French football legend Zinedine Zidane is set to open a new sports centre featuring 13 padel courts, two five-a-side football pitches and a beach volleyball court, with construction starting in early 2026.
The centre is part of the legacy from the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, held in Paris, and will be located in Toulouges, a town in the department of Pyrénées-Orientale, just under 30km north of the French-Spanish border. Its proximity to Spain was a key reason why the town was chosen to host the new venue.
Zidane’s involvement in the completion of the new centre will increase his portfolio of sporting investments since taking a step back from football management in 2021. In October that year, the Frenchman announced the launch of Z5, a new padel centre based in Aix-en-Provence, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, before opening a second base just 50km west in Istres.
Toulouges’ highly anticipated centre will be the fourth in Zizou’s Z5 catalogue – also hosting a centre in Turin due to his links to Juventus – and will require an estimated €5 million in investment. In addition to the sporting facilities, the centre will also host a ‘France 98’ Sports and Leisure centre as well as the extension of the Naturopole business park.
At the end of 2024, France had an estimated 550,000 amateur padel players, in comparison to an estimated 50,000 in the United Kingdom. These players were accommodated by over 2,500 courts, spread across a staggering 940 dedicated padel facilities. That makes France the fifth largest country in the world when it comes to the number of padel clubs, sitting behind Spain, Italy, Argentina and Sweden.
1998 World Cup-winning midfielder Zidane is not the only person to make the leap from football into the world of padel. Icon of the game Cristiano Ronaldo recently purchased the Lisbon Racket Centre, with the Portuguese Padel Federation hoping the number of players can increase to 500,000 due to the superstar’s involvement. Ronaldo was recently spotted watching his countrymen Nuno and Miguel Deus compete in Saudi Arabia.
In late 2020, Zlatan Ibrahimovic opened the doors to Padel Zenter, a new facility in Örebro, Sweden. The ex-Manchester United man has since expanded his empire across Sweden to Skövde, Jönköping and Uppsala.
Premier League legend Shay Given is part of a group that includes current Brighton & Hove Albion player James Milner and ex-England Test cricket captain Michael Vaughan who have backed The Padel Club. The group has built on its inaugural Wilmslow venue with another club in Gloucester, with further openings imminent at TraffordCity in Manchester, Sutton Coldfield, Cheshire, Cheltenham and the North East.
England strikers Tammy Abraham and Callum Wilson have recently joined AFC Bournemouth winger Marcus Tavernier in investing in Game4Padel, a UK operator that runs 21 facilities and is currently valued at around £27 million. Tennis legend Andy Murray was among the early investors into the company, alongside current Premier League stars Virgil van Dijk, Jamie Vardy and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
