LTA announces new padel strategy

The new strategy, which covers the period from 2024 to 2029, maintains the LTA’s focus on growing the infrastructure of padel, increasing and diversifying the coaching workforce and building on the performance pathway as well as increasing visibility and driving participation.

Padel is one of the fastest growing sports in Britain. The sport is played on an enclosed court that is about a third of the size of a tennis court. All ages and abilities can play together.

Since becoming the national governing body for the sport in Britain in 2020, significant investment has already been directed towards developing and supporting padel in Britain. In addition to private investment, the LTA and LTA Tennis Foundation have invested £6 million into 40 padel facility projects funding a total of 75 new courts, as well as the competition structure, performance support and coach development.

In total, since 2019 the number of courts has grown from 50 to 350, annual participation from 6,000 to 129,000, and the LTA has launched new coaching courses, as well as a performance pathway to support Britain’s best players.

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Growing padel facilities in Britain is a key aspect of the LTA's new padel strategy 

The new strategy will help deliver the next stage of the sports development with a series of actions that focus on investing in the visibility of padel and its infrastructure, growing the fan and player base, growing and engaging the padel workforce, developing opportunities to widen the appeal of padel and creating a pathway and support for adult and junior performance players.

The commitments for the first phase of the strategy, inclusive of 2024 through to the end of 2026, include:

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From 2025 onwards, the LTA will also establish a new Padel Advisory Group (PAG) to help guide the development of the sport across Britain. The group will be open to those from across the industry who want to work collaboratively and share ideas to grow the sport.

The new strategy has been launched in Manchester, which through collaboration between the LTA, Manchester City Council and Manchester Active, has become the first city in Britain to develop a local padel plan. This will support the development of facilities locally, work with local clubs and schools and grow the appetite for padel in the city, as part of this work a pop-up court has been built in Manchester’s Cathedral Gardens, with the support of Padel Affair and Manchester Active, available for fans during the Davis Cup Finals group stage taking place in the city this week.

Jason Manford joined local children to take part in activity on a pop-up padel court in Manchester's Cathedral Gardens

Tom Murray, LTA Head of Padel said, “The new strategy being unveiled today will help take padel in Britain to the next level. The strategy and tactics that we’ve put in place will truly help to open padel up to many more people across the country, with more funding, facilities and coaches ensuring that the sport is accessible, welcoming, enjoyable and inspiring.”

Olly Scadgell, LTA Managing Director of Tennis Development said: “Once we became the national governing body for padel in 2020, we wanted to lay the foundations for the sport to grow in a sustainable way. Now the numbers of courts, players and coaches are accelerating rapidly, and the sport is thriving, this strategy will help us take padel to new audiences and ensure it is accessible to more people across Britain.