Five padel venues in a mid-sized northern city. Multiple planning applications approved or pending. A university putting £600,000 into four courts on land that used to be tennis. Something interesting is happening in Preston, and it tells you a lot about where padel is heading in the UK.

This isn’t a London story. Preston has around 150,000 people, no Premier League club, no obvious demographic tailwind. What it has is several landlords and investors who looked at underused sport infrastructure and decided padel was a better bet. That pattern is playing out across the country – Preston just happens to be at an unusual concentration of it right now.

UCLan’s plan: four courts on a tennis site

University of Central Lancashire has submitted plans to install four padel courts at its Tom Benson Way sports arena in Cottam. The proposal is a partnership with Soul Padel, a national operator who funds, builds, and manages the courts while the university provides the site. The investment is £600,000, and Soul Padel has committed for ten years.

The courts would sit on the footprint of two existing tennis courts near the sports arena reception. Artificial grass, canopy roof, floodlights. Bookable by students, staff, and the wider community – this won’t be an exclusive academic facility.

Jimmy Khan, UCLan’s Head of Sport and Active Wellbeing, described it as part of a commitment to “innovative, inclusive sport.” Mark Hewlett, Soul Padel’s founder and CEO, grew up near Preston: “I grew up just down the road, so to hopefully be bringing Soul Padel to the heart of Lancashire means the world to me.”

The Loughborough precedent matters here. Soul Padel installed courts at Loughborough University in March 2025. They’ve run at 100% booking rates since. UCLan is presumably aware of that data when signing a decade-long agreement.

There’s also a strategic dimension: padel is expected to become an official British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) discipline. Institutions that want competitive teams will need certified facilities. UCLan is positioning early.

Preston’s padel venues: where to play now

Before any of the new schemes open, Preston already has four operating venues:

  • Game4Padel at West View Leisure Centre, Ribbleton Lane – council leisure centre partnership, one of Game4Padel’s nationwide rollout sites
  • Just Padel, Corporation Street – indoor courts in the city centre
  • Broughton and District Club – club-based padel alongside existing sports
  • Performance Padel Preston, Caxton Road, Fulwood – four indoor courts in a converted food distribution warehouse (18,500 sq ft); planning ref 06/2025/0279 is pending but the venue has been operating

The Caxton Road venue is worth noting separately. Performance Padel has invested in World Padel Tour specification turf – a step up from the all-weather surfaces you find at most casual venues. The standard is noticeably higher than a converted car park or a council leisure centre booking.

Three more venues in the pipeline

Beyond the UCLan proposal, two further schemes are at various stages:

Fishwick (Mercer Street) – planning approved by Preston City Council’s planning committee in March 2026. Padel Out Preston Ltd is converting two vacant warehouse units on the Fishwick Park commercial estate – one formerly occupied by GhostBikes, the other empty for longer. Ten courts, viewing area, gym space, café, around 50 parking spaces. Opening hours: 6am to midnight, seven days a week. That’s 180 hours of combined court time daily across all areas. No investment figure has been made public, but converting two warehouses into ten padel courts isn’t cheap.

Performance Padel Preston (Caxton Road expansion) – a separate planning application (ref 06/2025/0279) for further development at the Fulwood site, currently pending.

Add these to the UCLan proposal and the four existing venues, and you’re looking at a city with five distinct padel destinations either open or on the way.

Why tennis courts keep becoming padel courts

The UCLan site replacing tennis courts isn’t unusual. Glasgow Club Scotstoun converted two of its eight indoor tennis courts into three padel courts in early 2026. Similar conversions are happening at leisure centres and private clubs across the country. The Fishwick and Caxton Road schemes are warehouse conversions, but the pattern at public and institutional venues almost always involves tennis.

The economics are straightforward. One tennis court footprint fits three padel courts. A padel court books four players per session; a singles tennis court books two. Padel player retention rates are typically quoted around 92% – people who start playing keep playing, which makes booking systems predictable. Tennis courts at public leisure venues frequently sit underused for large parts of the week.

This isn’t an attack on tennis – plenty of padel venues exist alongside tennis facilities without displacing anything. But when a venue needs to decide how to use limited indoor space or secure capital for a new development, the padel booking model is a straightforward commercial argument. You can read more about why football clubs are making the same calculation.

The university partnership model

Soul Padel’s approach to universities is worth understanding because it’s likely to spread. The model is: Soul Padel provides all the capital and manages bookings; the university provides an already-permitted site with existing infrastructure (changing rooms, car parks, student footfall). Both parties get something they couldn’t as easily achieve alone.

For universities, it means sports facilities without capital expenditure. For Soul Padel, it means access to sites with predictable demand – students are exactly the demographic that drives early adoption of social racket sports. Loughborough running at full capacity since March 2025 has given them a proof case they can take to every other university with underused tennis courts.

The BUCS angle extends this further. If padel becomes an official university sport – which the governing bodies anticipate – then universities without certified courts will be at a competitive disadvantage for student recruitment. The pipeline of potential university partnerships is substantial.

What this means for Preston and Lancashire players

If you’re already playing padel in Preston, the short-term picture is more courts, more booking slots, and probably more competition among venues to offer decent prices. The Fishwick facility opening at 6am on weekdays at ten courts will shift what’s available before and after work.

If you’re in Lancashire more broadly – Blackpool, Blackburn, Lancaster – Preston is about to be a more credible padel destination than it currently is. Worth knowing if you’re looking for people to play with or travelling to play at a specific level.

The UCLan courts being open to the wider community is the detail worth watching. University padel venues tend to be newer facilities with maintained surfaces, often at reasonable prices because the primary use case is students. If the Loughborough model holds, UCLan Cottam could end up being one of the better-value places to play in the area.

None of the new venues have confirmed opening dates yet – the UCLan application is still subject to planning approval from Preston City Council, and the Fishwick planning green light means construction can start, not that courts are ready. Realistically, the city starts looking very different for padel players in late 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Is the UCLan padel open to the public or just students?

The proposal specifies courts will be bookable by students, staff, and the wider community. This is consistent with Soul Padel’s model at Loughborough, which also operates as a community facility. Subject to planning approval.

When will the new Preston padel venues open?

No confirmed dates yet. The Fishwick scheme (Mercer Street, 10 courts) has planning approval and can now proceed to construction. The UCLan/Soul Padel courts are still subject to planning from Preston City Council. Realistically, late 2026 is the earliest either is likely to open.

How much does padel cost in Preston?

Pricing varies by venue. Game4Padel at West View Leisure Centre and Just Padel on Corporation Street are the most established options for drop-in pricing. Performance Padel Preston (Caxton Road) runs at World Padel Tour turf standard and prices accordingly. The new venues haven’t published rates yet, though Fishwick’s 6am–midnight hours suggest they’re going for volume over premium pricing.