The notice landed on his boss’s desk January 2nd: Andy Paterson, 47-year-old head of business development at Zurich Insurance, was walking away from a six-figure salary, pension, and company electric car. The reason? He’d rather teach padel for £60 an hour.
“Demand for padel coaching is crazy,” Paterson told The Times. “If I could double myself, I would still have hours of work.”
Paterson isn’t an outlier — he’s the leading edge of what insiders are calling “padel quitters,” a growing cohort of midlife professionals abandoning established careers for coaching roles in Britain’s fastest-growing sport. The phenomenon exposes a fundamental mismatch: Britain added 1,021 courts between January 2023 and December 2024, according to Playtomic data, but qualified coaches haven’t scaled at anywhere near that pace.
The numbers tell the supply-side story. Monthly court bookings in Britain surged from 16,000-25,000 throughout 2023 to 175,000-200,000 in 2025, with February 2025 hitting a record 240,785 bookings. That’s roughly a tenfold increase in 24 months. Terry Williams, 53, left his investment banking role at Jefferies International after catching padel fever on Portuguese holidays — he and his brother convinced their 78-year-old father to bankroll Padel Box, five indoor courts in a retrofitted Bermondsey warehouse.
But the coaching shortage is only half the infrastructure puzzle. While court operators race to capture real estate — Williams noted the market has turned brutally competitive since 2023 — equipment brands are moving upstream to capture the professional talent pipeline. On announced in January it had signed World No. 1 Arturo Coello, the 21-year-old Spaniard who achieved a historic 47-match winning streak, to develop padel-specific footwear by summer 2027.
“By combining my experience with On’s technology, we can create products that elevate the sport and help athletes at every level perform at their best,” Coello said. The Swiss athletic brand is positioning the partnership as a two-year R&D project, with Coello working directly with engineers in Switzerland — a striking contrast to the typical athlete endorsement model.
The venue-side response is evolving beyond pure court rental. Padel Society, opening this summer in Austin at 6320 East Stassney Lane, is building what co-founder Evan Meyers calls a “third space” — six indoor courts anchored by a full-service bar, co-working space, physical therapy station, and AI-powered gameplay analysis. “We want to create an atmosphere where people can socialize, eat, drink, work — where you can spend an entire day,” Meyers told WhatNow.
That infrastructure play — combining courts with food, beverage, workspace, and tech — represents a bet that padel’s stickiness depends on community, not just court access. Britain is already the world’s third-largest padel market by revenue behind Spain and Italy, with courts renting for £20-80 per hour.
The question isn’t whether padel can sustain current growth — Playtomic’s booking data settles that. It’s whether the coaching supply, equipment innovation, and venue sophistication can evolve fast enough to professionalize a sport that’s still largely learned through trial and error. Paterson’s three-month notice period at Zurich ends soon. By then, he’ll have his LTA Level 2 qualification and a waiting list of clients. The corporate world’s loss is padel’s gain — assuming 1,220 courts can generate enough coaching demand to support the exodus.
Sources
- I quit my six-figure job at 47 to teach padel — The Times
- On Adds No. 1 Padel Player Arturo Coello to Athlete Roster — WWD
- Opening This Summer, Padel Society Will be the Ultimate Padel-Focused “Third Space” — What Now Austin
Sources: