Ben Nichols, CEO and founder of communications consultancy Padel 22, continues his series assessing the truth behind the ‘padel boom’ in its key growth nations around the world
The British media may lead you to believe that padel is already dominating the UK’s sporting landscape.
However, despite a mainstream media narrative of padel being “the next big thing” – alongside stock images of David Beckham or Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp holding a padel bat – I imagine public awareness of the sport would be hovering somewhere around the 10% mark, at best.
There’s no doubt the numbers are encouraging. There were just 50 courts in Britain in 2019. Four years later, that number is more like 250. There are now also an estimated 90,000 players in Britain, and a whole lot of entrepreneurs, racket sports enthusiasts, shrewd business people and, yes, chancers, seeking to wring cash from the padel boom.
These enthusiasts for the game, and those who’ve spotted an opportunity, are being held back by a very British issue: planning permission.
Planning is, on the whole, strict in the UK, and that can feel a whole lot stricter when the game of padel is an entirely unfamiliar concept to the local councils who grant the green light (or not) for court construction.
The LTA took ownership of the sport’s governance in 2020 as a shrewd but also defensive move, given tennis’ participation rates are (as with many mainstream sports) facing decline over the long term whilst padel’s graph is pointing in the opposite direction.
With a nascent network of national and local tournaments emerging, pockets of junior activity (but not enough to meet the need yet) and coaching qualifications being established, the infrastructure is gradually growing.
But growth cannot happen without courts. There is a bottleneck of domestic and foreign investor-led projects at present, so expect the landscape to look very different 12 months into the future.
With padel facillity operators including We Are Padel, Game4Padel, Padel Shift, Rocks Lane, Padel4All and soon to be Padel Social Club getting up and running, the private sector is driving in the fast lane of the motorway, trying (planning permission aside) to accelerate this supply and level up supply with demand.
See also: State of the Game: Padel in the UAE
