“We’re ready to take padel to the next level” – Tom Murray reflects on padel growth, a new strategy & exciting plans for the future
• 5 MINUTE READ
2024 has been a significant year for padel in Britain and our collective ambition to open the sport up to more people and places across the country.
From increasing court facilities, participation growth and the successes of British players on the international stage to the announcement of a new strategy for 2024-2029 – this year has seen several important developments that will help shape the game for the future.
Hear from LTA Head of Padel Tom Murray as he looks back on the year that has been and the exciting road ahead for padel in the future.
Reflecting on the LTA padel journey so far
This is a pivotal moment for padel. We’re coming out of the Padel Development Plan, which was our initial four-year plan from 2020-23 for padel growth and integration, and I’m proud that we’ve achieved the milestones we set out.
Through investment, support and the ongoing collaboration with the padel community, we saw over that period of time the number of padel courts in Britain grow from 50 to 350, while annual participation rose from 6,000 to 129,000 by the end of 2023. This has only gone from strength to strength over the past 12 months - we're on track for record-breaking growth in infrastructure to over 700 courts and participation only continues to soar to 200,000.
Padel continues to be one of the fastest growing sports in the country with more and more venues reporting all-time highs in people playing on their courts, which has just been amazing to see.
We have record numbers of competitions being held all year around, more coaches being developed through our coaching pathway and we’ve seen improvements across the professional game as well.
This year alone we have had five players win international tournaments, two players competing up on the Premier Padel Tour for the first time (the highest level of the sport), seven players inside the FIP top 200 and men’s and women’s teams competing at the European Championships.
It’s great to take stock of how far we’ve come and recognise those achievements – especially considering some of the obstacles we’ve had to navigate, including a global pandemic and cost of living crisis – but we know there is still lots to do to achieve our wider goals…
Entering a new phase of padel growth
This year we’ve turned our attention to the next phase of padel’s development – announcing our new padel strategy in Manchester this September.
The ‘Padel Opened Up’ strategy lays out our ambition to make padel more accessible, welcoming, enjoyable and inspiring for people across Britain.
We’ve taken a lot of time to listen to the padel community and the learnings have been reflected in our ongoing plans. This assures we’re prioritising areas that the LTA is best placed to drive forward, such as:
- Developing and continued investment in infrastructure
- Increasing the visibility of the sport
- Expanding and diversifying the coaching workforce
- Building a performance pathway
While the strategy spans six years, we have set key objectives that we want to achieve within the next three years (from 2024-2026):
Padel strategy targets 2024-2026
- Grow the visibility of padel to increase awareness from 20% to 40% of the population, interest in playing from 7.5% to 15% and boost participation.
- Increase the number of annual padel players from 129,000 to 400,000, and monthly players from 65,000 to 200,000.
- Increase the number of padel courts from 350 to 1,000
- Grow the padel coach and activator workforce from 40 to 700
- Enable 10 players to break into the top 200 and 2 players into the top 100 and inspire the padel audience
Delivering on the new padel strategy
So, how are we going to deliver this?
Going forward, we want to bridge the gap between the LTA and the private sector, taking a more collaborative approach with more flexible ways of working.
Having a thriving private sector is a big positive and behind-the-scenes we’ve been doing a lot of work to nurture those relationships and set ourselves up for long-term success.
It’s important for us to clarify our role in growing the sport and to help the community better understand how the governing body is here to support.
We’ve also worked hard to make sure that going into this next phase, padel is recognised not only by the likes of Sport England, but also with relevant authorities – highlighting the opportunities, both nationally and locally, padel creates for different communities and encouraging their support around facilities projects.
For example, we recently collaborated with Manchester City Council and Manchester Active, to produce a local padel plan for the city – the first of its kind in Great Britain. This will support the development of local facilities, support for clubs and schools in the area, and build greater awareness and appetite for the sport in Manchester.
Having laid a lot of groundwork over the last few years, we are pushing on into the next phase and we have a robust strategy in place for how we can get there.
We are rolling out this approach to other local authorities across the country, which will help support the sustainable growth of padel facilities across the country.
We’ve recruited a Padel Manager (Steve Yeardley) as we’re now at that point where infrastructure is massive, it’s about to scale now. Steve has joined from Tennis Wales, where he was Coaching and Volunteer Manager and he brings extensive experience in coaching padel and the private padel sector, having previously served as Head Coach for Padel4all.
A large part of his role will be project managing key areas of the strategy, supported by the wider LTA colleague base, to ensure that we meet those initial targets for 2026 and further ahead.
This year, we launched the National Operator Forum – engaging with operators to better work alongside them, understand their plans and concerns, and ultimately support as best we can.
For 2025, we also plan to establish a Padel Advisory Group, including influential individuals from the padel sector as well – so we’re heavily committed to working with the wider padel community to ensure the sustainable growth of the sport.
With regards to participation, we want to get more kids and young people involved in playing the sport. We’ll be working with venues to help them facilitate more youth programmes and encourage the next generation to pick up a rack and get involved. This will drive more sustainability within our sport but also increase our player database so we can run more training camps, opportunities to talent ID and open up more international tournament opportunities as well.
We’re also enhancing the competition pathway for players to provide greater opportunities all year round, in support of the growing player base and comes as a result of the growth in venues that are able to run these types of competitions.
There will also be some exciting developments in the digital space to help continue to raise awareness of padel and tap into new and existing audiences – with more details coming early in the new year.
In the professional game, our support over the last five years has given British players a great platform to grow, develop and push up the rankings. Whether it’s been support with travel to tournaments around the world, enhancing their training environments, both in this country as well as abroad, investing in top-level coaches to work with them or opportunities to compete domestically – we’ve been with those players on every step of the journey and it’s great to see them pushing at the top level.
We only want to build on this momentum to achieve our performance goals, so we will continue to review and enhance our support packages for the pro players into next year and beyond.
Overall, I think it’s an exciting new chapter for padel in Britain. Having laid a lot of groundwork over the last few years, we are pushing on into the next phase and we have a robust strategy in place for how we can get there. We’re ready to help take it to the next level.
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