Padel growth in the UK seems strong but how far can it go?

The Lawn Tennis Association in the UK appointed themselves as the governing body for padel last year and since then have been pushing forwards with investment in both infrastructure and participation programmes. They’ve now released figures that aim to back up the success of this investment.

According to their press release,

“Figures released today by the LTA show that at the end of 2024, just over 400,000 adults and juniors in Great Britain played padel at least once in the preceding 12 months. Up from 15,000 in 2019, 89,000 in 2021, and 129,000 at the end of 2023. Meanwhile Sport England who use a different metric – recorded the number of adults who play twice monthly - doubling from 23,000 in 2022-23 to 51,000 in 2023-24, as per their Active Lives annual survey that was released two weeks ago. This growth is supported by a rapidly expanding infrastructure, with 893 padel courts now available across 300 venues across Britain.”

(They then go on to drop in some unbelievable stats about the awareness of the sport which Racket Business quite frankly doesn’t want to credit as they are so ridiculous.)

What is obvious is that padel participation is growing fast from a very low base, but the numbers are still small.

A more robust survey has found there are 51,000 active padel players in the UK with ‘active’ being defined as those that play at least twice per month. This seems much more realistic given that there only 800 courts in the whole country and probably only 500 when the player numbers were analysed. This would mean that each court sees play from around 60 unique players on a monthly basis.

But will issues such as noise, cost of land, planning constraints and rising prices for players dampen the excitement?

Take the headline from an article today published in the right leaning Daily Telegraph newspaper,

‘Padel has made my life a living hell. It’s like being at the Somme’ The racquet sport is surging in popularity – but not among those who live within earshot of its courts, such as some residents of Winchester’

(And for those that want to pay to subscribe, you can read the full article below)

These issues on their own aren’t going to stop such a popular sport but what they are doing is adding hurdles for growth and investment which will no doubt ask questions to the money men when deciding if they want to invest.

Padel courts are not cheap to install, unlike pickleball. A typical padel court built onto an existing tennis court in the UK will cost £50k whilst a court built on new ground can be up to £100k.

Gaining planning consent can take months and involves hours of work, meetings and general frustration which investors are notoriously shy of.

Once a new padel centre is built and up and running, because often there are institutional financial investors involved, they demand a fast return which is encouraging operators to over charge. Padel court rental in London can easily be £60 - £100 per hour which prices the sport alongside other more affluent focussed demographics such as golf.

The story can be very different when padel courts are added to existing sports clubs. The additional facilities such as clubhouse, changing rooms and car parking will already be there and a ready-made target audience who might add padel to their other rackets sports such as tennis or squash already exists. This brings down the overall financial risk of the project.

Padel is attractive for those that haven’t learned tennis from a young age as the technique requires much less training. Underarm serves remove that block of having to learn an overarm serve and the doubles-only format makes it more accessible for those that are maybe not mobile enough for full court tennis or singles.

Racket Business will keep a keen eye on developments with padel but our long term prediction is that pickleball could end up the winner.