Vida Del Padel has six venues in play and a further five set to open before the end of 2026. Although growth at this rate is not unusual in British padel’s current boom, it’s not achieved without fierce graft, the odd mistake and plenty of wisdom gleaned along the way.
Since co-founders Ross Carlin, Cory Skrzypkowski and Jan Skrzypkowski opened their first venue in Lincoln less than two years ago, Vida Del Padel has recorded over 53,000 occupied court hours and over 20,000 players, with 5,000 new players visiting its network every quarter.
New clubs in Hull, York, Peterborough, Wakefield and Leeds are in the pipeline before the end of 2026, with more including Colchester, Chesterfield, Doncaster and London following, as the brand accelerates its franchise-led expansion.
Vida Del Padel’s venues are inspired by the social culture of Spain. Dwell time is key, with community events and ‘lifestyle experiences’ encouraging players to stay long after the final point.
The Padel Paper sat down with Vida Del Padel’s co-owner Ross Carlin to discuss the challenges of multi-site operations, coaching, player retention and the importance of customer conversations.
What are the challenges of scaling and multi-site management?
The main challenge is simply getting it right. Getting the first site right is critical, because every time you spread your energy further away from actually operating the club, you miss things, and then you only learn from the mistakes. That’s life: you learn from your own mistakes or you learn from other people’s.
We’ve grown quickly. Six clubs in two years, and we’ll be at 12 by the end of this year. It’s inevitable you drop the ball on certain things at that pace. The hardest part is finding which balls have been dropped, when, and how.
The other big one is scaling the team. As you increase the number of sites you’re in, it becomes really difficult to keep your focus on operations rather than just growth. Everyone in your team needs your attention, your help, your support.
You can build all the systems you like, but you still have to give real time and energy to each person. If you don’t, they haven’t got direction, and it matters that they can grow their skill set and understand how you think and how you want things done.
What has been the most unexpected impact of having sites across multiple cities?
The nuances of people in different cities. We try to keep the clubs as uniform as possible in how they operate and how they feel, but different areas have genuinely different views on what they do and don’t want. You could change one thing down south and they’d love it; make the same change up north and it wouldn’t land at all.
We think the UK is small and that we’re all united, but people have very different opinions, and the difficulty is making sure you’re addressing the right ones.
We’re in constant conversation with players across every club: social channels, the app, WhatsApp groups, and face-to-face. Every club throws up different problems.
The other thing that’s been harder than expected is coaching. There simply aren’t enough great coaches in padel yet, not just in terms of playing level, but people who are genuinely engaged in helping others improve.
That’s changing fast, with more people falling in love with the sport and getting qualified so clubs like ours can bring them in.
But programming is everything for a padel club: the right events, tournaments, coaching sessions, intro sessions from beginner to advanced, social events alongside performance and wellness events. It’s all part of the ecosystem, and it’s really difficult to deliver that without the right people in place locally. Recruiting into those local areas is one of the hardest parts of multi-site.
With the market now maturing, how do you change marketing messaging and daily operations?
We segment into different buckets of customer. We now have a really good view of who our different customers are, what they’re interested in and what they actually want. A good example is our membership, we’re relaunching the Vida Del Padel membership soon, built almost entirely on customer feedback.
Coaching came out as hugely important: the people who play frequently, who care about their rating and about improving, want access to coaching, clinics and external partners who can help with recovery, with niggles and pains, nutrition, and lasting longer on court. What our members care about is the additional benefit, not just a discount. So that’s what we’ve built into the plan.
Socials work the same way. From intro to intermediate, it’s about participation, fun, and getting lots of games in. As you move from intermediate to advanced, it becomes far more about the competitive edge. So it’s different style of events, and talking to those groups differently.
The main thing for us is that we ask a lot of questions. Not just members, we also speak constantly to pay-and-play customers who come in regularly, just to understand what they want. It’s about building an ecosystem where everyone falls into their bucket and feels like they belong in it.
What have you found works and doesn’t work around retention?
Retention comes down to the standard being maintained at all times.
Weather is a real factor. We’ve just had a very hot summer, and that affected play because clubs can get stuffy. Our ventilation systems help, and some of the newer clubs have air conditioning built in. We can’t do that everywhere, but we’re always looking at how to improve.
Consistency is the big one. We have our own maintenance team working across the UK, maintaining the clubs and the court standards, regularly testing sand levels, using specialist machinery to keep the courts fresh so the ball bounces properly and the spread stays even, and doing full glass cleans bi-weekly across every club. We do a lot to retain customers.
We also use dynamic pricing. Our Summer Sessions have just come to an end, that was about encouraging people to play before work. We knew the middle of the day and the evenings would be warm, and some clubs are quiet first thing while others are rammed. Again, that’s the nature of different people at different clubs. So we rewarded early play with pricing and double points, and gave people a better experience at the same time.
The app is a big part of it too. We’re working with a lot of external partners and will be launching some genuinely exciting things where people can claim real prizes with points earned just from playing padel. Some of what’s on there is worth hundreds of pounds. That’s what we’re all about, giving people an added benefit.
What have you learned about the role of off-court facilities; bar, gym, cold plunge, aesthetics, atmosphere?
For us it’s about creating a premium environment, but people walk through those doors for padel first and foremost. The secondary revenue streams are fantastic, and I see clubs out there with infrared therapy, saunas, plunge pools… they’re brilliant, but they’re wellness centres.
We’re building a lifestyle padel club. You can play padel, have a coffee, a matcha or a beer, it’s all there. But the padel experience has to be great first. When you walk into our clubs you should get an emotional experience: the scent, the music, the DJ theme nights, the events, the coaching, the programming across the UK.
And it doesn’t stop at the club. The app, the brand work, the new clothing range, the experiential events we’re bringing in with big brand partners, that’s about making people feel like they belong to the club even when they’re not in it. That’s what matters to us.
