Data Sources & Methodology

Data Sources

Every figure we publish is derived from information that is already public — published by clubs and booking platforms, or released by public bodies under open licence. We do not access private or internal club systems, and we do not buy or receive confidential operator data. Our sources are:

• Public booking platform listings — publicly listed availability and pricing from major booking platforms used by UK padel clubs
• Club websites and public listings — court counts, facility details, pricing structures, and operational information
• UK planning portal data — planning applications, applicant and agent details, decision outcomes, and timelines
• ONS population and geography — mid-year population, population density and median age by local authority; MSOA-level population for catchment sums; and Local Authority District boundaries (May 2024). Contains National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right 2024, and OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2024, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0
• HMRC income statistics — median and mean total income by local authority (Table 3.14, tax year 2022 to 2023). These cover taxpayers only, excluding anyone earning below the Personal Allowance, so they sit above a whole-population median and are individual rather than household figures. Source: HM Revenue & Customs, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0

Gross Booking Value (GBV) Estimates

Three things follow from that definition, and each matters when you read the figures:

• Court hire only — coaching, equipment hire, retail, memberships, events and food & beverage are not counted
• Inclusive of VAT — UK listed consumer prices include VAT. GBV is the price a player pays, so it contains the VAT the club collects and remits to HMRC. VAT is never the club's revenue
• Before platform commission — measured before any booking-platform fee, payment processing, discount, or no-show adjustment

GBV is therefore not revenue. It is the gross value flowing through a club's booking funnel — the standard measure for marketplaces — and it sits above any revenue line a club would recognise in its accounts.

We estimate GBV by combining the court utilisation we observe with each club's own publicly listed prices, across peak and off-peak hours and across weekdays and weekends. These are estimates produced by our own models, not figures reported to us by clubs.

Two observation windows. Monthly figures are a recent, real-time read. Yearly figures are an annualised run-rate over a longer trailing window, so they don't swing on a single quiet or busy week. Each figure is labelled with the window it uses. Because the two windows differ, the yearly figure is deliberatelynot the monthly figure × 12.

Free court time is valued at zero. Where an operator publishes free-to-book hours as part of their business model, those bookings are real, so they count towards occupancy exactly like any other; they are not sales, so they add nothing to GBV and are excluded from the average price actually paid. One consequence is worth stating plainly: occupancy at a club with free hours is not like-for-like with a club that charges for all of them, and we say so on every page where those figures appear.

Observed activity, not a forecast. Padel demand shifts materially across the year. Our figures annualise the activity we actually observed in the stated window — they describe a period that has happened, and are not a prediction of future demand.

Where a club lists its availability publicly, GBV is estimated from the utilisation we observe and the club's listed pricing. Where it does not, the figure is modelled conservatively from published information such as court count, and is labelled as an estimate wherever it appears.

GBV is not a conservative estimate of a club's court-hire revenue — if anything it is an upper bound on it, because it includes VAT and is measured before commission, discounts and no-shows. Separately, a club's total turnover may exceed its court-hire GBV, because coaching, retail and food & beverage are excluded here entirely. These two effects run in opposite directions and we do not net them off: GBV measures one thing — the gross value of court bookings — and should be read as exactly that.

Occupancy Rate

Occupancy measures how full courts are during operating hours — a key indicator of market demand:

We observe publicly listed availability across many thousands of time slots to estimate occupancy, and weight the result so that clubs with more complete data are not outweighed by clubs with less.

"Booked" means no longer publicly bookable. We can see that a court has come off sale, not why. Court time held back for coaching, leagues, maintenance or member reservations is therefore counted the same way as a paid booking. This makes occupancy a measure of court time in use rather than of bookings sold, and it is one of the reasons GBV should be read as an upper bound.

Where we know a club was closed for refurbishment, maintenance or an event, we exclude those dates. We cannot exclude closures we are unaware of, so a club that was shut during the observation window may show correspondingly lower occupancy and GBV for that period.

Pricing Data

We collect publicly listed pricing information from booking platforms and club websites, building an hourly pricing schedule for each club:

Prices vary considerably by location, court type and time of day, so a single average is a summary of a club's schedule rather than the price any individual player pays. Where a club does not publish a full schedule, we work from the rates it does list.

Planning Applications

We monitor the public planning registers that UK local authorities are required to publish, and identify the padel-related applications within them. From each we record:

• Application status and decision outcomes (approved, pending, refused)
• Planning agents and applicant organisations involved in padel developments
• Geographic distribution and local authority coverage
• Timeline data from submission to decision

Applicant and agent details are reproduced as published on the relevant authority's own planning register. We do not add contact information from any other source. Registers are the authority's record and are corrected by the authority; if a detail attributed to you is wrong or out of date, write to hello@playskan.com and we will correct or remove our copy of it.

Data Coverage & Limitations

Our occupancy and gross booking value estimates are based on publicly available data collected from clubs with publicly listed availability on booking platforms.

• All data is sourced from publicly available listings — we do not access private or internal club systems
• Coverage of UK clubs is comprehensive but not exhaustive. Clubs that may not be included at any given time include private or members-only clubs that do not list publicly, recently opened or pre-opening clubs we have not yet indexed, clubs that have closed or paused operations, and clubs whose public information is incomplete
• The absence of a club from a report is not an indication that the club is not in operation — if you spot a missing club, let us know at hello@playskan.com and we will look at adding it
• Gross booking value figures are estimates only, not actual reported figures — see Gross Booking Value for exactly what is and isn't included
• GBV includes VAT and is measured before platform commission, so it should not be read as a club's revenue or profit
• We are continuously expanding coverage by monitoring additional booking platforms and adding new clubs

Independence & Use of These Figures

• Playskan is an independent market-intelligence provider. We are not a governing body, and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for any club, operator or booking platform. Clubs do not pay to appear in our data, and no club can pay to change how it is presented
• Our figures are estimates and market commentary. They are not financial, investment, valuation or legal advice, and they are not a substitute for your own due diligence
• Club, operator and platform names are used descriptively to identify the businesses our data covers. All trade marks remain the property of their owners
• You are welcome to quote our figures in reporting and research with attribution to Playskan and a link to the page you took them from. For bulk or commercial reuse, or for journalists and academic researchers who would like complimentary access, contact hello@playskan.com
• Third-party data is used under the terms of its own licence, with attribution as required — see Data Sources

Data Freshness

Booking availability and pricing data is refreshed regularly, typically daily. Aggregated insights — gross booking value estimates, occupancy rates and market reports — are recalculated on a regular schedule. Figures on any given page reflect the most recent completed run rather than live activity at the moment you load it.