Alpine Padel opens free outdoor courts with music and food in Bürs

Alpine Padel Club Bürs is set to open its outdoor padel facility on Saturday, July 4, with a 5 p.m. launch at Sportplatz 1 built around free courts, live music, food and drinks. Founder Ibrahim Köse and his team are using the opening as a public introduction to the sport in the Oberland region, and the club is pitching the night as the area’s first padel daydance.

The strongest signal in the plan is accessibility. Players will be able to try the courts free of charge on opening day, and they will not need to bring a racket or balls because loan equipment will be available on site. Entry to the event itself is free as well, which turns the launch into more than a celebration: it is a low-barrier trial session aimed at first-timers as much as experienced players.

That approach matters in a sport that is expanding fast across Austria. In Vienna, padel courts have jumped from eight five years ago to more than 110 in 2026, a sharp sign of how quickly the game has moved from novelty to routine. Nearby in Bludenz, a new padel project has been budgeted at nearly 240,000 euros, another indicator that clubs and municipalities are still putting real money into the format in Vorarlberg.

Bürs is not opening in a vacuum. ORF Vorarlberg reported that the first padel courts in the Bodenseeraum appeared in Hard in 2017, giving the sport a foothold in the region before it pushed deeper inland. Alpine Padel’s launch now extends that footprint into the Oberland, where the real test will be whether an easy entry point on day one can translate into repeat play, not just a crowded opening night.

The wider backdrop is unmistakably global. The International Padel Federation says the sport is played in 150 nations and dependent territories, and its 2025 World Padel Report counted 77,300 courts worldwide after 14,355 were built in 2025. In Bürs, the scale is far smaller, but the strategy is the same one driving padel’s broader rise: make the first visit easy, make the atmosphere social, and hope curiosity turns into habit.