Vida Del Padel, which opened its first club in Lincoln less than two years ago, is growing through franchising, joining the sports and leisure brands recruiting UK operators. The operator says six sites are trading, three are under construction and at least seven more are planned for 2026, with five clubs due to open before the end of the year across the north and east of England.
The business was started by three friends, among them co-founders Ross Carlin and Jan Skrzypkowski, and pitches itself as a “lifestyle” padel club rather than a bank of courts to hire. Its sites carry a bar and café, coaching, leagues and themed social nights alongside court bookings. In August 2026, The Padel Paper reported more than 53,000 occupied court hours and over 20,000 players across the network.
A pipeline that runs from Lincoln to Peterborough
Vida Del Padel’s own franchise page lists sites in Lincoln, Chichester, Hartlepool, Sheffield, Eston and Guisborough, with a pipeline of seven or more further sites for 2026. The Padel Paper names the clubs due before the end of the year as Hull, York, Peterborough, Wakefield and Leeds. Colchester, Chesterfield, Doncaster and London are described as the next wave. In May, the operator had floated a target of 20 sites by the end of 2026. The August count, six trading plus five due, comes to 11.
What the franchise page sets out
The franchise page describes a package built around a fit-out playbook with marketing templates, operating manuals and training, plus a shared technology stack covering Playtomic bookings, keycode access, CCTV, a CRM and a Shopify shop.
A PR agency and sponsors support the brand nationally. Revenue is drawn from court bookings, coaching, leagues, corporate hire and retail. The operator cites average court occupancy of “~58% within 3 months of opening” and a break-even of about three months, a benchmark it says comes from its own owned sites.
What the page does not publish
The page gives no initial franchise fee, ongoing fee, contract length or investment range. Applicants are asked for their investment capacity through an enquiry form, and the full pack is sent on request. The reference to “owned site” benchmarks also indicates a mix of company-owned and franchised sites, and the split has not been published. UK franchising has no statutory disclosure document, so the franchisor’s own figures are the only ones in circulation.
Wakefield shows the club format
The Wakefield club, at Unit 1, Navigation Yard, is due to open in November 2026. Local reports describe five padel courts, four for doubles and one for singles, together with an eight-bed Reformer Pilates studio, a bar and café, a lounge, changing rooms with showers, air conditioning and free parking at the front and rear.
Neither report gives a floor area, a job count or an operator name. Jan Skrzypkowski, co-founder, said: “Community has always been at the heart of what we do, and combining padel with Reformer Pilates allows us to give people even more reasons to spend time at the club”.
What comes next
The next signals are the opening dates for Hull, York, Peterborough and Leeds, none of which has a confirmed day, and the first franchise-specific details, such as fees and territory terms, which the operator releases only to enquirers. The brand has also spoken of an apparel line and a loyalty app, and its stated ambition is to become the “world’s leading padel lifestyle platform”.
Padel is a young sector in Britain, and no official statistic tracks the number of courts or clubs, so the operator’s own counts remain the main yardstick for its progress, as with most brands taking on partners in the UK.
