The stampede of investors, operators and suppliers into the British padel business shows no sign of slowing down — and everyone, whether new arrival or established practitioner, needs access to one thing: data.
Data is central to assessing the viability of any padel project: How many other courts are in the area? How many more are in planning? What is the nearby population density? What is their drive time to the location? What is their average age and affluence?… Only armed with the answers to these (and many more) questions can fully-informed business decisions be made.
Operators are assessing potential new sites on an almost constant basis, and compiling detailed reports on each one can be a time-consuming business. Or it was, until tech entrepreneur James Morgenstern reduced the task to a few simple clicks with an ingenious online tool.
Morgenstern’s recently-launched invention, Padel Genie, shows a map of the UK with an array of toggleable indices down the side.
Not only does the map give location and detailed info on all the current padel venues in the country, but a click of a button adds all venues that are in the planning stages too (both approved and as-yet unapproved). With a further click, you can read each planning application in detail. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Operators can select any number of variables to check whether a location is viable for a padel facility they may want to build; whether indoor or outdoor, large or small, in a pre-existing sports club, school, warehouse or building from scratch. Using data on nearby competing clubs (and potential future competition), demographics and site information, Padel Genie assesses the suitability of a location in seconds.
Looking for a 1,200 sqm warehouse in Portsmouth with a 7m eaves height and want to search by current use class? Padel Genie will find you every matching building instantly. Want to see all padel planning applications from the last week, 30 days or 90 days? Across Britain or in a specified area? No problem.
“This would previously have taken months or years…”
“This would previously have taken people months or years, or maybe they’d never have found one,” Morgenstern tells The Padel Paper. “With Padel Genie, thousands of potential sites are suddenly narrowed down to a handful, or just one.
“You simply can’t do this without being able to handle enormous amounts of data. Now, you can layer that data onto an actual map, apply the filters, and make it instantly usable.”
London-based Morgenstern previously founded and sold his own marketing agency, before building an accounting platform, which he sold last September. Whilst seeking ideas for his next project, he started playing padel at Padel People in Wimbledon. That inspired him to start building Padel Genie in February. “I just followed my curiosity,” he says.
Morgenstern used AI to gather information from lots of different sources: the LTA, live planning applications, court booking portals, Sport England, the open web and more. Weeding out imperfections and false positives took some time, then he began to build more and more layers of features.
“To begin with I compiled lots of stats, but I realised it only showed me what currently exists, not what’s in the pipeline,” he explains. “I started pulling in all the planning portals and realised just how many courts are coming down the line. It kind of freaked me out.”
The system pulls in new information constantly, so Morgenstern has in his possession what must surely be the most up-to-date and comprehensive snapshot of the British padel ecosystem. Some of its insights, therefore, are fascinating.
At the time of our conversation (the end of of August 2026), Padel Genie shows the UK has 2683 courts across 819 venues.
It also shows that there are, incredibly, over 2000 courts* in the planning system (over 1,100 currently awaiting a planning decision and 900 which have permission but are not yet built). Around 80 to 100 new applications are lodged each month.
This data is not just useful for those looking to build courts, of course. Suppliers can search all upcoming new venues and know exactly where to go to pitch their wares, and who to contact; courts, rackets, marketing services, vending machines, signage, and much more.
“There’s so many ways to use it, depending on who’s using it,” says Morgenstern. “Whoever’s using it can start to identify leads very, very easily.”
It’s also a very useful way of taking a snapshot of padel operators’ success. Padel Genie tracks every club’s court bookings, prices, and peak and off-peak court occupancy, so can easily compare clubs in the same town or multi-site chain. This is very handy knowledge for competitors.
‘Exclusivity model’
There is a similar product, Playskan, which offers free usage of its service in a limited capacity, rising to £200 per month for club owners and builders , then ‘custom’ pricing for investors. Morgenstern’s monetisation of Padel Genie is through an ‘exclusivity’ model.
“I realised that if I were to let an uncapped numbers of suppliers and operators sign up, its value diminishes,” he explains. “My aim now is to limit access to two suppliers per category, with a limited number of operators, and then have a waiting list. That gives my clients a huge advantage over the rest of the market.”
*This 2000 number is likely to be an underestimation, as 29% of current planning applications don’t state the intended number of courts, so if they are referred to in the plural, Padel Genie assumes it as a conservative two.
