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Padel is the UK's new obsession. Meet the companies making it happen
Like many of the UK's growing ranks of padel devotees, Sammy Arora, 24, was hooked from his first swing of the racket. It was seven years ago, and he was sharing a court with his family, 'who hadn't really played sports before' but still managed a decent rally.
As the Aroras found, padel is easy to pick up, regardless of age or fitness. Often described as tennis with walls — which the ball can bounce off — it is the UK's fastest-growing sport.
It wasn't until Arora's university days in Durham, where he wrote his dissertation on the potential growth of padel, that he began to mould his passion for the sport into a business idea. 'I spoke to my dad and he said, 'It's a great opportunity, you've got to do it.''
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His father, Bobby Arora, knows a good business opportunity when he sees one: he is a multimillionaire who made his fortune from building the budget retailer B&M. He put up the majority of the £450,000 Sammy needed to open his first Pure Padel club in Cheshire, with three courts and a shop. 'I managed to balance my last year of uni and starting the business', Arora says. 'My first site opened in October 2023, about five months after I graduated.'
Now, just over two years since sitting his finals (he got a 2:1), Arora is among the entrepreneurs feeding the craze for padel in the UK. It has drawn 400,000 players at last count, David Beckham and Stormzy among them. The Lawn Tennis Association, the sport's governing body, says there are now 893 padel courts at 300 venues across Britain.
These courts can be indoors, often in converted warehouses; or outdoors, either exposed to the elements or covered by a giant canopy. Arora is hedging his bets and creating a mix because 'no one really knows' which will prove the most popular in the long run. Pure Padel now has five clubs, with another seven planned this year.
His father continues to finance the business, having so far invested £1.4 million together with other friends and family, some of whom also assist in running the venture. Sammy's uncle, Simon Arora, B&M's former chief executive, is 'helping on the legal leases and land deals'. Paul McDonald, the retailer's former chief financial officer, is 'helping with the company finances'.
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The result, so far, has been sales of £1.6 million in the eight months to the end of March 2025. The young company hasn't yet achieved the propulsion to make it on to the main Sunday Times 100 table. But it is one of a growing number of padel startups — our Ones to Watch — that have flourished in parallel with padel's growth in the UK.
When Michael Gradon started another of our promising future stars, the club operator Game4Padel, in 2019 'most people hadn't even heard of the sport' and thought it was a 'mad idea', he says. But Gradon, 66, had already caught the bug, having played padel in Spain, home to 5.5 million players.
'We managed to persuade Andy Murray to come in as a small investor,' says Gradon, a former Wimbledon board member. Other investors, including the footballers Virgil van Dijk and Jamie Vardy, have since handed the business more than £10 million, for a valuation of £27 million.
Game4Padel now runs 21 padel clubs in the UK and four overseas, and generated sales of £2.4 million last year. It plans to open about ten more clubs this year, but Gradon notes the UK is still far behind countries like Spain. 'We're still in the very early stages of the boom,' he says.
Operators including Game4Padel sometimes pair their padel offering with pickleball, another fast-growing racket sport, played on a smaller court with a slower ball. But whereas padel courts can cost about £160,000 to build when an overhead canopy is included, a tennis court — or even indoor badminton courts — can be easily converted to pickleball. It just requires a lower net and some lines, meaning local groups of players can improvise with existing facilities.
Yet finding business success with padel isn't easy. As well as the expense of building courts, planning permission and building regulations can mean projects take years to bring to fruition. Then there is the noise: complaints from nearby residents about the noise of hard shots add to the challenges of site selection.
But that hasn't stopped enthusiasts rushing headlong into the market. Gradon likens it to a 'gold rush'. Paul Regan, whose company, Pro Padel Courts, has six years' experience in installing courts, says clueless construction companies are flooding the market, some of which 'cut corners on groundworks which fail, and courts have fallen down'.
A serial entrepreneur, Regan expects his company to build about 100 courts this year, almost doubling its present tally. He thinks this will lift sales beyond the £900,000 his company served up in the 12 months to February.
Regan, who is also a former tennis coach, is in little doubt that padel will 'overtake tennis very quickly' in the UK. Part of the appeal is the social aspect of the game. Operators like Pure Padel and The Padel Club are opening bars and cafés alongside courts. Also, as Arora says, compared with sports like tennis, 'it's a lot more informal, you can wear trackie bottoms'.
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Pure Padel, Game4Padel and the like — others among our Ones to Watch include Padel4All and Smash Padel — are up against more established businesses that have turned their attention to the sport. Slazenger Padel Clubs, backed by Frasers Group, and the five-a-side football provider Powerleague are spending millions to roll out courts. Foreign operators are making inroads too. The Denmark-headquartered Rocket has four clubs in the UK, having sold its suite of clubs in Sweden and Norway to focus on the UK market.
The race is on to spread padel across the UK, and profit from the fruits of its popularity. But for now padel entrepreneurs see no end in sight to Britain's appetite for the game.
