Padel is now one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. Walk past any leisure centre or gym in the UK and there is a decent chance you will spot a glass-walled court tucked alongside the car park. Yet the sport started with one man, a small patch of land, and a problem with a fence.
A Backyard in Acapulco
The story of padel begins in 1969 in Acapulco, Mexico. Enrique Corcuera, a local businessman, wanted to build a tennis court at his holiday home but did not have enough space. He had a small 10 by 20 metre plot available, so he built a scaled-down court and surrounded it with walls to stop balls disappearing into the neighbouring garden. He called the game "Paddle Corcuera." The walls were not just a practical fix; they became the defining feature of the sport.
The rules are straightforward. Padel is played as doubles on a court roughly a quarter of the size of a tennis court. The walls are in play after the first bounce, which rewards clever angles over raw power. You use a solid, stringless racket and a depressurised tennis ball. Most people can get a decent rally going within 20 minutes of picking up a racket for the first time.
From Marbella to the World
Corcuera's court might have stayed a curiosity had it not been for one guest. Alfonso de Hohenlohe, a Spanish-German entrepreneur and friend of Corcuera, visited in 1974 and became so taken with the game that he brought it back to Spain. He built the country's first two padel courts at the Marbella Club on the Costa del Sol, where it quickly became popular with the club's wealthy membership, including Grand Slam tennis champion Manolo Santana.
From Marbella, the sport spread along the coast, and tournaments followed. By 1975, Argentine millionaire Julio Menditegui had discovered padel in Spain and taken it home, where it grew into a national obsession. Today Argentina has more than 10,000 courts and over two million registered players. In Spain, padel is the second most popular sport after football, with an infrastructure that rivals almost any racket sport in Europe.
The International Padel Federation was formed in 1991, bringing standardised rules and international competition. The World Padel Tour launched in 2005 and turned the best players in the world into professionals. Premier Padel, a more recent tour format backed by major investment, now fills stadiums and streams matches globally.
Padel Arrives in Britain
Padel came to Britain considerably later than it did to Spain or Argentina, and for a long time it barely registered. For most of the 2000s and early 2010s, a small number of private clubs had courts, but there was no governing body, no national structure, and no serious investment.
That changed in 2019 when the LTA announced it would bring padel under its umbrella, and in 2020 it became the official national governing body for the sport in Great Britain. At that point, there were just 69 courts in the entire country and around 15,000 players.
What followed was extraordinary. By the end of 2023, there were 129,000 players. By the end of 2024, that number had risen to 400,000. By the end of 2025, it had more than doubled again to 860,000 adults and juniors playing at least once in the year.
The court count tells the same story. From 69 courts in 2020, Britain now has 1,553 courts across 559 venues. The LTA and LTA Tennis Foundation have invested over £7.5 million directly into court construction, which has in turn unlocked a further £10.5 million of investment, bringing the total to more than £18 million spent building new facilities since the sport gained its governing body.
Why Padel Has Connected With British Players
Part of what makes padel work is that it is genuinely easy to start. You do not need to be fit, young, or athletically gifted to enjoy your first session. The court is small enough that you cover it quickly, the walls mean the ball stays in play longer, and doubles means you are always playing with a partner. That social element matters.
Awareness of padel among British adults stood at just 23% in early 2024. By late 2025, that figure had jumped to 57%, roughly 31 million people. Over 10 million Britons now say they would like to try the sport. At an average off-peak cost of around £7 per person per hour for a doubles session, it is also affordable relative to many other racket sports.
The demand has, if anything, outpaced supply. With an estimated 426 players per court, waitlists at popular clubs are common, and the LTA is pressing the UK Government for further facilities funding.
Where the Sport Goes From Here
Padel's trajectory in Britain shows no sign of flattening. The LTA has dedicated social channels, a new padel website, and active community outreach programmes at more than 81% of its affiliated venues, including school partnerships and reduced-cost sessions for underserved groups.
If the pattern from Spain and Argentina tells us anything, the sport tends to reach a tipping point and then accelerate fast. Britain passed that tipping point around 2023. The courts are going up, the players are signing up, and the sport is moving well beyond the leisure centres and into parks, schools, and purpose-built clubs.
Padel took 55 years to travel from a Mexican backyard to a national sport in Britain. The next few years will determine just how big it gets.