Cricket star-backed Play Padel secures £1.2 million for second site

Play Padel has secured £1.2 million in funding to open its second site in Sheffield, a move that pushes Joe Root-backed padel deeper into the UK’s club market. The deal is framed as a loan and gives the company fresh capital to move beyond the first-club novelty stage and prove that its venue model can be repeated.

The financing brought in Mercia Business Loans, the British Business Bank, South Yorkshire Pensions Authority, FW Capital and Castle Square Corporate Finance, with Andy Tyas and Ian Whitworth of Mercia Business Loans named alongside the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Cllr Andrew Sangar, Jemima Jones of British Business Bank, Gillian Taberner of South Yorkshire Pensions Authority, Paul Wainwright of FW Capital and Brad Green of Castle Square Corporate Finance. That mix of regional finance and civic backing matters in a sport where court construction is only one part of the equation and where operators need sustained utilisation from coaching, memberships, social play and events.

The second Sheffield site is set for Meadowhall and is being built as an eight-court club, with an October opening planned and further northern locations already on the board. For Play Padel, that makes the Sheffield launch the first real stress test of whether a premium indoor padel format can scale beyond a single flagship venue. A second club has to generate enough repeat visits to support payback, not just opening-week buzz, and the company is now betting that the demand is there.

Play Padel Group says it develops and operates indoor padel clubs across the UK by transforming vacant and underused spaces into sporting destinations, a model that fits the wider shape of the sport. Padel has rapidly grown to 30 million participants worldwide, and that scale is helping attract both celebrity names and serious local capital into the venue business. Joe Root’s backing gives the brand immediate recognition, but the funding round shows investors are also buying into the economics of courts, locations and repeat traffic.

For the UK padel market, the significance is straightforward: lenders and regional institutions are willing to fund another club when the operator can point to a branded concept, a dense city location and a pipeline of future sites. Play Padel’s challenge now is to turn that £1.2 million loan into a Sheffield venue that fills courts often enough to justify the next round of northern expansion.