Major British operator PADELHUB has defended its decision to terminate memberships across all of its eight clubs amidst uproar from many long-term customers.
PADELHUB has served notice to members across its venues, effective 11 January 2026, abolishing the option to pay a premium membership fee in return for ‘free’ court time and early court access. It has also moved all bookings to Playtomic.
The move has arisen due to alleged ‘court hogging’ by groups of premium members, some of whom, insiders claim, play up to twice a day, six or seven days a week.
Whilst those players would argue they were simply maximising value from their Platinum membership fee and taking advantage of their booking priority, it made finding available courts difficult for others and PADELHUB says it was damaging its long-term financial viability.
In a statement to The Padel Paper, the PADELHUB stated: “To be honest, we’ve been a bit of a victim of our own success.
“PADELHUB has seen truly explosive growth, and demand reached a level where our old way of doing things just couldn’t keep the game fair or the lights on long-term. We refuse to let the quality of the experience drop.
“This update is our way of protecting the game you love and ensuring sustainable, fair access for the entire community.”
Explaining the change of business plan, the statement continued: “The new model pairs a monthly or annual fee with a discounted court fee per booking.
“The best part? We are abolishing the maximum daily booking limit. We’ll keep a cap on active bookings to stop the court-hoggers, but otherwise, the shackles are off – you can get on court as often as your legs (and stamina) will allow.”
PADELHUB issued an apology to the members affected, saying “changing the rules of the game is never easy.” It has offered credits for the difference for those who remain as members and full pro-rata refunds for those who wish to leave.
‘Gerald Ratner moment’
Several members contacted The Padel Paper to voice their displeasure at the change of policy and confirm their intention to quit the club. One even labelled the decision PADELHUB’s “Gerald Ratner moment.”
A founding member said: “It was such a shock – last Wednesday every member across all eight Hubs got sent an email effectively cancelling their membership with one month’s notice.
“Most of us have been paying up to £2,000 a year to play, but with no court fees it made it worth it. Going forward it’s basically pay to play and at around £120 a court we can’t afford that and most are just cancelling their membership and going elsewhere.
“It is all very sad as we have built a lovely padel community at our club. Guess we will all become padel nomads now.
“Not sure how the PADELHUB Group will survive this – it may well turn out to be their ‘Gerald Ratner’ moment.”
Another long-term member said: “You’ve broken the back of the members – the people you thought you could achieve further revenue from, but instead will either completely remove their spending from PADELHUB or splinter it across a number of clubs. This won’t be revenue-generating, it will be revenue losing.
“Should you carry on with your decision, you can take this as cancellation of my membership. I do not wish to transition to your new membership model and will spend my money elsewhere.”
PADELHUB, which opened its first club in Slough in summer 2023, was one of the UK’s earliest and fastest-growing multi-site operators. It has venues in Slough, Crawley, North London, Epsom, Reading, Fleet, Tunbridge Wells and Southampton.
The ones who are paying the ultimate price are the ones who are on the “non peak time rate (silver)” who are playing in the day when if they don’t play the courts would be empty – who still had to put up with the lights not working on 40% of the courts and after a previous shake up in staff had to deal with dirty courts even though at that time already the padel hub was the most expensive club in the market! They have shown no loyalty to any of the members who respected and loved the club introducing new members etc- they saw more value in charging £7 for a towel RATHER than actually fixing the showers, having a club the members and the padel hub can be proud of and building a community says it all. It’s sad that something with so much potential has become such a money grabbing entity – for the record other fairer commercially minded alternatives were put to them which has been ignored.
Members understand the financial viability reasons behind this, however what your article doesn’t mention are how Padelhub have done this without addressing the members directly. Speaking on behalf of members at Epsom for example, which opened in Dec 2024, our members fees went up 10% within 3 months of joining. No notice was given. This latest move was done out of the blue, without any measures taken beforehand to try and curb so called ‘court hoggers’
Why not just talk to the members about the issues? Introduce limits of play per week? Why not max 4 games a week and charge for the extra?
Nothing was put forward to us as members and the constant censorship of actual feedback on WhatsApp groups was Orwellian at best. The ‘General’ WhatsApp group was muted soon after concerns were raised about increasing costs at the club such as price of refreshments, the exiting of a coach, the removal of guest passes (under the guise of creating a better community) amongst other things. Not to mention the £7 ‘towel rental fee’. Let’s also not forget that all annual membership holders had their terms rescinded and terminated to fall in line with the new membership terms from January 11th. Is that even allowed?
The community was built by members and members alone, we organised our own Americanos and groups instead. It is incredibly sad when an organisation doesn’t value that and instead squashes it and closes its eyes to all feedback on top of that.
Let’s also not mention the fact that it reported all of our negative Google reviews!
The club should have been transparent and communicative, but it never was. It became a faceless corporation just wanting everyone’s money. Even from its own staff
This decision has broken the trust of loyal members and dismantled the communities that built these clubs. Memberships were entered into in good faith, yet cancelled with minimal notice and no consultation. Court availability could have been managed through sensible limits or phased change; ending memberships entirely was a disproportionate response. Refunds are welcome, but they do not undo the loss of trust or the damage to the community.
Another kick in the teeth from Padel Hub is that under the new membership system the platinum membership no longer applies across all clubs. This doesn’t make sense at all. Not only have they pulled members pants down but now we are restricted to play at only one club. Terrible decision padel hub. You will feel the squeeze when the new indoor clubs in Leatherhead and Guildford open next year.