Why are so many padel clubs appearing on farms?

A grain store in north Bedfordshire has two padel courts in it, booked every evening until 11pm, with nobody on the desk. The booking system takes the money and sends a door code. Balls come from a vending machine. The farm manager has trained as a coach. That club is Podington Padel, the case study in a Farmers Weekly feature on padel as a farm diversification (Farmers Weekly, 25 March 2026). It isn't a one-off.

I build websites for padel clubs. Moorwood Padel, two courts on a farm on the edge of Sheffield, is one of mine. Two of the club concepts I've designed since were on farmland too. Farms kept coming up, so I went looking for the reasons.

They turn out to be practical. The right building already exists, planning is friendlier in a barn, and the sums work at farm prices. This post sets out the evidence, the one serious warning from abroad, and what the farm clubs that fill their courts do differently.

In this post: The sport has outgrown its courts · Why farms, specifically · The warning from Sweden · What the farm clubs that fill their courts do differently · Thinking about courts on your farm? · Frequently asked questions

The sport has outgrown its courts

Demand explains everything else. When the LTA took over padel in 2020 there were 69 courts in Great Britain. By the end of 2025 there were 1,553 courts across 559 venues, up from 870 at the end of 2024 (LTA, 25 March 2026).

Players grew faster than courts. The LTA counts 860,000 adults and juniors who played at least once in 2025, more than double the 400,000 it reported for 2024. It also says over 10 million Britons want to try the sport (same release). Court numbers rose by almost 80 per cent in the same year, so the queue for a 7pm slot got longer, not shorter.

That gap is why barns are being measured up. New courts need space, height and neighbours who won't complain. Industrial units in cities have the first two. Farms often have all three.

Why farms, specifically

Five things line up on a farm that rarely line up on an industrial estate.

1. The building is already there, and it's the right shape

Padel is a racket sport played in doubles on an enclosed court, with the ball in play off the glass walls. A doubles court is 20 metres by 10, and because the game is full of lobs it needs clear height. Adam Phelps of PadelMagic UK, the consultancy behind a string of farm clubs, puts that at about 7 metres to the apex (Farmers Weekly, March 2026). The International Padel Federation asks for a ceiling of at least 6 metres (Muckle LLP, February 2026). Either way, you're describing a modern grain store or a portal-frame shed.

Cost is the other half. Farmers Weekly quotes around £75,000 for two courts, with covering them adding roughly the same again. A redundant barn removes most of that second half and gives you indoor courts from day one. In Yorkshire in January, indoor is the product.

Podington exists because a change in cropping meant the estate needed less grain storage. Todenham Barn in the Cotswolds, the first PadelX.Club site, came about when the livestock side went more extensive and the buildings sat empty (Farmers Weekly, March 2026). Same story, different county: the barn cost money, and the courts gave it a job.

2. Planning is kinder in a barn

Class R is the permitted development right that lets an agricultural building change to a flexible commercial use without a full planning application. Since the May 2024 amendment the permitted uses include Class E, which covers indoor sport, and outdoor sport or recreation (legislation.gov.uk, Class R as amended 21 May 2024).

The tests are specific:

• Cumulative floor space is capped at 1,000 square metres.
• The building must have been in agricultural use on 3 July 2012, or for ten years if it came into use later.
• Up to 150 square metres you notify the council. Above that you apply for prior approval, and the council can only consider transport, noise, contamination and flooding.

Muckle LLP's note on padel and permitted development (18 February 2026) is worth reading before anyone gets excited. The criteria are strict, external works aren't covered, and plenty of farms carry conditions or designations that remove the rights. Outdoor courts with floodlights and fencing almost always need a full application.

Noise is the objection that sinks padel schemes. The ball off the glass is loud. LTA guidance recommends noise mitigation where homes are within 30 metres of a court. That advice is summarised in Bath and North East Somerset Council's planning committee minutes from July 2024. On a farm the nearest bedroom is often a field away. Indoors, it stops being a question.

One honest caveat from Phelps: many planners have never seen a padel court and need walking through what it is. Budget time for that.

3. The sums work at farm prices

Court fees are where the farm advantage shows. Some London clubs charge up to £100 an hour. PadelMagic's rural clubs average about £30, and Podington charges £36 to £40 (Farmers Weekly, March 2026). The LTA's own off-peak average is £27 an hour, or £7 a head for a doubles booking (LTA, March 2026).

Here's how the headline figures from the two sources sit together.

A farm club pays no commercial rent and already owns the building, so £30 to £40 an hour on two courts can be comfortably profitable. For scale, two courts booked for six hours a day at £35 would take about £153,000 a year before any costs. That's arithmetic, not a forecast, and your utilisation will decide it.

By contrast, a private-equity-backed operator fitting eight or nine courts into a city industrial unit pays commercial rent and needs every court full at a higher price. If the market gets crowded, the high-rent operator feels it first.

If the capital isn't there, there's a route for that too. Some firms, PadelMagic among them, will fund the build, supply the booking system and take a percentage of court fees (Farmers Weekly, March 2026). The farm brings the barn and the operator brings the money.

4. It's trading income, which matters to estates

Knight Frank's rural consultancy is applying to turn a redundant farmyard on a large south-east estate into a padel centre. The plan is two outdoor courts and three or four indoor, run in-house rather than leased out (Farmers Weekly, March 2026). The drivers it names are tax planning, community benefit and placemaking.

Trading income from a diversified business sits differently for inheritance tax than a barn quietly falling down. A building with a use is worth more than one without. That's a conversation for an accountant, not a web designer. It does explain why estates are moving as fast as working farms.

5. It runs itself

This surprised me most. Podington can operate with nobody on site. Online booking takes payment and issues a security code for the gate and the barn. A vending machine rents rackets and sells balls. Courts run until 11pm, and the manager says young men come to play instead of going to the pub. He or the estate staff still greet first-timers, partly because so few people pass through a farm these days. Locals get a discount and summer socials are planned (Farmers Weekly, March 2026).

Todenham Barn has 600 registered players on two courts in a rural spot with no passing trade (Farmers Weekly, March 2026). Players will travel to a barn. What they won't do is play on a court they can't find or can't book.

The warning from Sweden

Sweden is the cautionary tale in every padel article, and it earns the place. Between 2019 and 2022 the country went from a few hundred courts to more than 4,200. By the end of 2024, over 100 facilities had closed and around 90 padel companies had gone bankrupt. We Are Padel, the largest operator, shut 50 of its 63 Swedish clubs (European Business Magazine, 9 May 2026).

The collapse was visible early. In October 2022 the operator entered restructuring while losing about €1.4 million a month (Padel Alto, 18 October 2022). Within weeks, eleven of its Swedish companies, running 16 facilities, had gone bankrupt (same report).

The players never left. The International Padel Federation counted more than 600,000 Swedes playing in early 2024, a higher share of the population than anywhere in Europe except Spain (European Business Magazine, May 2026). What collapsed was supply. Near-identical suburban halls were built side by side, chasing the same off-peak bookings, heated with electricity that had risen to about five times its pre-2020 level. Busy urban sites held up. The rest didn't.

The same piece argues that Britain in 2026 looks a lot like Sweden in early 2022: court numbers multiplying, institutional money arriving, industrial units converting. A farm club with low overheads is better placed than most to ride that out. But picture a barn 15 minutes from the nearest town with no website, a bare Playtomic listing and a Facebook page last updated in March. That club is relying on word of mouth in a market about to get competitive.

What the farm clubs that fill their courts do differently

This is my corner of it, so treat it as first-hand observation from building club websites rather than a study. The pattern from the clubs that fill up fast is consistent.

• They open the waitlist before the courts are built. The Padel Local in north Leeds registered interest in over £20,000 of membership fees from its pre-launch waitlist, with no ad spend, before a ball was hit. That's the club's own waitlist figure rather than a study, and it's the number quoted publicly on the padel club page. If you're six months from opening, that's the window.
• They own the search for their town. "Padel Sheffield", "padel near me", "padel courts Harrogate". Moorwood's site was built with local pages to rank for exactly that. Playtomic is where people book. Google is where they find you first.
• Booking is one tap from every page. Playtomic link, membership form and coaching in the first screen. No PDF price lists.
• They look like the place. A farm club has a story most industrial units can't tell: the barn, the view, the family that has farmed there for three generations. A short launch film of the farm turning into courts does more on Instagram than a stock photo of a racket.
• They talk to the village. A local discount, a summer social, coaching for the kids. Podington has all three. It's cheaper than ads and it's what keeps a Tuesday in February full.

Thinking about courts on your farm?

Farmers Weekly's own checklist is a good one, so here it is with one addition.

1. Planning first. Height to the apex, floor space, the building's agricultural history, noise, access. Get a specialist's view before you price anything.
2. Who's within 20 minutes? Other courts, how many people live there, and where your evening players actually come from.
3. Fund it yourself, or partner? In-house keeps the margin. A funded build or joint venture keeps the capital in the farm.
4. Indoor, outdoor or covered? Indoor wins on noise, planning and winter. Outdoor is cheaper and seasonal.
5. Who runs it day to day? Unmanned works, but someone still answers the phone, meets the first-timers and posts the photos.
6. How will people find you and book? The one the article doesn't cover. A website, a Google Business Profile, Playtomic and a waitlist from the day you announce. It's the cheapest part of the project and the part that decides whether the courts are full.

What a club launch site includes, and what it costs, is on the padel club website page.

In short

If you're measuring up a barn, get the planning view first and the waitlist live second. The sport isn't the risk. A good club that nobody can find is.

About the author

Aston Buck is the founder of AHB Agency, a web design studio in Leeds. He has launched the websites for two padel clubs: The Padel Local in north Leeds and Moorwood Padel on a Peak District farm. He designs launch sites, waitlists and booking flows for clubs and local businesses across Yorkshire. The work and the pricing are both public.