Soul Padel привлекла 3,6 млн фунтов для расширения сети клубов пэдел до десяти за год

Soul Padel, the Manchester-based padel operator, has raised £3.6 million from three family offices at a £30 million valuation, as it moves from proving its model to accelerating its growth across the UK. The round, announced on Tuesday, combines further backing from existing shareholders with new investors, and will fund the company’s expansion from four live clubs to ten over the next 12 months. Six new clubs, in Ayr, Washington, Warrington, Preston, Wigan and Rochdale, have already secured planning permission. The business said it continues to progress further sites towards its ambition of 250 courts nationwide by 2032. Soul Padel currently operates in Stockport, St Helens, Braehead and Loughborough University. It opened its first club in 2024, and said the funding follows two years in which it has proven and refined its operating model, establishing profitable clubs with utilisation consistently above 80 per cent across both highly competitive and lower-maturity padel markets. The company is raising money into a sport that is still growing quickly. Figures published by the Lawn Tennis Association in May put the number of padel players in Britain at one million, up from 860,000 at the end of 2025 and 400,000 at the end of 2024, across 1,825 courts at 551 venues. That demand has fed a surge in padel planning applications and drawn in investors ranging from institutional backers to celebrities, with Stormzy taking a stake in Padel Social Club as the sport’s popularity spread. Soul Padel’s pitch to its backers, however, rests on more than court capacity. The company said its strongest foundations for growth extend beyond the courts themselves, pointing to early investment in participation, inclusion, community, loyalty and customer insight. Its What’s That Racket? programme began giving schools free access to padel in 2024, before the introduction of Soul Sisters and Soul Timers in early 2025 created dedicated communities for women and over-50s. The company said approaches pioneered through these programmes have since become increasingly visible across the wider UK padel market as operators place greater emphasis on broadening participation and building communities around their clubs. In summer 2025 it launched Soul Mates, a data-led loyalty platform, which attracted 12,000 members in its first year. The business said this gives it a depth of first-party insight into who its players are, how they play and what keeps them engaged, and that the data is now shaping the next stage of growth. It has developed criteria around the towns, locations and partners best suited to its model, while customer insight informs the experience and programming within each club. Mark Hewlett, chief executive and founder of Soul Padel, said: “This investment is a significant milestone for Soul Padel. We’ve spent the last few years proving and refining our model, learning from our clubs and putting the foundations in place to grow with confidence. “The continued backing of investors who have been with us from the beginning, alongside new investors joining the business, reflects both what we’ve built and the opportunity ahead.” He added: “We’ve always believed that building a successful padel business is about much more than putting courts in the ground. From taking padel into schools and creating dedicated communities for women and older players, to investing in loyalty and customer data, we’ve consistently tried to anticipate what the market will need next. “It’s been encouraging to see many of those areas become a much bigger focus across padel as the sport has grown. For us, that early work means we’re entering our next phase with programmes, insight and experience that have already been developed and tested within our clubs.” On the expansion itself, Hewlett said the company would not be rolling out a single template. “We’ve learnt a huge amount from our first locations. We know what we’re looking for in a location, a town and a partner, and we have much greater insight into the communities we’re entering. “The next 12 months will take us from four to ten clubs, but we’re not trying to create ten identical venues. We have a proven model and programmes that we know work, while every Soul Padel club will be shaped by its local community. That’s fundamental to how we believe a national brand should grow.” The company is also preparing for the next phase of its technology and digital transformation, building on the foundations established through Soul Mates as it scales towards the 250-court target. The deal is a modest one against a backdrop in which UK tech funding reached $15.3 billion in the first half of 2026, with capital concentrating in fewer, larger rounds. For a regional leisure operator with four sites, the significance is less the sum than the source: three family offices willing to value a padel business that opened its first club in 2024 at £30 million, on the strength of profitable clubs running above 80 per cent utilisation, and to fund more than a doubling of its estate within a year.