BBC asks why women remain underrepresented in booming padel

Women account for only 30% of padel players in Great Britain. The sport sits between tennis and squash, uses tennis scoring, and has spread fast enough in the United Kingdom that courts have appeared across the country in the last year or two. That participation gap is the clearest sign that padel’s boom is structurally incomplete.

The boom is bigger than the participation gap

Padel has become one of the fastest-growing sports in the UK. The Lawn Tennis Association’s March 2026 figures put it at 860,000 players in Great Britain, with 893 courts and 300 venues nationwide. Yet a sport can add courts at speed and still fail to build a broad base if the people walking through the door do not look like the full population.

Female participation is not a side note in a healthy sport, it is a warning light. If the public story is all packed courts, celebrity visibility and a rush of new venues, but women remain a clear minority, then the sport is growing in a narrow lane.

Where the bottleneck starts

A cluster of barriers shapes whether padel feels open to women in the first place, and most of them are practical rather than ideological.

• Court culture matters. If the loudest conversation around padel is built around elite men’s events, brand partnerships and male-dominated social circles, women can be left without a clear signal that they belong.

• Coaching access matters. A sport that is still introducing itself to many beginners needs visible, welcoming coaching pathways, not a first-come, first-served culture that rewards the already connected.

• Scheduling matters. When court time is concentrated at awkward hours or in formats built around established groups, new players are pushed to the margins before they ever get a rally going.

• Childcare matters. If playing requires a level of free time that many women do not have, the participation gap becomes self-reinforcing.

• Beginner intimidation matters. Padel is easier to pick up than many racquet sports, but that does not cancel out the social pressure of joining a sport that already looks clubby, fast-moving and slightly coded for insiders.

• Club design matters. Facilities that are built to maximize volume without thinking about comfort, visibility and access can end up reproducing the same old sports hierarchy in a new shell.

Court construction by itself does not solve the problem. You can build 893 courts across 300 venues and still leave the first contact point intimidating or expensive.

The marketing problem is part of the participation problem

Padel’s image has become one of its biggest assets, but also one of its blind spots. A sport that wants to be the next big thing needs to show more than fast rallies and slick social clips. It needs women in the visible places: on court, in coaching, in club programming and in the public-facing conversation that tells new players whether they belong.

When women do not see themselves reflected in the sport’s public image, beginner confidence takes a hit before a racket is ever picked up. Padel can be booming in infrastructure and still feel socially narrower than it should.

UN Women and the Women's Sports Foundation have both long argued that girls and women are more likely to drop out when sports feel exclusive, expensive or socially unwelcoming. That is not a padel-only problem, but padel is now moving fast enough that the old pattern can be copied if clubs and governing bodies do not intervene early.

What the numbers say about fixes that matter

Supply growth alone is not enough. The LTA’s 860,000-player figure and 893-court footprint show that the sport can expand quickly, but female participation remains uneven. If court growth were automatically solving access, that share would be moving faster.

Sport England’s December 2015 figures showed that the number of women getting active in sport had risen in its latest survey. When sports are designed around reach, comfort and entry points, women’s participation can rise.

The fixes that look most credible are the ones aimed at the first experience, not just the elite end of the pyramid. More visible beginner sessions, better coaching access, less club snobbery, friendlier scheduling and facilities designed around first-time players are the pressure points that can move the number.