Kent’s padel boom continues with new New Romney club opening

Square One announced a New Romney club that will bring padel courts, a gym, a restaurant and social space to Romney Marsh, extending its Kent network beyond Ashford and Sittingbourne. The site is tied to Mountfield Industrial Estate, where the first courts on the marsh were set to open in the coming weeks.

The opening fits a county that has moved faster than most in embracing padel. Kent has become one of the clearest test cases for whether the sport’s boom is driven by real demand or by operators racing to secure land while the market is hot. Square One’s expansion suggests the company believes both the player base and the spending power are already there.

The wider numbers back that up. The Lawn Tennis Association said Great Britain reached 1,000 padel courts on 17 July 2025, a milestone that underlined how quickly the infrastructure has scaled. In May 2025, the same body said more than 400,000 people in Britain were playing padel, a participation figure that helps explain why new clubs keep pairing courts with food, fitness and social space instead of treating the sport as a standalone booking.

That mixed-use model is exactly what New Romney will get. A court complex with a gym and restaurant is built to hold players on site longer, capture non-playing visits and turn repeat bookings into a habit. It also matches the way padel has been sold in Britain: as a social sport and a less intimidating entry point than many traditional racket venues, especially for newcomers who want quick rallies without the steep learning curve of tennis.

Kent’s planning map has also kept pace. Local authorities have already green-lighted new padel court plans in the county, which has given operators a clearer route to open sites in places where leisure land can still be assembled. In that sense, New Romney looks less like an isolated launch than another piece in a broader county expansion that has moved from Ashford inland to Sittingbourne and now down to the coast.

For Square One, the New Romney project is a statement about where the sport is heading. The company is no longer just building courts; it is building destinations for players who want to play, eat and stay. In Kent, that is becoming the formula behind the boom.