A-Z of how to start a padel club

So you’ve made the decision to go ahead with putting a padel court at your club, but how do you actually go about getting the operation up and running;

a) Have a head pro, a sociable person willing to work hard and enthusiastic for the sport.
b) Hold an ‘opening’ of the court with some celebrity/ famous sportspeople and get as many people down as possible.
c) Have an ‘exhibition match’ at the beginning to show off the sport to members.
d) Provide a social area, bar and seating to encourage people to stay and be social.
e) Put posters up in the town, flyers around the houses that may be potential players about the club.
f) Get articles about padel in the local press, try local radio stations who are looking for interesting and new stories to promote to their audience.
g) Push the club and padel on existing social media
h) Contact local town or county councils and get their sports representatives playing.
i) Contact local schools and sports teachers, show them the game with some free coach time.
j) Contact the county LTA padel representative, or if there isn’t one encourage them to expand now Padel is under the LTA remit.
k) Offers, create ‘Founder’ member offers, or court offers to help get the momentum up
l) Offer ‘free hits with the pro’, come and try sessions.
m) Target local squash, tennis and badminton communities. Get local football teams playing each other etc, and try and facilitate league play
n) Target any ‘communities’ in the town, existing communities or organisations like yoga groups, elderly fitness groups etc.
o) Run kids camps in holidays and offer a comprehensive after school junior programme.
p) Try to encourage local business leagues to compete..
q) Hold regular club nights (sorted by ability), leagues, club championships, ladies padel mornings and a team league, regular competitions and matches with other padel clubs.
r) Offer subsidised play for youth and students at slow court periods.
s) Have a ‘Padel buddy’ system, bank of reasonable players who will “have a go” with beginners to help them start. Helps beginners, could be as simple as Whatsapp to organise games by level.
t) try and create some social functions for members to build up the spirit of the new club.
u) share Padel videos showing how to play, and share links to the rules to make sure everyone is playing the same game in the club.
v) Talk to local GPs about ’social prescribing’, funds for exercise as therapy for certain conditions.
x) Nurture a strong padel community, 6-10 people who are enthusiastic and what to help create a great club with you and support events and other players.
y) Have a padel coach who is keen to get out and talks to people, play competition and spread the word about the club and about padel.
z) be prepared to try different things, not all of them will work but you will land of a formula which is good for you club.