The free opening report

What the buildings you will compete with are actually like inside.

A free report for a club that has not opened yet. Every venue your future players currently drive to, what each one charges, what each one publishes, and the gaps nobody in your catchment has filled. Plus what is already wrong with your name, your address and your listings, while all of it is still cheap to put right.

One form, five questions. The PDF comes back within 48 hours. No call.

Five things about a market you have not entered yet

Read from published evidence, plus the venues I have been inside. Where the evidence does not support a score I leave it out rather than invent one.

01The ring, venue by venueEvery venue your future players currently drive to instead: the road distance from your site, the court count, the published rate and what each one actually publishes. Sourced row by row to that venue's own website or its national directory entry, with the date it was read.

02The nine measures across the ringShowers, parking, coffee, a real kitchen, wellness, wifi, workspace and somewhere to sit, read from published evidence only. A blank is not a zero, it is an absence of evidence, and the report says which venues I have walked into and which I have only read.

03The gaps nobody in your catchment has filledWhat the whole ring is missing, separated into what your drawings decide and what your programme decides. That split is the useful part: it tells you which of them you have to settle before the concrete goes down and which can wait until you are trading.

04Where your price would sitThe band the region clusters in, the ceiling, who holds it and what that club actually scores on the nine measures. Plus whether anybody in your ring sells a membership at all, what shape those memberships take and which hours they point at.

05What is already wrong outside the buildingWhether your club name already belongs to another business in this sport, whether the obvious domain has gone, whether a directory already has you listed under the wrong name, whether your address can be navigated to, and whether a Google profile exists yet. All observable from outside, and all cheaper to settle now than after your signage goes up.

The opening page of the free Padel Living opening report for The Grid Padel Haus, showing no padel courts within twenty minutes and one of eleven venues in the wider ring with any recovery offer — The first page of the free opening report for The Grid Padel Haus, August 2026.

Eleven venues in the ring, two of them scored from my own visits. One offers anything resembling recovery, and it is a members' golf club.

There is no revenue, cost or loss figure anywhere in a pre-opening report. The club has no trading history, and inventing one would make everything else in the document worth less.

Sent as a PDF. No call, no deck, no follow-up sequence.

Request the free opening report

Four things this is not

Not a sales callThere is no call, no discovery session, no deck and no follow-up sequence. You fill in one form and a PDF comes back. Reading it and never replying is a normal outcome and costs you nothing.

Not a feasibility studyIt does not tell you whether to build, how many courts your district supports, or what the demand will be. If you are spending real money on a padel club you have bought that already, and I have no access to your numbers. What nobody has done for you is go and look at what your competitors are like once you are through the door.

Not a forecastThere is no revenue, cost, occupancy or loss figure anywhere in a pre-opening report. You have no trading history yet, and inventing one would make everything else in the document worth less.

Not a scraped listEvery row is sourced to that venue's own website or directory entry, with the date it was read. Where I have been inside a venue and scored it in person the report says so, and it never presents a read as a visit.

The opening fix list, if the report is worth acting on

The opening fix list

£750

£750 · €900 · founding price, everything in

Your price position argued against the regional band, the ceiling, and what the club holding it actually scores — with the rate card written out, peak and off-peak, per court and said so on the page
Your membership model in full: which model fits your catchment, what the membership actually buys, and the page copy written for you
The founder membership — the cap, the price, the deadline and the benefits — because the months before you open are the only time you can sell one
Your Google profile built properly before you open: the exact categories, the description written out in full, the attributes, and the photograph plan in order
One name string and one address string, written, to be used identically in every listing you ever create
Every page title and meta description written out with character counts, in your own publishing languages — plus the pages your site does not have yet, in full copy
The directory entries, each one written, including corrections to any listing that already has you wrong
The booking decision argued on the one property that matters, with no platform recommended and no commission taken from anyone
Your first reviews: the ask, the moment, the card and the replies

What it deliberately does not contain

No design, no architecture, no fit-out, no floor areas, no coaching programme. The gaps the free report finds are real and they are yours to act on, but specifying a building is a job for your architect and your engineer, not for me. I price padel clubs and I make them findable, and saying that plainly is what should make you trust the rest of it.

The report is what your competition is like and what is already wrong. The opening fix list is the two things you can settle before you trade, written so your own people can carry them out without asking me a follow-up question.

Booked before you open, because neither decision can be backdated. A Google profile created six months early cannot be bought back later, and a price published on day one is very hard to move.

One price. No monthly, no retainer, and I do not do the work. You do it, or your web person does, from copy written out ready to paste. Doing it myself would mean logins to your accounts, a support burden, and agency money on the price.

You do not have to buy it, and it is never pitched cold. The free report is the whole report.

Who this is for

Ask for it if

You are at planning, fit-out or coming-soon stage and have not published a rate anywhere you control.
You have months rather than weeks. Nearly everything the report finds is cheap to settle now and expensive or impossible later.
You want to know what the competing buildings are actually like inside, which is the one thing a feasibility study cannot tell you.
You are in the UK or Europe.

Do not bother if

Your rates are already published somewhere you control, on your own site or on your booking platform. Then you are trading, whatever your homepage says, and this is the wrong document.
You want a demand forecast, a court count or a business case. That is a feasibility study, and this is not one.
You want the building specified: layouts, floor areas, fit-out, a coaching programme. Your architect and your engineer, not me.
You want the work done for you rather than written out for your own people to do.

The visit is free, and the score is free

I rank padel clubs on a public board at padel.living and I also sell clubs work, so it is a fair thing to ask.

I do not charge to visit a club and I do not charge to score one. I never have and I never will. Every club on the board was scored before it had heard from me, no club has paid to appear on it, and none can pay to move up it. Doing the work is the only thing that moves a score.

Your club is not on the board and this report does not put it there. I only score clubs I have walked into, and yours is not open yet. When it is, the visit and the score are free, the same as they were for the other nine.

Send me your club

Five questions, one submission. I need the website because it is where the name, address and listing checks start, and the court count because the ring table sets what you are building against everything already there.

The form needs JavaScript. If you have it switched off, email me at richard@richardpatey.com with your club name, your website and how many courts you have, and I will treat it as the same request.

I use the address to send the report and to write to you about it. No list sale, no partner emails, and an unsubscribe link on the bottom of everything I send.