There is no one right price for a padel or tennis court, only a right price for each hour of your week. Work it out in three steps: measure which hours you already sell out and which sit empty, group them into two or three price bands, and fill the quiet ones with something better than a discount.
Start from your own occupancy by hour
Before you look at anyone else's prices, look at your own courts. Take the last eight to twelve weeks of bookings and draw a grid: days across, hours down, and in each cell the share of court-hours you sold. With four courts over twelve weeks, each cell holds 48 court-hours.
Say Tuesday at 7pm sold 46 of 48 (96%) and Tuesday at 11am sold 9 (19%). The first hour turns players away; the second barely pays for its lights. Shade the grid by occupancy and your bands draw themselves.
Two or three bands, not ten
Players must remember your prices and staff must explain them, so keep bands few:
- Peak: hours that sell 85% or more. Ask whether you're too cheap, not how to fill them.
- Off-peak: hours under about 40%. A lower price, plus the levers below.
- Shoulder, if needed: the hours in between.
Where the line falls comes from your grid, not the clock. In one club peak starts at 4pm on weekdays and runs all weekend; in another, near offices, early mornings sell out and the early afternoon is the quiet part of the day.
Mind the gap, too. Too small a gap between off-peak and peak moves nobody. Too big a gap tells evening regulars they're overcharged.
If your peak hours turn players away every week, raise peak before you cut anything. On 20 sold-out peak court-hours a week, £4 more is £80 a week, and players who move to a cheaper hour fill a gap.
Per court or per player
Price the court, and show what it comes to per player. The court is what you sell: if a player drops out, it's still gone. But players compare per head, so £24 reads better as "£6 each for four". If members and non-members play together, add a small supplement per non-member.
60 or 90 minutes
Many clubs sell padel in 90-minute games; others quote the hour. Length is a pricing decision because it sets how many bookings fit into your best hours. From 6pm to 10:30pm a court holds three 90-minute games, or four 60-minute ones and a half hour nobody can use.
Fix the start times at peak (6pm, 7:30pm, 9pm) so no half-hour gaps appear. Off-peak, let people book 60 or 90 minutes from any half hour. Price 90 minutes at one and a half times the hour, or a little under to nudge players towards longer games.
Filling off-peak without leagues
Leagues fill courts, but someone has to run them. These need no organiser:
- Fixed weekly slots, booked by your staff. A school or a group of retired players takes the same court at the same time every week for a term. One phone call fills twelve quiet hours. In the UK, a series of 10 or more sessions of one sport in the same place, 1 to 14 days apart, let to a school, club or association for exclusive use and paid for as a whole, can be VAT-exempt unless you've opted to tax (HMRC VAT Notice 742).
- A morning rate with a name. "Weekday mornings, £16 a court" is easier to remember than a discount code, and it tells people those hours exist.
- Reward frequency, not the evening. Instead of taking 20% off evening prices, give a free off-peak hour after ten bookings. Regulars come more often, and the reward lands in the hours you need to fill.
- Ask players who've stopped coming. An email to everyone who hasn't booked in six weeks, with an offer for weekday mornings, costs nothing if nobody takes it up.
The VAT point is general information, not tax advice; check it with your accountant.
Review it every month
Each month, redraw the grid and set it beside the last. Move a band's edge by an hour at most, change one price at a time, and give regulars two weeks' notice of anything that goes up. If an off-peak hour is still under 20% after three months, it may be an hour nobody plays: close the court and save the lights.
Doing it with Tuora
Tuora gives your club its own booking page showing only the courts really free. Prices change by day, hour and booking length, per court or per player, and peak start times can be fixed. Staff enter standing weekly slots in the same calendar. A free hour after ten bookings runs on its own, offers go to lapsed players, and the metrics show your quiet hours. Payment goes into your own Stripe account, with no commission. More for tennis and padel clubs.
Try it before talking to anyone: book a court at our demo club, then open its back office to see the same booking from the other side.