How Many Padel Courts Does Ireland Need by 2030?

Every padel market in Europe has had the same argument. Spain built 17,000 courts over thirty years. Sweden built 4,000 in three, and then watched 120 operators go bust and 600 courts get dismantled and shipped abroad. Somewhere between those two is a sensible answer to the question Irish operators, councils and investors are all asking: how many courts does this country actually need?

We built a model to answer it. It is deliberately unexciting. It doesn't take today's court count and multiply it by a growth rate, and it doesn't assume Ireland becomes Spain. It converts demand into court-hours, converts court-hours into courts, and compares that with what is actually in the pipeline. Every input is published at the bottom of this page and in the accompanying workbook.

The answer

Base case: Ireland needs roughly 510 courts by 2030 — 2.6 times today's 193, or one new court opening every five days between now and then. The tracked pipeline plus the current rate of planning grants would deliver around 470 if built at realistic rates: one every 5.7 days. That leaves a shortfall of about 40 courts. Not hundreds. Not a crisis. A gap.

Under the conservative scenario Ireland ends up with more courts than it needs. Under the high-growth scenario — 2024–25 rates sustained — the pipeline falls 270 short. The honest reading is that the pipeline is the right size for the base case and wrong only if the boom doesn't slow down.

Where the numbers come from

What we measured. 193 open courts in the Republic across 64 venues (Openplay Court Tracker, 27 August 2026). A tracked pipeline of 128 courts: 78 announced, 44 with planning permission, 6 with applications lodged — with 40 unverified courts excluded. And, from our planning register, which scans every local authority in the State weekly: 7 padel schemes granted permission in 2024, 31 in 2025, and 53 in the first eight months of 2026. Roughly 18% of decided applications are refused.

How we measured demand. Nobody in Ireland publishes a count of padel players, and we're not going to invent one. So the model works in court-hours — the thing that can actually be measured from a booking system — and treats today's open courts, at a typical utilisation, as today's demand. It then grows that demand under three scenarios anchored to the best proxy we have: Irish Google searches for "padel," which grew 75%, 54%, 98% and 74% in successive years from 2022 to 2025 and are tracking roughly +40–50% in 2026. The base case assumes that growth keeps halving.

How we turned demand into courts. Court-hours needed ÷ (14 hours a day × 360 days × a sustainable utilisation of 42%). We also run a second calculation for peak hours only — because a court free at 11am on a Tuesday is not the same as one free at 7pm on a Thursday — and take the higher answer.

How we built supply. Today's courts, plus the tracked pipeline discounted for the fact that not everything announced gets built (85% of "coming soon", 60% of "permission granted", 40% of "lodged"), plus the flow of new planning grants at 60 schemes a year averaging two courts each, half of which open within the period.

What the model can't tell you

It cannot tell you whether Ireland is under- or over-supplied today. There's no utilisation data to say. The model is calibrated to a balanced market in 2026 and everything is measured from there. If Dublin's indoor clubs are really running at 55% with waiting lists, the country is already 60 courts short and every line above moves up by that amount. If community sites are running at 25%, it's the conservative case that's true. Only operator booking data can settle this, and we'd welcome it.

The number that matters most isn't growth. It's completion.

We tested every assumption. The one that swings the result hardest is not how fast demand grows — it's how much of the pipeline actually gets built.

The only Irish evidence on completion rates points downward: of roughly 40 Padel 100 community sites we've tracked, 13 are dead or can't be verified. If half the pipeline stalls, the shortfall in 2030 is close to 180 courts.

For the growth side, here is the full grid — courts needed in 2030 under a flat annual growth rate and a given sustainable utilisation:

At 20% a year, the pipeline covers it. At 30%, it's about 80 short. Above 40%, the pipeline is hopelessly behind — but 40% a year for four more years would put Ireland at Danish density by 2030, and Denmark took a decade.

2028 is the year the pipeline runs out

Under the base case, supply and demand track each other closely to 2028 — around 350 courts against 340 needed. After that the tracked pipeline is exhausted and every court in the model depends on planning grants that haven't been made yet. That's why we scan the planning register every week. From 2028, it is the forecast.

The pipeline is the right size. It's the wrong shape.

Two things the court count doesn't capture.

Type. Only 35% of the Republic's pipeline courts are indoor, against 45% of those already open (see our all-weather study). If 60% of demand falls in evening and weekend hours — and Irish evenings from October to March are wet and dark — outdoor courts contribute less usable peak capacity than their headcount suggests. The model doesn't yet weight for this; it should, and will once the tracker distinguishes covered from enclosed courts.

Place. A national number hides where the gap lands. Our access model found six counties where fewer than 30% of residents are within 30 minutes of a court — Leitrim, Sligo, Offaly, Mayo, Roscommon and Tipperary, 565,000 people — and five with nothing in the pipeline at all: Offaly, Donegal, Cavan, Monaghan and Westmeath. Any national shortfall will be felt there first. We haven't published county-level court requirements because the data to support them doesn't exist, and we'd rather say so than make them up.

Ireland in 2030 against the rest of Europe

Even the base case leaves Ireland in 2030 at half the Netherlands' density today and a third of Denmark's. The high case — 13 per 100,000 — is roughly where Denmark was in 2021. Nothing here assumes Ireland follows Spain, and nothing comes close to the Swedish density that preceded the crash. Matching the Netherlands would take almost 1,000 courts; matching Spain, 2,000. Those are not forecasts. They're a sense of the ceiling.

What this means

Ireland needs to open a padel court roughly every five days for the next four years. On current planning activity, it probably will — as long as the things that get permission get built, and as long as the growth in demand keeps decelerating the way every maturing padel market's has. The risk isn't that Ireland builds too few courts. It's that it builds them in the wrong places, without roofs, and that a chunk of what's announced never opens. The court count will be updated quarterly; the model's inputs are published so anyone can disagree with them.

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Methodology

Scope. Republic of Ireland only. The planning register covers the 31 Republic planning authorities; Northern Ireland's 110 courts and separate planning system are excluded so that measured pipeline isn't mixed with guessed pipeline.

Supply. Openplay Irish Padel Court Tracker, 27 August 2026 (open, coming soon, permission granted, lodged; unverified excluded). Planning flow from the Openplay Irish Padel Planning Register — National Planning Application Database, weekly scan, 216 records with 43 superseded resubmissions removed.

Demand. Today's demand = 193 courts × 14 hours × 360 days × 42% utilisation. Growth scenarios (2027–30): conservative 20/15/12/10%; base 35/30/25/20%; high 50/45/35/30%. Growth anchor: Ahrefs monthly search volume for "padel" (Ireland), annual averages 474 / 830 / 1,275 / 2,522 / 4,381 for 2021–25; Jan–Apr 2026 average 5,092. Search interest is a proxy for participation growth, not a measurement of it.

Conversion. Courts required = court-hours ÷ (hours × sustainable utilisation of 42%); peak-hours check assumes 60% of demand in 43 peak hours a week at an 85% ceiling; the higher figure binds.

Realisation. Coming soon 85%; permission granted 60%; lodged 40%; future grants 50%, at 60 schemes a year and 2.0 courts a scheme (register average ~1.7), opening a year after grant. All are judgements; all are on one Inputs sheet in the workbook.

Population. CSO Census 2022, 5,149,139, grown at 1.2% a year. CSO's 2025 estimate suggests growth has run faster, which would slightly lower every per-100,000 figure.

Benchmarks. FIP World Padel Report 2025; LTA (April 2026); padel-court.de (July 2025); KNLTB. Per-100,000 figures are indicative because court-count methods differ by country.

Updates. Four inputs are refreshed each quarter — open courts, pipeline by status, grants year-to-date, latest search growth — and the model recalculates. When booking-platform utilisation or a federation player count becomes available, two cells change and the model moves from calibrated to measured.

Source: Openplay Padel Court Requirement Model 2030, built on the Openplay Irish Padel Court Tracker and Openplay Irish Padel Planning Register. Workbook available on request. Free to cite with attribution and a link to this page.