Easy to learn, hard to master: what makes padel so interesting?

In the first of our two-part feature series on padel, Global Sustainable Sport dives into why the sport has witnessed a boom in interest and participation over the last few years – and whether its popularity is sustainable.

While the sport of padel has origins dating back to the 1910s where passengers on British cruise ships played a similar game with tennis racquets called ‘platform tennis’, Mexican Enrique Corcuera set up the first recognised court in the 1960s.

Corcuera set the court up on his own land, surrounding it with walls and a metallic fence on all sides to stop the ball from escaping onto his neighbour’s plot. It is typically played in doubles and is almost like a mix between tennis and squash, where the ball can bounce off the padel court walls.

He called the sport Paddle Corcuera.

Some years later, a friend of Corcuera’s – Spanish entrepreneur Alfonso de Hohenlohe – came to visit and enjoyed the game so much he built the country’s first two padel courts at the Marbella Club in the Costa del Sol. Spain has over 20,000 padel courts with an estimated six million active players. The sport continued to be imported to other countries such as Argentina, which now has more than 10,000 padel courts.

According to the sport’s followers, padel’s popularity has traditionally been associated with its communal qualities. Now, this aspect of the sport is being used by its advocates to drive a new era of growth.

“When you go to clubs in Spain and Portugal, you can see there’s a warm, welcoming, friendly kind of culture and atmosphere,” says Mark Hewlett, Founder and Chief Executive of Soul Padel.

Hewlett explains to Global Sustainable Sport that with Soul Padel, a start-up club operator based in Manchester, this warm welcome was something he wanted to replicate in the UK.

“Our vision is to welcome everyone to the court. We have three values which are meet, play and connect. That’s what we think padel can be – a real facilitator for human connection,” says Hewlett.

Over the summer, Soul Padel worked with sporting goods giant Decathlon to produce pop-up padel courts to offer new players the opportunity to play padel. Surplus land located around stores in the Scottish city of Glasgow, and Stockport near Manchester, were used to house courts.

The courts were installed and supplied by PADEL1969, with the summer padel festival running between June 3 and August 31.

While Soul Padel’s model focuses on accessibility for all, there is also room for a more exclusive and luxury experience in the sport in the UK – a nation that is witnessing an increased interest in padel.

With that in mind, is there a better place for a luxury padel club than in Canary Wharf, part of London’s business district?

Padium is a premium padel club founded by Houman Ashrafzadeh, built on his love of playing the sport back in his home country of Sweden. Having lived in London for 20 years or so, Ashrafzadeh was frustrated by the limited number of padel courts in the UK’s capital after discovering the sport.

“The first time I came across the sport was around five or six years ago. My brother was playing it with his friends and wanted me to join in on games when I was I home. I instantly fell in love with it,” Ashrafzadeh explains to Global Sustainable Sport.

“My initial idea grew out of frustration because I wanted to continue playing in London, but there were just no courts. There’s a handful of courts available outdoors, and they were very difficult to book. I started researching the market and I realised that very few people had discovered this beautiful sport yet. Why was that? And the more I looked into the sport, the more I looked at Sweden and saw that people are going crazy about the sport. I just figured we were very slow to adapt in the UK.

“Then I thought I could combine fun with business. It’s a good opportunity because I think, like myself, a lot of people will fall in love with it and would want to play.”

So, how sustainable is the sport in countries like the UK? Interest in the sport has clearly accelerated.

The UK saw 239 new courts built last year alone, though this is still far behind the likes of Spain, Italy and France, where 826, 577 and 673 courts were built in 2023, respectively. The UK also saw 35 new clubs open, placing the country on track for a major padel boom.

Participation has also increased over the last year, with hotspots in Manchester, London and Glasgow, as well as regions such as Leicestershire and North Yorkshire.

This is according to the 2024 Global Padel Report from Playtomic, a community of racquet players and app that enables those players to book spaces to play, and PwC’s Business Strategy Consulting arm Strategy&.

Playtomic was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Madrid.

Additionally, interest in the sport is increasing globally, with the top 15 countries for growth including Denmark, the Netherlands, Panama, Chile, Norway, South Africa, Paraguay, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and more.

A sport for all?

Pablo Carro, Co-Founder of Playtmoic, tells Global Sustainable Sport that not only does the social element provide a major selling point, but also the different levels of ability the sport can accommodate.

“Padel is inclusive in the sense that the sport doesn’t demand a high level of physical condition. It can be for beginners, and it is extremely accessible for both men and women,” says Carro.

“Because if you think about the tennis experience, it’s extremely big: the space and the distance between players is huge. The coordination that you need between arm, ball, and racket is super complicated, super technical, and you need to learn. Padel is easy to learn.”

This is echoed by Ashrafzadeh, who says: “It’s sociable rather than just two people playing tennis and not being able to chat as much. Tennis is a really great sport, but it’s difficult to learn. If you’ve never played tennis and you want to start learning, you would have to get lessons.

“It would take maybe 10 lessons just to get the serve right. And even after 10 lessons, you’re not mastering it, you have a half-good serve. If you can’t serve in tennis, you’re losing against your opponent. So there’s this huge obstacle to getting into tennis.

“With padel, you don’t have that. It’s an underarm serve and anyone can start learning straight away. We’re not just talking about the serve, the overall game involves a lower level of difficulty. If you just want to be able to play the game, you can play after just one session with an instructor.”

Ashrafzadeh agrees with this notion. “I think this is the strongest reason for why padel has become so popular,” he says. “It’s easy to learn, but at the same time, it’s hard to master so you’re not going to get bored of it.”

Part two of the padel series of features will focus on the growth of the professional game, the hurdles faced when building new courts and clubs, investing in the sport, and the design and construction of the courts themselves. Make sure to check it out next week!

Images: Soul Padel x Decathlon, Padium, SideSpin Padel on Unsplash