US pickleball players

The annual average price of lithium carbonate and the number of US pickleball players have, between 2015 and 2022, risen together at a correlation of 0.949. One trend is a critical commodity for battery manufacturing. The other is a paddle sport largely played by retirees. These two facts are not, despite the spreadsheet, a secret collaboration.

Lithium carbonate prices rose from around $6,000 per ton in 2015 to over $35,000 per ton by 2022, driven by the explosive growth of EV battery demand that outstripped mining and refining capacity. US pickleball participation climbed from around 3 million to 8.9 million in the same window, driven by demographic shifts and pandemic-era outdoor recreation. Both trends are products of the same global economic period of demand expansion in their respective domains, with no operational link between paddle sport adoption and battery metal pricing. The court and the cathode share a decade of growth.

Eight years of two lines rising together can describe two wildly different markets scaling on their own timelines. The paddle and the lithium ion are not in a cartel. Both, however, have a lot more customers than they did.