Melton Mowbray gets new Rally Yard padel venue with five courts

A long-vacant site at Asfordby Business Park is being converted into Rally Yard Melton, an £850,000 padel venue set to open in August 2026 with five courts, including four doubles courts and one singles court. The project gives Melton Mowbray its latest bid to become part of the UK’s fast-expanding padel map, but this one is built around more than court time: hospitality space, coaching, social events and a community offer are all part of the plan.

Rally Yard says the Melton site is its first venue under the brand, making the development more than a single-town leisure build. It is the company’s opening move in what looks designed to be a wider rollout, and the choice of a business park location matters as much as the number of courts. Turning an underused commercial site into a sport-led destination is the kind of redevelopment that padel operators increasingly favour, especially when they can pair play with food, drinks and lingering footfall beyond the match itself.

The scale of the opportunity is clear in the numbers. The Lawn Tennis Association says British padel participation reached 860,000 by the end of 2025, up from 129,000 at the end of 2023. Court supply has climbed alongside it, with 1,553 courts across 559 venues by the end of 2025, compared with 69 courts in 2020. The LTA has also invested more than £7.5 million directly into court construction, supporting a further £10.5 million and 112 courts at 57 venues.

Those figures help explain why towns like Melton Mowbray are now seeing padel as credible infrastructure rather than a niche luxury. The LTA’s 2024 strategy set targets of 400,000 annual players and 1,000 courts, and the sport has already moved beyond those benchmarks on both counts. A venue with five courts, booking, coaching and social space is the sort of format that can absorb demand while trying to keep players on site longer.

The Melton project is also arriving beside another local proposal. In January 2026, Melton Mowbray Town Estate put forward plans for four indoor padel courts near Wilton Park, with hourly court hire, a pay-as-you-play model and opening hours from 5.30am to 10pm. That scheme drew an objection from ward councillor Allen Thwaites, who said parkland in a conservation area was the wrong location. With Asfordby Business Park now moving ahead, Melton has become a live test case for how secondary towns can host padel without treating it as a temporary fad.