The Padel Club

The Padel Club was founded in 2022 by Kris Ball, who discovered the sport while working in premium racquet and fitness clubs in Gibraltar. In a few short years it’s grown into a national brand, with sites already open in Wilmslow and at Trafford City – reportedly the largest purpose-built padel venue in the north of the UK – before Matrix’s involvement began.

Matrix delivered two of the brand’s flagship sites directly: a nine-court, high-specification venue at Gloucester Quays, and a four-court indoor panoramic facility at Cheltenham’s Festival Trade Park. The relationship came through John Trahan, Chairman of The Padel Club and the original founding chairman of The Gym Group – the same connection that runs through several of Matrix’s other leisure-sector relationships.

Matrix’s scope covered the full range: project management, contract administration, quantity surveying, and acting as employer’s agent – getting both sites from build to fully operational.

Gloucester and Cheltenham each came with their own specification to hit: Gloucester’s nine courts built to a high-performance standard with sports LED lighting, and Cheltenham’s four indoor panoramic courts fitted out for a different kind of venue entirely. Both had to go from build to fully operational, coordinated end to end.

That work now continues into a genuinely fast-paced national rollout. Four more sites are in active delivery. The pace here echoes what Matrix has supported before with The Gym Group in its early growth years – backing a brand through rapid, consecutive site openings, holding the same standard of delivery on each build.