Farnham, United Kingdom – Hurlands Pickleball + Padel Club has signalled a major shift in the UK’s leisure market, announcing a five-year strategic plan to aggressively expand its footprint across the Southeast.
What’s the Score?
Hurlands has officially launched a search for new real estate, with the goal of opening five new clubs over the next five years. The operator is casting a wide net for investment partners, landlords, and asset managers to secure sites that can accommodate their large-scale indoor facilities. To steer this ambitious acquisition drive, Hurlands has hired Jeremy Phillips, a heavy hitter in the property world and former director at The Gym Group, to manage site acquisitions. This expansion comes just ahead of the opening of their flagship facility in Farnham, Surrey, slated for early 2026.
Hit it deeper!
The specifications for the new Hurlands locations reveal a commitment to premium, purpose-built indoor environments rather than temporary outdoor setups. The company is specifically seeking buildings of 30,000 square feet or larger. Crucially, these sites must offer a minimum clear height of six meters—a necessary requirement for high-level pickleball and padel play—along with ample parking and strong accessibility.
The geographic focus of this expansion is a corridor stretching from West London out to Reading, Oxford, Winchester, and Kent. This targets some of the most affluent and well-connected commuter belts in the UK, positioning Hurlands to capture a demographic that values wellness and social leisure. The company is open to a variety of property types, considering freehold acquisitions as well as long-term leases on former industrial units, retail spaces, and existing leisure buildings that are ripe for conversion.
The template for these future clubs is the upcoming flagship in Farnham. Located at the Farnham Trading Estate, this venue is set to become the UK’s largest indoor pickleball and padel centre upon its debut in 2026. It will feature a staggering 14 courts, integrated with a broader mix of hospitality, fitness, and wellness spaces. This suggests that Hurlands is not merely building court capacity but is attempting to create “third place” social hubs where members spend time off the court as well.
The World Pickleball Verdict
Hurlands’ expansion plan is a watershed moment for the UK pickleball industry, moving it away from community centre gymnasiums and into the realm of “Big Box” leisure. By recruiting Jeremy Phillips from The Gym Group, Hurlands is signaling that it intends to apply the same scaling logic to racquet sports that budget gyms applied to fitness in the 2010s: standardised, high-quality facilities in high-traffic locations.
The requirement for 30,000 sq ft facilities with high clearance indicates that the UK market is maturing rapidly. Operators are no longer content with compromising on court quality; they are willing to invest in substantial industrial real estate to guarantee a premium playing experience. If Hurlands succeeds in securing these five sites, they will likely establish a dominant market share in the Southeast, forcing competitors to either consolidate or upgrade their own facilities to compete with this new standard of “social wellness” clubs.
Chris Beaumont
Founder and Editor-in-ChiefChris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine. Chris follows the global game closely, reporting on the latest news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball Podcast, interviewing people at…
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