New Era of Growth Requires Thoughtful Approach
UK PADEL CEO Nick Baker returned from last week’s World Padel Summit in Barcelona with a clear message: British padel has moved past the “will it work?” phase and entered a new era of scale. The headline figure from his presentation – that more than one million people played padel in the UK during 2025 – impressed the audience and generated plenty of discussion in a room also featuring presentations from the USA and Netherlands. But Nick explained operators, investors, suppliers, and brands are asking how the next nine million players will be captured.
The UK market’s defining feature remains its fragmentation: 1,800+ courts across 550+ venues, with two thirds of those being tennis clubs running just a couple of courts each. Nick argues this rewards ecosystem-building over big-money single investments – and UK PADEL is putting that philosophy into practice. Nick says the junior game remains “significantly undervalued” in the UK, and to address that UK PADEL puts school and university padel high on its focus list. Nick also offered a sharp reminder to international brands: community influence, not tour endorsement, drives participation decisions in the UK. The businesses that will win, he concludes, are those building relationships across the ecosystem.
It’s Official: Our First Million-View Reel
A clip on our Instagram channel is the first piece of content to chalk up one million views across the UK PADEL-owned social assets. It shows a high-quality rally from Ireland vs Scotland in the Women’s Over 60s at the UK PADEL Four Nations, and has attracted a plethora of positive comments like “Grandma over there playing better than my partner” and “My kind of influencers😍.” The clip perfectly encapsulates the sheer pleasure so many people of all ages get out of padel. Did you know? We have a Benefits of Padel hub on our website explaining how the sport transforms fitness, well-being, social lives, and the way you approach longevity.
The Importance of Being Deliberately Uncool
Walk onto the Instagram page of almost any padel club in the UK and you’ll see chiselled men with razor-sharp jawlines and women who look like they’ve come straight from a photoshoot rather than a match. It’s polished, it’s aspirational, but for a huge proportion of people who love padel, it’s actually terrifying. At UK PADEL, we steer away from that: our clubs are for people who want to hear The Beach Boys or Oasis, and who appreciate being somewhere that just feels good. People don’t feel judged. And that warmth isn’t an accident, it’s a deliberate philosophy. People come to our clubs not because they’re the coolest place in town, but because they instantly feel at ease.
Your Rallies: Best of the Action
Two superb rallies from Holmer Green, the second secured with a God-like sliced backhand from the very back of the court, feature in our round-up of the best of the action from the past couple of weeks. And there’s also a great example of the unusual angles and dynamics that come into play when two right-handers face off against a couple of lefties. Keep using the PUSH IT button and we’ll keep compiling these highlight reels since we love to watch you enjoying your games just as much as you do!
Social Reach the New Powerplay?
Sports and entertainment agency 54 has invested £2.1m for an initial 8% stake in the Hexagon World Series, padel’s first global team circuit. Sponsorship, event hosting and franchise team sales are expected to drive growth for the series, and padel as a whole, according to an interesting report in The SportBusiness podcast. Crucially, investors are not banking on big TV deals to power immediate commercial uplift but on the reach and engagement that inevitably stems from digital and social platforms. Short-form viral clips (see earlier item!) and influencer-style players like world No.1 Arturo Coello are central to this strategy.
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