Football clubs are adding padel courts – and that's a bigger deal than it sounds

If you’ve played five-a-side at a Powerleague centre – and there’s a decent chance you have – you already know the vibe. Floodlit pitches, synthetic turf, that faint smell of rubber crumb, car park banter afterward. These places are everywhere: 43 venues dotted across the UK, mostly in suburbs and industrial estates where rent is cheap and parking is plentiful.

Now imagine walking into one and finding padel courts where a football pitch used to be.

That’s already happening. And it’s happening alongside something bigger: football clubs themselves – from League One sides to community trusts – are building padel facilities at their grounds. It’s a trend that could reshape where and how casual players access the sport in the UK.

Blackpool FC, Just Padel, and a community trust

In early March 2026, Blackpool FC announced Just Padel Blackpool as an official Club Partner for the 2025/26 season. Just Padel operates six indoor courts including a panoramic showcourt, and the partnership runs through the Blackpool FC Community Trust – the charitable arm of the football club.

That community trust detail matters. This is how football clubs typically funnel investment into grassroots access: the trust runs walking football, disability sport, junior leagues, and schools programmes. Padel is now part of that mix.

The partnership sits alongside something even more significant happening a short walk from Bloomfield Road.

A town deal with padel courts in it

The Revoe Community Sports Village is a £6.5 million project funded by the UK Government’s Town Deal, developed jointly by Blackpool Council, the football club, and the community trust. The plan includes two seven-a-side football pitches, a multi-use games area, and two padel courts.

Construction is expected to begin later in 2026, following a Council Executive vote on 16 March. The facilities will serve the football club’s women’s and girls’ teams, walking football groups, wheelchair sports, junior leagues, community groups, and local schools.

Government money, a football club, a community trust, and padel courts – all in one project, in one of the most deprived areas of the country. That combination is worth paying attention to.

Football grounds have something padel venues don’t

Standalone padel venues in the UK cluster in wealthy areas. Research into the Greater Manchester padel landscape found that venues are 6.5 times more prevalent in affluent areas than deprived ones. Several Greater Manchester boroughs still have zero courts.

That pattern repeats across the country. Purpose-built padel facilities tend to follow the money – upmarket suburbs, commuter towns, areas with high disposable income. If you live in a post-industrial town in the north or Midlands, your nearest court might be a 45-minute drive away.

Football grounds flip that equation. They already exist in exactly the places padel venues don’t go: Blackpool, Mansfield, Wolverhampton, Nottingham. They have car parks, floodlights, changing rooms, and – crucially – land. Mansfield Town’s padel courts were built on unused wasteland adjacent to One Call Stadium. No planning battle for a greenfield site. No speculative property deal. The infrastructure was already there.

For the roughly 1,000,000 people playing padel in Britain (LTA, May 2026) and the 10 million-plus who say they want to try it (LTA, end of 2025), football grounds could be the fastest route to getting a court within a reasonable drive.

The money argument

Football clubs are sitting on assets that generate almost no revenue on non-matchdays. Car parks, training grounds, adjacent land – all of it sits idle for the majority of the week. Padel changes that calculus.

A set of four courts can be built for a fraction of what a new stand or training facility costs. They generate daily booking revenue, attract a demographic that overlaps heavily with football fans (team sport, competitive, social, up for a pint afterward), and they don’t interfere with matchday operations.

Powerleague has made this bet at scale. The company – which operates 43 football venues and over 250 third-party sites – is investing £14 million over two years to add padel at almost half its clubs. The plan: 17 new padel venues and 76 courts operational by the end of 2026. Their Birmingham site has already converted football pitches to three padel courts, operational since July 2024. Manchester opened in March 2025 as their largest venue, with six canopied courts.

CEO Christian Rose described padel’s growth as showing “a 26% compound annual growth rate.” When a company that built its entire business on five-a-side football starts converting pitches to padel, the financial case is clearly persuasive.

Who’s building courts: the full list

The football-padel trend is broader than any single headline suggests. Here’s what’s happening across the country:

Blackpool FC + Just Padel – Six indoor courts (including panoramic showcourt) via Club Partner deal with Blackpool FC Community Trust. Plus two additional courts planned at Revoe Community Sports Village (£6.5m Town Deal project).

Mansfield Town + World Padel Academy – Four covered courts at One Call Stadium, opened November 2024. Built on unused wasteland adjacent to the ground. £1 million investment. Courts from £6 per hour – among the cheapest in the country.

Forest Green Rovers + The Padel Club – Partnership with The Padel Club Gloucester, announced August 2025. FGR Head of Commercial Paula Brown: “This partnership allows us to promote a sport that shares many of the same values we hold dear – inclusivity, accessibility and fun.”

Nottingham Padel Centre at Notts County – Located next to Meadow Lane, backed by the World Padel Academy as technical partner. Opened 2023. It’s one of four pay-to-play venues in Nottingham – see padel in Nottingham for the full picture.

Everton FC – Padel court installed at Finch Farm Training Ground.

Powerleague – 17 new padel venues across their football centre network, 76 courts by end of 2026. Birmingham and Manchester already operational. £14 million total investment.

Every single one of these is outside London.

The access problem this might fix

The UK’s padel growth story is impressive – from around 15,000 players in 2019 to over 400,000 in 2024, with courts crossing the 1,000 mark in 2025. But that growth has been uneven. Premium venues in affluent areas have thrived. Towns like Blackpool, Mansfield, and Wolverhampton have been left behind.

Football clubs change the geography. They bring padel to places where the existing venue model hasn’t reached, at price points closer to a game of five-a-side than a premium racket club membership. When Mansfield Town offers courts from £6 an hour, that’s a different proposition entirely from the £40-plus peak-time rates at some London venues.

The community trust model adds another dimension. Football community trusts already know how to run inclusive sport programmes – disability sessions, walking sport, youth engagement, school partnerships. Padel slots into that framework with remarkable ease. Forest Green Rovers explicitly cited “inclusivity, accessibility and fun” as their rationale. Blackpool’s Revoe project bundles padel with football, community access, and government regeneration money.

If padel is going to become a sport for everyone in the UK – and the growth numbers suggest people want it to be – then football grounds might be the single most effective delivery mechanism. They’re in the right places, they have the land, they have the community connections, and they have a financial incentive to diversify.

What this means if you play outside London

For casual players in northern and Midlands cities, the football-padel convergence is practical good news. If you’ve been checking where padel is growing outside London and finding slim pickings near you, the next wave of courts might come from somewhere familiar: your local football ground.

If you’re weighing up whether a football venue suits you or you’d prefer a dedicated padel club, the padel club guide covers what to look for before you book.

It also suggests the sport’s rapid UK growth has legs beyond the initial premium-venue boom. When Powerleague – a company that serves millions of recreational footballers – commits £14 million to padel, they’re betting that the casual player market is large enough to sustain mass-scale venues at accessible prices.

Whether that bet pays off for every operator remains to be seen. But for players who’ve been priced out or geographically excluded from the first wave of UK padel, football clubs opening their gates to the sport is the most encouraging development in months.

Keep an eye on your local club. They might be next.