UK padel court occupancy

Ask how busy UK padel courts are and you'll get several different answers. Each one is right about something different.

The figures

• 57%. Playskan's UK average on 23 October 2026, over the trailing 90 days, measured against each club's opening hours. Its current peak and off-peak figures are 70% and 50%, using its own time bands. The 1 September 2026 snapshot cited in the original research was 64%; these dated observations alone should not be read as a trend.
• 81.5% at peak. MATCHi's platform data from January 2022 to April 2026, with an average booking lead time of 5.5 days.
• 47% to 54% off-peak. MATCHi again, Q1 and Q2 2026. MATCHi describes the UK as having "effectively no idle window left" in the schedule.

These come from different platforms, different clubs and different definitions. Don't average them or compare one against another.

What "occupied" means

From outside a club, an hour that's sold looks the same as an hour blocked for coaching, a league or maintenance. So any occupancy figure built from public availability is really an unavailability figure. It's useful, but it shouldn't be trusted to within a few points.

I ran my own check over five days at the end of August 2026: day-ahead availability from the booking systems of three clubs in one English county, using the same definition for all three. 69% of bookable hour-starts were unavailable. Five days isn't a season, and unavailable isn't the same as sold, and this small sample does not establish that peak is full nationally.

Why it matters

If peak is full, peak doesn't need a discount. The commercial question is off-peak, because that's where the spare capacity is. It's also, in Vincent Hivert's words, the metric that tells a club about itself: "Off-peak doesn't fill because of pricing alone. It fills when players feel connected."

Reading your own grid

• Measure against your opening hours, and say so when you quote it.
• Split peak and off-peak. A single blended figure hides both.
• Separate public bookings from coaching and league blocks. Your booking system knows which is which, even if the public grid doesn't.
• Track weekly, but report levels. One noisy week tells you nothing.

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