOK 271k — the only club that reports this separately.
Growth from 981 to 1,089 (2023→2025). Hall occupancy above 80%. Surplus NOK 300k+. Has strategy and action plan 2024–2026, mentions mixed americano, barbecues and Christmas lunch with partner clubs. The only club with an explicit collaboration plan involving Heming, Snarøya, Holmenkollen and Paradis. Plans for padel courts.
Minutes and auditor's report publicly available. But the website (Clubmatch/SportConnexions) reveals something the annual report does not mention: the club ladder is open to non-members and actively collaborates with Stabekk TK and BSTK. Skriver eksplisitt: "Spread the word further, also to those who are not members of VBTK!" Morning tennis attracts players from several clubs.
Growth club with +105 members and +NOK 762k annual result. But the strongest finding comes from the website: The club ladder is open to all aged 12+ via Clubmatch/SportConnexions, and the page explicitly mentions matching with players from Konglungen TK and Holmen TK. This is operational cross-club play — without being mentioned in a single board document.
A clean and formal agenda is available. The club appears on winner lists, but no strategy documents or annual report provide directional insight. It treats itself as a well-functioning facility, not as a network with potential beyond its own courts.
The tennis hall collapsed during extreme snowfall on 7 January 2025 and was out of operation for five weeks. Tennis revenue fell from NOK 2.757 million to NOK 2.389 million, a decline of NOK 368,000, or 13%, while hall rental income fell from NOK 515,000 to NOK 292,000. Nesøya IL is a multi-sport club with nine sports and 1,024 members in total; tennis accounts for approximately 46% of activity revenue, with NOK 2.389 million out of NOK 5.176 million. The structural problem is not the collapse of the bubble hall. It is that the club spends NOK 1.057 million per year on gas to keep a tennis bubble standing, a business model that can no longer be defended. The board knows this. The solution is known: a heat pump and an insulated hall would reduce costs by approximately NOK 800,000 per year. But the financing is not in place. The 2026 budget still allocates NOK 990,000 to gas. Nesøya is a precise picture of a club that has the diagnosis, the prescription, and no pharmacy nearby.
* NTK deficit stems from deliberate facility investment of NOK 2.75m. Equity ratio 66%.
"The player is no longer primarily a member of one club. The player is a member of tennis. The clubs that have understood this — Stabekk, Heming — are growing. Those that have not — Holmen, Holmenkollen — lose people every year."
Players move between facilities, book wherever there is availability, and play with friends regardless of club affiliation. The clubs know this, but treat it as an exception rather than the new normal.
Holmenkollen is still operating according to its 2021 plan. Stabekk according to its 2022 plan. The padel industry updates its concept every quarter. That is the asymmetry.
An established collaboration between five clubs, but only for children under 12. No one has extended it to adults, shared booking or social events across clubs.
NTK is in a leadership transition. A new CEO without established loyalties is easier to reach with new ideas than one who has sat for five years. This window is short-lived.
"I want to play tennis tonight. Who can I play with?" No Norwegian tennis club answers that question today. That is the gap CourtBuddy is built to fill.
- Invite the boards of Holmen, Nesøya, Asker TK, BSTK and Stabekk to an informal dinner meeting
- Topic: what do we see, what concerns us, what can we do together?
- Not a federation meeting. Not a project. A conversation between people who share geography and challenges
- Konglungen TK takes the initiative and hosts
- "Open evening" once a month at a central facility — players from all affiliated clubs welcome
- Level-based matching built on UTR or a custom rating, so that a player from Asker can find an opponent from Holmen
- Padel does this every week. Tennis can do it better
- CourtBuddy is the tool that makes this scalable and digital
- Joint purchasing: sand, balls, insurance — shared volume gives better prices for all
- Shared IT platform with split licence costs
- "Tennis in the Asker region" as a joint marketing concept
- A network that competes with padel on padel's own terms
Do you see the same pattern as us? Is there interest in an informal meeting? Have you already taken steps that others can learn from? We want to hear from you — not as part of a formal project, but as neighbours in the same tennis community.
A pattern that recurs across clubs with energy-intensive facilities: they know that switching to a heat pump and better insulation will save them NOK 700–900k per year. They have calculated it. And yet they still budget the same amount for gas the following year — because the financing for the transition is not in place. It is not unwillingness. It is the lack of a bridge between diagnosis and action. Municipal coordination, the Sparebank Foundation and NIF support schemes exist, but they require someone to own the process.
At least one club in the material is located in an area now undergoing major urban transformation. Nye boliger, nye naboer, nye arealpress, nye muligheter. That is the single most important question for that club's future — and the public material gives no sign that the board has addressed it formally. A strategy that does not take account of proximity to a new urban district is not a strategy. It is a map from 2018 hung on a meeting-room wall in 2026.
The control committee is, in most Norwegian sports clubs, little more than a ceremonial body. They read the accounts once a year and write “no remarks”. In the best clubs, they are quiet architects of trust, direction and quality: they see patterns where the board sees isolated issues, and they ask questions before the crisis, not after it. None of the twelve clubs analysed mentions the work of the control committee in its public documents. That is in itself a finding.
The original assessment relied partly on assumptions. After a direct meeting with Court22 and a review of the actual cost model, the picture changes materially: Court22 now looks not only faster and more modern than first assumed, but also substantially more attractive economically for clubs with high booking volume.
If the MATCHi figures are correct, the club pays roughly NOK 12 per booking and the player roughly NOK 14. With a normal booking price around NOK 250, MATCHi becomes more than twice as expensive over time.
That creates a strategic paradox: in MATCHi, success makes the platform more expensive. In Court22, higher activity is far more of an advantage. If a sponsor covers the service fee, booking can in practice become free for the player.
You avoid working across multiple systems.
Hall owners can extract almost any operational view they need.
Very easy to manage different membership types.
A strong tool for planning coaching and training activity.
Players can find opponents or playing partners at the level they are looking for.
Updated conclusion: Court22 now appears to be the most economical alternative, the most flexible alternative, and the alternative that best supports the club’s own interests in sponsorship, membership growth and activity.
Booking, payment, administration. 9,000 venues in Europe. Optimises for scale — not individual clubs. Weak on culture and matching.
Challenges MATCHi on UX, speed and club control. Integrated series play, flexible membership handling, strong training planning, open matches and a statistics module make it more substantial than first assumed.
"Who can I play with tonight?" Matching, social habits, community across clubs. The layer MATCHi and Court22 do not own — and cannot copy without understanding the culture.
"MATCHi and Court22 must win the club. CourtBuddy must win the player. It is not the same battle — and it is not the same prize."
the answer to the question no club is asking
CourtBuddy matches players across clubs based on level, availability and geography. A player from Konglungen finds an opponent from Holmen or Asker — without knowing them beforehand. Loyalty to the opportunity to play, not to any single club.
Players see available times across affiliated venues and book directly. One court fully booked in Asker? Konglungen has available courts the same evening. Venue owners keep control and revenue — the system coordinates between them.
Which time slots are actually available? Who drops out — and when? Which groups are underserved? CourtBuddy gives boards insight they do not have access to today — and which is necessary to make good decisions about the future.
One round is played at Holmen, next at Asker, then Konglungen or OTK. Not one host for everything — but a regional league shared between clubs. Better court utilisation, stronger community, less strain on the enthusiasts.
The clubs keep their identity, their courts and their members. CourtBuddy connects them on the players' terms, without requiring mergers, new bylaws or extraordinary annual meetings.
Matching, communication and insight are driven by artificial intelligence. The system learns over time — who plays well with whom, at which levels, at which times. MATCHi and Court22 own the infrastructure. CourtBuddy owns the experience.
Support concrete pilot projects in Oslo West, Asker/Bærum and at least one region outside Oslo. Measurable goals: number of cross-club matches, court utilisation and player satisfaction.
Develop simple guidelines for rotating hosting in national team and league play. The pilot between Holmen and nearby clubs shows that this works in practice.
Include cross-club play with concrete goals: the share of clubs offering cross-club play by 2028, the number of regional tennis networks established, and so on.
Package successful social formats from individual clubs into national templates. The social element is the product — not a newsletter add-on. Heming and Njård have already shown the way.
"Clubs that embrace cooperation and technology will grow. Clubs that defend 'our court, our members' risk being left with empty courts and exhausted volunteers. The beautiful wooden boat can survive, but only if we set sail in the new current."
Konglungen TK — input to national strategy, April 2026It is not lack of will that causes enthusiasts to burn out. It is sludge. Hundreds of hours per year disappear into processes that should take minutes — og which in many cases could be fully automated. Sunstein foreslår «sludge audits» — a systematic review designed to measure the time cost of unnecessary friction and remove what does not create value. Norwegian tennis clubs need exactly that.
Typical Sludge in Norwegian Tennis Clubs
Manual handling of refunds, time swaps and cancellations, with emails back and forth instead of automatic rules in the booking system. Estimated: 40 to 80 hours per year per club.
Sending SMS, waiting, sending email, waiting, calling — instead of direct debit and automatic booking suspension on non-payment.
An Excel list, a Facebook group, a phone chain, reminders about weather and illness. Spond solves in 10 minutes what now takes three to four hours.
Excel, Min Idrett and emails from people who have moved, with no synchronisation between them. Some clubs spend weeks every year just keeping them aligned.
And the biggest sludge problem of all
This is what the process looks like today:
Complicated rules requiring voting and matrices every year. Sludge that could be replaced by transparent rules in the booking system.
Fill in form, send attachment, wait for confirmation — instead of one-click in app. A process that takes 15 minutes should take 15 seconds.
The board sits down and asks for each process: "How many hours do we spend on this each year, and can we automate 70 percent of it?" A review like this takes one afternoon. The gain is often hundreds of hours freed for what actually builds the club: creating meeting points, helping people find someone to play with, and making it easy to stay for a long time.
Sludge is the reason why AI competence in club leadership is not a luxury problem, it is a survival problem. A CEO who does not understand automation remains trapped in the sludge loop. A CEO who does understand it frees both themselves and their volunteers to spend their time on what really matters: the people around the court.
"Reverse sludge" — the variant no one talks about: where ordinary sludge creates too much friction for players and volunteers, there is also an internal variant where too little friction subsidises the wrong behaviour. Private lessons not invoiced through the booking system. Court use that is not recorded. Resources that disappear quietly without anyone having a system to see it. A sludge audit should look in both directions — not just for processes that are too heavy, but also for resources that disappear because it is too easy to let them.
Adjust the sliders to see what different actions mean for your club.
Calculations are based on average court hire of NOK 250/hour, membership fee of NOK 3,500/year, a realistic adult recreational member base, available empty morning court-hours, and typical seasonal patterns for the Oslo region. The purpose is to illustrate order of magnitude, not provide accounting forecasts.
There are still Norwegians who think Italians only know two things: making pizza and gesticulating as though the air owes them money. But in recent years Italy has also become the most successful tennis nation in the world. Not by chance, not because one player suddenly emerged from a sunlit corner of Tuscany, but because they found a formula that works.
While many countries still sit around the clubhouse table discussing who should sit on the next committee, the Italians have built a system that produces players, coaches, tournaments and belief in the future. Not secret, not mystical, just wise, long-term and well executed.
Today Italy has players at the very top of both the men's and women's games. Jannik Sinner has become a world star. Lorenzo Musetti plays some of the most beautiful tennis the world has seen in many years, with a one-handed backhand that looks as though it was painted with a brush. Jasmine Paolini has lifted the women's side, and behind them comes a long line of young players. This is not a golden generation. It is a system that works.
Futures, Challengers, junior tournaments and local leagues in close succession. A 16-year-old can play tough matches almost every weekend without major travel costs. Good players are not developed through another hour with the ball machine — they are developed through matches. Many raw, brutal, educational matches in which you lose 6-1, 6-2 one week and 6-4, 7-5 the next, until one day you finally win.
The best juniors are not absorbed into a centralised system where everyone must think and train alike. The Italian federation supports the player's own coach and local club. Italy has understood that it is often wiser to water what is already growing than to pull it up by the roots, not to move young players around like potted plants in a greenhouse full of politics and prestige.
The role of coach is not something you receive simply because you were once a decent player and own a cap with the club logo on it. Coach education is extensive and demanding: technique, pedagogy, match understanding, physical development and mental strength. It creates a culture in which children meet adults who actually know what they are doing. Not people shouting “more effort!” from the sideline as though tennis were an old steam locomotive that simply needs more coal.
SuperTennis does not only show Grand Slam finals — it shows Challengers, junior matches and players at all levels. Children grow up watching tennis almost every day. They do not see superstars from a distant universe. They see players who recently competed in a tournament in the neighbouring town. At that point, tennis stops being something that happens “out there”. It becomes something that happens here.
When one player succeeds, it pulls the others along. When Sinner broke through, it became easier for others to believe. Suddenly, young players no longer think, “Maybe I can become quite good.” They think, “Why not me?” It is a little like when a small club suddenly produces one successful player: the entire atmosphere changes. People arrive a little earlier. Train a little harder.
Many clubs, including in Norway, are a bit like old manor houses: lots of focus on the board, position, rules and "this is how we have always done it". Italy has been more pragmatic: more matches, more coaches, more tournaments, more children, less bureaucracy. It is almost brutally simple. Do not debate what a good tennis culture ought to be. Build it.
That is precisely what is interesting: the Italians have largely avoided the classic club war between juniors, seniors, veterans and recreational players. They did not solve it by giving juniors all the courts. They solved it by creating more activity and using the courts more intelligently.
Instead of one large tournament blocking all courts for a whole weekend, they have many smaller events at specific times — mornings and weekdays when seniors rarely play. Seniors and veterans have their own leagues. And because there are many clubs nearby, one can host a junior tournament while the neighbouring facility still has free courts for recreational players. They think more regionally than we do. The club is not a small island with a moat around it. It is part of a larger landscape.
In Norway conflict quickly arises because we have few courts, few tournaments and a culture where each group guards its own. Then every junior tournament feels as if someone is stealing a slice of the cake. The Italians chose a different strategy: they bake a bigger cake.
This is where Norwegian tennis has something to learn. We spend too much energy on structure, committees, rules and territory. Clubs become small islands guarding their members like old lighthouse keepers in the fog. The federation thinks too much from the top down. The clubs think too much in isolation.
Italy still makes excellent pizza. It turns out they can also build a tennis system that smells less of meeting rooms and more of clay, sweat, laughter and the possibility that something big can grow on a small court on a Tuesday evening.
Bad strategy, writes Rumelt, is marked by four things: words without substance ("we will be the best"), goals mistaken for strategy ("we will grow by 20% next year"), failure to choose ("we will invest in everything"), and avoidance of the real challenges. Read the strategy documents of most Norwegian tennis clubs, where they exist, and you begin to recognise the pattern..
Good strategy starts with an uncomfortable truth. A diagnosis that does not dress up the problem. For Norwegian tennis clubs, that truth looks like this: the players have already changed their behaviour. The clubs have not.
No diagnosis. No prioritisation. No choices. A list of good intentions that avoids the real questions: Why are membership numbers falling? Who are we really competing against? What do we need to stop doing?
Rumelt: «Fluff masquerading as strategy.»
Diagnosis: players want to play across clubs, and we have no infrastructure for that. Principle: become the network, not the island. Actions: a CourtBuddy pilot, rotating league tennis and one open evening each month.
Concrete. Coordinated. Buildable Over Time.
Dixit and Nalebuff show in The Art of Strategy based on game theory, that the best strategies are not about being best at everything. They are about understanding the situation you are in, the moves others are making and what you can uniquely offer that others cannot copy without fundamentally changing themselves.
For Norwegian tennis, this means that CourtBuddy and a regional network between clubs are not something that MATCHi or Court22 can easily copy. They are infrastructure companies. Owning the sense of community and culture between players requires local roots, trust built over time, and a different kind of motivation than commercial actors possess. That is the unique advantage of tennis clubs, if they choose to use it..
Think of it as a coordination game: if every club keeps its courts and players to itself, everyone loses, because the players drift toward padel and other alternatives anyway. If some clubs dare to open up and coordinate, everyone in the network wins. It is not a merger. It is an alliance. And the alliance is voluntary, something the padel chains can never offer..
The dugnad model is not a relic from the past. It is the very foundation on which Norwegian sport is built. A father with no coaching expertise who turns up for volunteer work, a mother with no accounting experience who becomes treasurer, a retired person with no sporting background who organises tournaments: this is not amateurism. It is the social capital that makes Norwegian sport one of the most inclusive and well-functioning systems in the world.
Casper Ruud, Viktor Durasovic, Ulrikke Eikeri — they have all had parents, coaches and board members in the background who were never professionals, but who were present. It is the deepest competitive advantage..
As we wrote in Budstikka: dugnad is not just practical work. It is the moment someone goes from being a user to becoming a co-owner. That transition is something no commercial padel operator can buy with money.
A club that rests on one or two enthusiasts is like a tent held up by one pole in a crosswind. The strength is real. The vulnerability is just as real. The solution is not to replace dugnad, but to make it more sustainable.
"Professionalisation and the spirit of dugnad are not opposites. They are a partnership. Technology and systems free the volunteer to do what she does best: create belonging, build relationships and bring out the best in the players around her."
This is where CourtBuddy and the strategic proposals in this document draw their real justification: not to replace the human element, but to protect it. When the systems handle booking, matching and coordination, the coach has time to learn the child's name. When the technology connects players, the enthusiast can spend their energy creating the moments that actually determine whether people come back..
The critical obstacle in Norwegian tennis is not a lack of courts or will. It is a lack of infrastructure to connect players across clubs. That is where all resources should be directed.
The end state we want is a regional network where players find each other regardless of club membership. What is the last step before that? And the step before that? That is what determines what we do today.
The spirit of dugnad is the core. It is non-negotiable. But the frame around it, the systems, tools and coordination, can and should be modernised. That is not a betrayal of tradition. It is the best thing we can do for it.
Norwegian tennis clubs have the world's best raw material: engaged people, solid facilities and a national sports culture the rest of the world admires. The only thing missing is an infrastructure that makes it as easy to play tennis as it is to play padel. That is what CourtBuddy and the regional network we propose are designed to solve..
The document is strongest as diagnosis and weakest as evidence. It should be read as an invitation to action, not as a judgment on those who have not yet acted. The best response to criticism of Norwegian tennis is not an even better document. It is a pilot.
An honest margin of error: some findings in this document are documented with primary sources — Holmenkollen −148 members, Njård drop-in NOK 271k, Heming figures from their own annual report. Others are observations and assessments, not documented findings: that padel primarily takes the social players, that matching matters more than facilities, that the time window is 18–24 months. Readers who wish to distinguish between the two should do so. This document is written by someone with a position — that is both a strength and a weakness.
The first step does not require a board decision. It requires one person sending a message and suggesting one concrete step.
Njård Tennis: drop-in NOK 271k (accounts 2025)
Nesøya IL: gas for tennis hall NOK 1,057k (accounts 2025)
Heming: 376 seniors, 384 juniors, waiting lists (annual report)
Asker Tennis: names Konglungen and Holmen in club ladder (website)
All figures in the comparison table: from signed annual accounts
That the action window is 18–24 months
That matching matters more than court capacity for adult tennis
That CourtBuddy will make a significant difference to retention
That volunteer attrition is the most underrated risk
The scenario results in the calculator (illustrative, not forecasts)
All links are taken from publicly available websites and document URLs as of 31 March 2026. The documents are unedited and reproduced as published by the respective clubs.