The shops closing and the padel courts opening

The Matalan at Heeley Retail Park in Sheffield closed on Saturday 7 March. It was the kind of closure that gets a few local news stories, a handful of regulars posting on Facebook, and then not much else. The building sat empty for less than a week before the landlord announced what was coming next: five indoor padel courts, run by The Padel Club, opening this summer.

That turnaround – high street retail out, padel courts in – is happening at a pace that would have seemed improbable three years ago. It has become one of the defining patterns in UK sport.

Why empty shops are becoming padel venues

Large floor plates, high ceilings, level concrete, and existing parking make former retail units a near-perfect fit for indoor padel courts – and landlords are glad for the tenants.

Padel is growing faster than the infrastructure to support it. The LTA recorded 69 courts across Britain when it took over governance of the sport in 2020. By July 2025, that number had hit 1,000, spread across 325 venues. By May 2026 it was 1,825 courts across 551 venues, with about 1,000,000 adults and juniors playing. More than 10 million more say they want to try it.

Courts are needed, and they are needed fast. The sport can’t wait for purpose-built facilities to work their way through planning – it needs space that already exists and can be converted quickly.

Empty retail units, it turns out, are a near-perfect match. The floor plates are large – typically 10,000 to 40,000 square feet – with high ceilings and level concrete pads. A padel court needs approximately 200 square metres per court, including run-off space. An indoor court requires a minimum ceiling height of around nine metres. A former retail warehouse often has 10 metres or more. The structural work required is modest compared with a new build: courts go in, glazing goes up, changing rooms get fitted. The building already has planning permission for commercial use.

From a landlord’s perspective, the calculus is straightforward. Retail footfall has been falling for a decade. The remaining tenants are under pressure. A padel operator signing a 10-year lease fills a unit that would otherwise sit empty, generates foot traffic, and brings something the surrounding area may well be short of: somewhere to play sport. Planning tends to be sympathetic. Indoor padel courts operate within Class E(d), which allows the reuse of commercial buildings for sport without a formal change of use.

The venues making the switch

The Sheffield story has several threads running simultaneously. The Padel Club – whose existing venues include Trafford City, Gloucester Quays, Cheltenham, and Wilmslow – has taken the Heeley Retail Park site for its first Yorkshire location. Five indoor courts under a 10-metre roof, with potential for two more outdoor courts at the site. CEO Kris Ball has described the ambition as delivering “a facility that gives people the very best playing environment while also creating a vibrant community space.”

Separately, Play Padel Group – co-founded by England cricket captain Joe Root – has planning approval for a second Sheffield venue adjacent to Meadowhall shopping centre: a 36,100 square foot unit converted into seven double courts and one singles court. Opening is expected in summer 2026.

Sheffield alone is acquiring three distinct padel operators this year. That is not a coincidence. It is what happens when a sport reaches the point where operators compete for space in the same city.

The picture is the same elsewhere. In January 2026, Velocity Leisure converted its Widnes site – previously a trampoline and inflatable park – into Velocity Padel, with five indoor courts. The decision reflected a straightforward commercial reality: trampoline parks have had a difficult few years, padel venues are filling up.

In Glasgow, Pure Padel has signed for the 40,000 square foot former Cineworld at The Forge Retail Park. Ten indoor courts, a competition court, a café and bar, opening May 2026. It will be the biggest padel club in Scotland.

In Milton Keynes, the industrial property landlord Indurent has applied for permission to turn an empty new-build warehouse – marketed since 2023, never let – into four indoor courts. In South London, Padel Box converted a Victorian railway arch in Bermondsey into five courts. In Peterborough, Smash Haus won permission for four courts in an empty warehouse on Lincoln Road.

Hammerson, one of the UK’s largest retail property companies, has submitted plans for 10 padel courts at its Swords Pavilions shopping centre in Dublin. If a company of that size is putting padel into its planning applications, the trend has moved past early adopter territory.

What the economics look like

Converting a retail unit into padel courts costs £55,000–£85,000 per court – cheaper than a new build because the groundworks, structure, and planning permission are already in place.

Building a padel court in the UK costs roughly £55,000 to £85,000 per indoor court, including structure, glazing, turf, and lighting. For a five-court venue, that is £275,000 to £425,000 before fitting out changing rooms, a reception and any social space.

That is a large number in absolute terms, but modest relative to other leisure developments. A swimming pool at a comparable scale costs ten times as much. A multiplex cinema costs more. And the revenue model for padel is predictable: courts typically run from 7am to 10pm, bookings come through platforms like Playtomic, and a busy court at £20 per person with four players generates £80 per hour.

The indoor conversion model has a further financial logic. A purpose-built padel facility involves land acquisition, planning, groundworks, and steel frame construction. Converting an existing commercial building skips most of that. The groundworks are already done. The structural engineer’s job is confined to what goes inside. Operators can move from lease to opening in months rather than years.

That speed matters. Padel operators are racing to establish venues in cities where demand already exists. The Heeley closure was announced and a replacement confirmed within the same week. The sport is growing quickly enough that operators cannot afford to wait.

What it means for players

Retail park conversions bring courts to established commercial areas – closer to town centres, with better transport links than edge-of-city industrial venues.

For anyone playing padel in the UK, the shift towards retail and leisure conversions has a direct consequence: courts are appearing in places they wouldn’t otherwise be.

Purpose-built padel facilities gravitate towards sites where land is cheap and accessible – business parks, edge-of-town retail estates, industrial zones. That tends to mean car dependency and a degree of inconvenience for urban players. Retail park conversions sit in different locations: established commercial zones with existing car parking, public transport links, and surrounding footfall. Heeley Retail Park is two miles from Sheffield city centre. The Forge in Glasgow is on the east end of the city, five minutes from the Parkhead Forge bus interchange.

The LTA’s own research has found that padel courts are disproportionately concentrated in affluent areas. Commercial rent in city-centre locations is still significant, so retail conversions are far from a universal leveller. They do, however, open up sites in more mixed urban areas that would struggle to attract purpose-built investment – bringing the sport to places that would otherwise be waiting years longer.

For the casual player trying to find somewhere to play within reasonable distance of where they live, more venues is more options. Sheffield going from one padel club to three or four in a single year is not unusual in how the UK market is developing. The cities where padel has landed are seeing clusters form. The cities where it hasn’t are the ones to watch.

The bigger picture

The UK padel build-out is now happening through multiple channels simultaneously: LTA-funded community courts, purpose-built facilities backed by private equity, and conversions of whatever existing space can be made to work. The retail and leisure conversion wave is one of those channels, and it is moving fast.

The 1,000-court milestone reached last summer already looks conservative. Industry analysts project 7,000 to 8,000 courts within a decade. Courts will exist – the open question is where they land, at what standard, and for whom.

The Heeley Matalan closed. The Padel Club opens this summer. Somewhere else, another store is closing, and another announcement is a week away.

For a broader view of how this growth is playing out across different UK cities – including Birmingham, where the LTA estimates 86 courts are needed – padel in Birmingham gives the full picture. The same conversion pattern is what has driven court growth in the wider piece on how UK padel courts are built.