Demand for padel courts in the UK has become so intense that clubs are stretching their opening hours into the night.
The Padel Paper revealed last year that a new club in Bolton club planned to be open all hours of the day, and one PadelStars venue is trialling staying open until midnight.
At Manchester’s Carbon Padel Club, the UK’s largest facility with 17 courts, the last available booking is 11.30pm, keeping games going until 1am.
We spoke to Ultimate Padel Series founder Sufiyan Salim, who took that as a sign that if people are already willing to play past midnight, then they might as well do so in tournament format.
Sufiyan will this weekend run his second Midnight Madness tournament at Carbon, with 80 players expected on court across two days, following on from the first edition, in March, with both beginning — you guessed it — at midnight.
“In the Asian community there’s a lot of people who tend to play around 8pm onwards,” Sufiyan tells The Padel Paper. “I’ve been at Carbon until 2 o’clock in the morning and it’s full.
“I thought if everyone’s playing from 12 till 2 anyway, then why not do a tournament at that time? Normally everyone does it during the day, but some people are working, everyone’s busy.
“With the first one, I just wanted to see if players participate at that time. The fact that it sold out within 24 hours says it all.
“Even now when I’m at Carbon, people are saying ‘I can’t wait to play in the tournament, it’s going to be crazy!’ People are playing around that time anyway, so they might as well play a tournament.
“Late night vibes, everyone’s together, it’s silly o’clock and it’s just a little craze that is starting.”
Sufiyan is of Pakistani descent, and he’s pleased to have people from all walks of life involved in his tournaments, while members of the Asian community have certainly helped fill the late-night slots.
“Because we don’t drink or go partying to the bars or anything, it’s like, what do we do with our time?” he explains. “At the moment, padel is such an addiction, each day when people are still there until two o’clock, it’s like, what?
“A lot of padel places have become like a social hub. For Midnight Madness, the teams that have signed up are from all different communities – Asians, black people, white people. It’s a mixed environment, it’s like a collective of everyone. That’s the best part of Ultimate Padel Series, we want to get everyone involved.”
There will be £500 driving competitors to play their best late into the night, and Sufiyan feels it’s only fair that participants are properly rewarded for their efforts in all of his tournaments.
“The idea of Ultimate Padel Series just came from tournaments that I played. Me and my brother, we’re not amazing players, but we are self-taught, like when you play street cricket.
“My dad has always encouraged us to play sports – so long story short, we played a tournament and we ended up winning it, and the trophy that we got was very small. My hand was covering it basically, you couldn’t even see it when I was posing for pictures.
“Literally that night I set this up, and thought it’s time to do it my way, my style, let’s go big! When I say big – every tournament should have nice trophies for winners, runners-up, you should have cash prizes, just to give that reward to the players that are participating, especially the winners. You put a graft in, you want to make sure you get rewarded for it.”
