Padel is booming in the UK, but will its recreational players become professional fans?

One scene from Premier Padel at Olympia in west London this week tells the story of the state of professional padel in the UK.

The leading British women’s pairing, Aimee Gibson and Catherine Rose — on the fringes of the top 100 and given wildcards to enter their first event at the top level of the professional circuit — have taken the highly experienced pairing of France’s Alix Collombon and Russia’s Ksenia Sharifova to a second-set tiebreak. Lose it, and they’re out. Win it, and they’re into a decisive third set, with both momentum and a home crowd on their side.

It’s the biggest five minutes of their professional lives.

In the stands, a small group of friends are desperately waving placards with the type of pun-tastic slogans you expect to see at a local 10k run, almost expecting a wave of appreciation in return. Gibson and Rose, completely locked in, simply don’t notice them. This isn’t fun and games. This is top-level professional sport.

This prompts a couple of questions. First, at what point does an emerging, fast-growing sport break through to become an actual, established, mainstream sport? And second, can padel’s sharp rise in participation translate into success as a spectator sport?

These two questions aren’t a regular concern in Britain, which has long been dominated by sports essentially invented by Britons from centuries gone by: football, rugby, cricket, tennis. But the growth of the distinctly Hispanic sport of padel has been completely unprecedented. The number of courts in Britain has risen from 68 in 2019 to over 1,800 today. In the same timeframe, the Lawn Tennis Association — which also oversees padel — estimates that the number of people who have played in the last year has gone from 15,000 to over a million. Spending your Saturday morning playing a game of padel has become almost a running joke, a meme, a cult.

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Doubles strategy

For the uninitiated, padel is essentially the premise of tennis combined with the walls of squash. First-timers accustomed to those sports adjust smoothly, although the former tend to play with too much follow-through, and the latter are a bit too wristy.

That’s because power is not the default quality in padel. Serves are taken underarm. In most professional matches, there won’t be a single ace. Similarly, there is relatively little value in smashing the ball — unless you’re capable of smashing it out of the opposite side of the court entirely — because it means the ball generally bounces up high, and allows your opponents an easy shot back over the net.

Therefore, padel, always played as doubles, is more about spin, angles and patience. Good positioning is the most important quality, and decision-making is more valuable than technical brilliance. Generally, there are almost two battles within each point: first about getting position at the net, usually with a well-placed lob to force your opponents back, giving yourself time to advance. From there it’s about maintaining pressure and finishing the point, which usually takes longer than you expect. The most padel-specific shot is the bandeja, where a player responds to a lob with a slow, sliced overhead towards the glass, which allows them time to push up and maintain their net position.

In many ways, the rise in participation is similar to that of pickleball in the United States. But as a sport, it’s almost the opposite. Pickleball is basically a simplified tennis and often ends up with players crowded at the net. Padel, while initially easy to pick up, becomes a complex running battle of angles, almost live-action trigonometry.

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Power play

Are the angles becoming less relevant at the top level? As the sport has increasingly professionalised, top-level padel players have become physically stronger, and more capable of spectacular smashes off the back glass and out of the court; the equivalent of a home run.

It’s debatable, though, whether this is a positive. There is a growing concern that elite men’s players are simply too capable of winning points in this manner, which completely changes the basic premise of padel. A deep lob was always regarded as a good shot. Nowadays, it might not be. This is a particular issue during outdoor matches in hot weather, when the ball flies through the air quicker, and accelerates off a hot glass pane. These days, rallies are generally settled within a few shots, whereas once they were a patient game of chess.

“For me, it’s very important that ‘the game’ exists,” says Malaga-born Miguel Yanguas, eighth in the men’s rankings. “What I mean is: when we’re playing on slow courts, people see a better show. In the last few weeks (in a hot European summer) we’ve had very fast courts. The rallies are very short. For me, that’s not padel. I respect that the game is changing, the players are better smashers, but in my opinion, the best padel is one that has more shots to win a game.

“If you only have smashes…it’s like in tennis, only having a great serve. My game has changed a lot over the years. Before I was also aggressive, but I was defensively much better than now. When you add something, you forget something.”

It’s not unusual to hear padel obsessives say they prefer watching the women’s game — which, to use an analogy from a more traditionally popular sport in London, is Test cricket rather than T20. There are some powerful smashers — and the women’s game is becoming more attack-minded too — but there’s more risk of a smash falling short and becoming an opportunity for the opposition to counter-attack.

As such, the women’s game is more about a disguised change of direction, a clever slice into the corner of the glass or an angled shot into the fence, which absorbs the speed of the incoming ball and causes it to drop short. More than anything else, it’s more similar to the sport recreational players have fallen in love with, and should merit equal billing with the men’s game.

“Women play very tactically, the ball is much slower, so you can see how they play,” says Yanguas. “If you see (leading men’s players Agustin) Tapia or (Ale) Galan smashing from everywhere, it’s so fast that people don’t identify themselves with the men’s game. It’s more spectacular, but if you watch women, it can influence your own game. They’re very solid on the tactics, because the power is not the same, so they need other weapons.”

You wouldn’t know the difference by sight, but the ball used in the men’s and women’s London event is slightly different: the women’s use the ‘speed’ version of Wilson’s ball. The men’s game doesn’t need any extra speed. Quite the opposite.

The textbook padel player — almost literally — is Delfina Brea, the Argentine who has climbed to the top of the rankings alongside her partner Gemma Triay, from Menorca. Brea’s father, Nito, was a professional in the 1990s, then became one of the most respected coaches in the game and authored the go-to coaching book on padel strategy. His daughter’s success is presumably responsible for much of his royalties.

The extent of Brea’s profile in Argentina is completely alien to British players. The ovation for her when walking out at her home tournament in Buenos Aires brings to mind the Bombonera. Brea doesn’t have the physical power of others in the top 10. But her ability to win points with disguise is remarkable. She also boasts the best backhand bajada — playing the ball after it’s bounced high off the back glass — in the sport, cutting under the ball to provide slice while arrowing it between her opponents.

“I worked a lot to have that shot,” she says. “It’s a difficult shot. It’s important to have all the variations, all the shots, all the angles. It’s really important to confuse the rival.” It’s almost refreshing to hear a player speak about padel like this; about outfoxing the opponents rather than overpowering them.

Do the women’s players feel like they have equality within Premier Padel? “We’re getting there,” says Brea. “I don’t think we have it today, but we’re trying hard and I know Premier Padel is trying too. Sometimes maybe they have to try harder with the promoters and (attracting) local people. I know that’s difficult right now — it’s expensive to put on a tournament, so the promoter has to decide. But I think that every promoter should decide that the women have to be there in the afternoons too (rather than being scheduled only for morning matches) when most people are here.”

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‘It’s like having a girlfriend or boyfriend’

It’s difficult to think of many other sports that exist in their basic state as a two-player team.

As such, the balance between the two players is more important than their individual quality, particularly in the women’s game, where they work as more of a duo. There are broadly two types of pairings. For obvious statistical reasons, most pairings are comprised of two right-handers. In this partnership, the two have very different roles. Any high balls down the middle are easier for the left-sided player to take as an overhead, so that player (revés, or backhand) is more aggressive. The right-sided player (drive, or forehand) is more cautious, more methodical, and concerned with trying to set up the play. In football terms, the right-sided player is the traditional winger: an assister. The left-sided player is the inverted winger: a finisher.

“I don’t have what you need to be a left player,” says Brea, somewhat modestly considering she reached the final at Roland Garros two years ago on the left, when her regular partner was out injured. “I try, and in an emergency case, I can do it if necessary. But I don’t think that’s my place. I’ve found my safe place on the drive side. But it’s really important to play both sides. Don’t always get into, ‘I’m the right side, I’m the left side’. No, play everything, and you will understand the game much more.”

Mixed pairings are different. A left-handed player will always play on the right, meaning anything down the middle can be exploited by either player. This has become a significant advantage as the game has become more aggressive, and the rankings are increasingly dominated by these combinations.

Part of some fans’ fascination with professional padel comes from players constantly seeking new partners. The merry-go-round is an ongoing soap opera; many players have several partners within a single season. The Yanguas, after a surprise defeat on Wednesday, announced his separation from Argentine Franco Stupaczuk on Instagram. “There were some very good moments, and others, not so much…”, read his caption.

It is relatively common for the in-form player from two different pairings to simultaneously ditch their partners and join forces, leaving the “rejected” two with little choice other than to pair up. However, it is curiously common for the couple who got left behind to triumph over their old teammates: Brea and Triay joined forces last year and became World No 1s; but nevertheless consistently struggled to defeat their former partners Bea Gonzalez and Claudia Fernandez. Revenge plays a major role in padel. As does weariness with your partner.

“It’s really hard,” says Brea, of the challenges of being in a partnership. “We have to travel the world together, and we always say it’s like having a girlfriend or boyfriend — but without the love that makes you be with them, right? You’re sharing so much time, all the good moments, all the bad moments. You’re together all day, eating, sleeping, it’s really hard. It’s a rollercoaster. It’s not surprising that so many separate.”

Padel, then, has the genre of storyline that seems to drive football coverage these days: transfer rumours.

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Football focus

Football might be padel’s trump card. No marketing can compete with the fact professional footballers are obsessed with padel, constantly post about it on social media and regularly show up at Premier Padel events. In London, Thiago Alcantara cheered on the pairing of Spaniard Javier Garrido and Brazilian Lucas Bergamini; an appropriate choice for a player who had the luxury of choosing between those two nations at international level.

Indeed, nationality crossover between padel and football works in various ways. The World Cup final last month was Spain 1-0 Argentina, and the top 30 padel players (the top 15 from men’s and women’s rankings) features 22 Spaniards and seven Argentines. Other nationalities that sometimes pop up in the latter stages are Brazil, Portugal, Italy and France.

Continuing the World Cup theme, much of the financial support for Premier Padel is coming from the hosts of the 2022 and 2034 World Cups. The tour was founded by Qatar Sports Investments, so its President is Nasser Al-Khelaifi (briefly a tennis professional) who is also President of European champions Paris St Germain, and chairman of BeIN Media Group. Meanwhile, this London event was organised by Sela, whose logo is familiar from the shirts of Newcastle United; both Sela and Newcastle are owned by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.

The Premier Padel tour has grown from eight events in 2022 to 26 in 2026, culminating in a finals event at 18,000-capacity Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, which was a sellout last year. This isn’t purely due to grassroots interest; there has been a concerted push from these states. Riyadh hosts the opening tournament of the season, while Doha hosts one of the four majors alongside Paris, Rome and the birthplace of padel, Acapulco. It should be noted that the crowds for women’s matches in Doha are particularly disappointing.

The football/padel crossover is evident in various other ways. At this London event, Spanish sportswear brand Joma were keen to show off their new Brentford FC-branded racket. The meeting of the dominant two pairs in the men’s game is branded as El Clasico, and players can ask for video review in the vein of VAR if they disagree with an umpire’s call. Two years ago, a tournament was even held at La Cartuja in Seville; when Malaga fan Bea Gonzalez won the tournament, she whipped out a Malaga scarf and held it up to fans. The nature of padel fandom in Spain seems familiar from football fandom. It’s clear Britain isn’t quite at that point.

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British boom

Still, British interest in this week’s event was considerable. No British player is ranked high enough to qualify for the other Premier Padel events, and therefore the existence of this London event, and the wildcards handed out by the organisers, gave them a rare opportunity to compete on the highest stage. Tuesday, the first day of the tournament proper, was billed as the Back the Brits day — and many did. For all padel’s novelty, and its prevalence on social media, the crowd at Olympia was full of people who were probably born before padel was invented in the late 1960s.

Gibson and Rose lost that second set tiebreak, eventually going down 6-1 7-6. Fellow Brits Chris Salisbury and Alfonso Patacho lost to an experienced Argentine pairing 6-2 6-4, a commendable performance in defeat considering they’re ranked in the 700s. Welshman Louie Harris and his partner from the UAE, meanwhile, lost 6-3 6-2. These scorelines look disappointing on paper, but the Brits can be pleased with their efforts: the fact there wasn’t a single 6-0 was, in itself, something of a surprise.

And just as it appeared British interest would be over on the first day of the main draw, Christian Medina Murphy, born a few miles down the Thames in Kingston, recorded a win with his Spanish partner Alberto Garcia. It was the first Premier Padel win for a player with a Union Jack next to his name. Still, it should also be acknowledged that he, Patacho and Harris all spent much of their upbringing in Spain, which seems almost mandatory to make it at the highest level.

“There’s no reason you can’t make it growing up here in the UK,” says Harris. “It’s just going to take a little bit longer. Once you reach a certain point, you’ve then got to assess whether it’s worth moving to Spain. Players from all different countries tend to go to Madrid as a bit of a hub, or a pre-season.”

“We have to respect Spain,” says Gibson. “Look how many players they’ve got. Padel’s been around a long, long time in Spain, and the coaches are so experienced. You’ve got amazing players when you go to the academies. Padel is growing in the UK, but I think it’s a great idea for the juniors to get out to Spain and learn from them.”

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What now?

It was often said that squash didn’t capitalise on its 1980s boom because it was a difficult sport to make look exciting on television. Padel works well as short-form viral content, and given the nature of the links with BeIN, the quality of broadcast is usually high. Generally screened only on the Red Bull TV app, this tournament featured the first coverage on proper UK television: TNT Sports picked up the rights and are showing it throughout the weekend. PPL, the biggest padel league in the U.S., which has relied on unpaid media rights deals for distribution, will have five matches on CNBC for the 2026 season.

As for the in-person spectators, the scene at Olympia from Tuesday to Thursday was strange. The venue was bustling with supporters, and there were dozens of stands from the leading padel brands selling rackets, clothing, bags and various other accessories. There was a genuine buzz. Yet once you went into the arenas to see some action, the number of empty seats was striking, even for matches involving the biggest superstars in the game, and for all of the Brits’ matches.

This is no different from some spells at Wimbledon, where strawberries and cream often seems a higher priority than watching tennis. But as yet another person walked out midway through a tight game, clutching a couple of carrier bags overflowing with newly-bought padel equipment, it served as a symbol of padel in 2026 in the UK: a sport you play, not a sport you watch. Things may be different for the semi-finals and finals this weekend, with higher-profile matches all concentrated on one court.

Premier Padel is very much committed to making this event work in the long run; for all the sport’s popularity elsewhere, winning over London is considered almost the ultimate litmus test for a ‘foreign’ sport; for NFL in the 2010s, read padel in the 2020s. The sport clearly isn’t going away: it boasts huge participation numbers at grassroots level, and is attracting considerable investment at professional level. The key to becoming even bigger, you suspect, is Britain producing a player who can truly compete at the top.