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.

Peak & Off-Peak Hours

Where we split a figure into peak and off-peak, we use one fixed definition across every club and every market, so that two clubs are always compared on the same hours:

Hours are the club's local time, so a 19:00 booking counts as a 19:00 booking in summer and in winter alike. Only hours a club is actually open are counted on either side — a club that shuts at 21:00 has no 21:00 peak hour, rather than an empty one dragging its peak figure down.

It is a fixed clock definition, not each club's own commercial peak. Clubs set their own peak pricing windows and those vary — some price weekend mornings as peak and weekend evenings as off-peak, and a club in a student area may run a genuine peak at times this definition calls off-peak. A shared window is what makes clubs comparable to each other; it is not a claim about any individual club's tariff. Where we quote a club's peak and off-peak price, that is a different thing again: the highest and lowest rates on its own published schedule, whenever they fall.

We expect to refine these rules — per-market windows and further edge cases are likely as coverage grows. Figures are computed under the definition current at the time they were generated, so a peak figure should be compared with another from the same period.

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.

Court Investment Estimate

The UK market report estimates what it would cost to build the UK's current padel courts. Every cost figure in it comes from the construction costs published by the LTA (2025 delivered-project costs, excluding VAT and fees). We apply them to every open venue we track, according to how its courts were built:

• Outdoor courts are priced at the court installation cost: the court with lights, plus ring beam, base, ducting and drainage
• Covered courts add a canopy. The LTA's web page and its guidance note publish different canopy costs. The guidance note includes a 3m rain screen and is higher, so the web page sets the low end and the guidance note the high end
• Indoor courts are priced by how the venue was built, using the descriptions of the planning applications linked to it. A venue in an existing building (change of use of a warehouse, industrial unit or barn) is priced at the court with lights (low) up to the court with a full base (high), because the building already exists. A venue in a new hall or marquee is priced like a covered court. The LTA says enclosed membrane and portal-frame structures cost less than a traditional building, but walls still cost more than a canopy, so this is a floor. English and Welsh venues with no planning application are treated as existing buildings, because moving into a unit that already has commercial use often needs no permission. Venues in Northern Ireland and Scotland, where our planning coverage is thin, and venues whose applications are unclear, get the widest range
• Venue size. Each venue is priced at the rate for its number of courts of that type, because groundworks are shared and the cost per court falls with scale. The LTA table stops at four courts, so bigger venues are priced at the four-court rate, which slightly overstates them

This produces a low and a high cost per court for each court type, weighted by the real mix of venue sizes and build types. The report multiplies those by the live court counts. Build types were last classified on 16 September 2026, across 629 venues.

What it is not. The estimate uses today's prices for courts built in earlier years, so it is a replacement cost, not a record of what was actually spent. It does not include VAT, professional or planning fees, land, clubhouses and other facilities, or the cost of converting a building (heating, fire safety, roof and lighting changes). It only counts courts at venues we can see on a booking platform, and leaves out closed and not-yet-open venues. Actual investment is higher.

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.