Padel club marketing in 2026: a 90-day plan to fill your empty courts

Padel club marketing has one job: fill the hours your courts sit empty, with people who can play at those hours. Most clubs start with a new logo and an Instagram push. The clubs that fill their courts start with their own booking data, sell to the players already in it, and only then pay to reach strangers.

This plan works in that order. It takes 90 days, and every step comes with the numbers to check.

Step 1: find the hours that are empty

Export the last four weeks of bookings from your booking system and split occupancy into four blocks:

Then do the sums, because they decide what you market. Take a club with 6 courts open from 07:00 to 23:00: 672 court-hours a week. Say evenings are 90% full, weekends 70% and weekday daytime 30%.

Almost three quarters of the empty hours fall on weekdays before 17:00. Marketing that brings in more evening players fills nothing here, because the evenings are already full. Every campaign this club runs should bring in people who can play on a weekday before 17:00.

Now turn the gap into people. Filling a tenth of the weekday daytime gap means selling 21 more court-hours a week. At 90 minutes a game and four players a court, that is 56 player-games. If a daytime regular plays twice a week, it takes 28 new regulars. That is a target you can plan for.

Who plays on a weekday before 17:00? Shift and hospitality workers, parents between school runs, retirees, remote and self-employed workers, students, crews on rotation, hotel guests and companies looking for a team activity. Every channel below is picked to reach them.

Step 2: start with the players you already have

Your booking system holds the cheapest list you will ever market to. Work through it before you spend anything on ads:

Three rules make these messages work:

• One message, one game. "Court 3 is free Thursday at 10:30, intermediate doubles" gets replies. "Come and play more" does not.
• One-to-one, not a group post. A post in a group of 400 reaches 400 people with something 8 of them care about. Post enough of those and members mute the group, and then they miss the news that mattered too.
• Ask first. Members agree to hear from the club, and anyone who asks to stop is out at once.

Watch the newcomers most closely. A second game usually means they found people to play with at their level; a single game usually means they did not. Track the share of newcomers who play again within 30 days. If it is low, buying more reach only buys more one-off visits. Member retention for padel clubs goes deeper on keeping them.

Step 3: get found where players look

New players look in three places: the booking app your city uses (often Playtomic), Google Maps and Instagram. Fix all three before you buy ads.

Playtomic. Players browse by place and time, so your club profile is your shop window. Use real photos of your courts, keep prices and opening hours right, and list your beginner sessions and social formats as classes or tournaments, so they show up where players are already searching. A visibly cheaper weekday 10:00 is a reason to pick your club.

Google Business Profile. Searches for "padel near me" end on the map. Choose the most specific padel category Google offers, add photos of the courts, the entrance and the parking, keep your hours right (holiday and Ramadan hours included), link straight to your booking page, and answer every review. Ask for a review right after a good game, with a QR code at the exit or a link in your post-game message.

Instagram and TikTok. Post what a newcomer needs to picture themselves at your club: short clips from your own courts, a coach explaining one shot, this week's social with real dates and times, and new players after their first clinic (with their permission). Three posts a week that you keep up beat a daily plan that stops after a month.

Step 4: build a beginner path inside your quiet hours

Many new players come from tennis, squash or the gym, and the first hour is the hard part: no partners, no idea of their level, often no racket. A beginner path removes all three, and it can run entirely in hours that would otherwise sit empty.

1. A 60-minute intro clinic, on a weekday at 10:00 or 15:00. Four players a court, one coach, rackets included, priced low enough to be an easy yes.
2. A beginner social the following week, same slot. A short americano for people who did the clinic, so they meet partners at their level.
3. A beginner league or weekly group. Same day and time for four to six weeks. This is where a newcomer becomes a regular.
4. A second clinic for the next level up.

Measure each step: how many clinic players come to the social, and how many socials turn into league players. If people drop off after the clinic, the next step is too far away or too hard to find.

Step 5: sell daytime blocks to companies and partners

One company can fill three courts at 12:00 every Tuesday. Finding twelve individual players for that slot takes weeks.

• Companies. A 90-minute team session at lunchtime or mid-afternoon: courts, a coach, rackets and a short americano. Pitch it to HR and office managers within 15 minutes of the club, and sell a monthly slot rather than a one-off.
• Schools and academies. After-school programmes for children use courts in the late afternoon, before the adults arrive.
• Gyms, hotels and residential communities. A gym can add padel to its membership, a hotel concierge sends guests during the day, and a residential community's notice board and group chat reach people who live five minutes away.
• Women's sessions. A weekly ladies' morning, with a female coach where you can. In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, "women's padel club" is one of the first searches Google suggests after "padel club".

Step 6: pay for reach last, and cap it

Ads come last because they cost money per person, while the steps above fill hours for free or close to it. When you do buy reach:

• Advertise an offer for a quiet hour, not the club. "Learn padel on Tuesday at 10:00, rackets included" gives people a reason to act. "Padel at our club" does not.
• Target a small radius around the club. Few people cross a city for a weekday daytime game.
• Judge every channel by its cost per first game, not by clicks or followers.

Before you set a budget, work out what a new player is worth to you. With round numbers: a court costs 60 for 90 minutes, so each player pays 15. Say one newcomer in four becomes a regular who plays four times a month for six months, and the other three play twice. On average a newcomer then brings in (0.25 × 24 + 0.75 × 2) × 15 = 112.50. Spending more than that per new player loses money; spending 30 to 50 leaves room for the ones who never come back. Use your own prices and rates.

Every channel, what it costs and which hours it fills

Step 7: run it as a 90-day plan

The numbers to check every week

Court utilisation: the metrics every club should track explains how to read the first and the last.

If your club is in the Gulf

• Summer. From June to September outdoor daytime play stops, and many residents travel in July and August. Run summer leagues indoors or late in the evening, and market them to the people who stay.
• Ramadan. Play moves to after iftar and often runs past midnight. Publish your Ramadan hours on Google and Playtomic before it starts, and plan night leagues and americanos for that month.
• Weekends. Saturday and Sunday in the UAE, Friday and Saturday in Saudi Arabia. Set your blocks to match.
• Language. Post in English and Arabic, and write your Google profile in both.

Where WhatsApp fits

Most clubs already run a WhatsApp group or Community. Keep it for news everyone needs: a closure, a tournament date, new opening hours. It is the wrong tool for one court at 10:30 on Thursday that eight members care about. Post enough of those and members mute it.

The messages that fill courts go one-to-one: the freed court to the players who play that slot, the second game to last week's newcomer, the invitation to the regular who has not played for a month. That is the work kortbase does. kortbase watches your bookings and messages the right member at the right moment. Nothing for your members to install - it arrives in the WhatsApp they already have. Nothing for your club to replace - it reads Playtomic, or the software you already run.

Questions owners ask

What your empty hours cost

Enter your courts, opening hours, occupancy and price. The result is what your club's empty court-hours are worth in a year.