Is the court the new pub? New data shows Brits are swapping post-work pint for padel

While the after-work crowd deserts the pub, weekday evening padel bookings are heading skywards, says Playtomic s Alan Douglas. Every town has one. The pub with a quiz and darts, the one with the best pint but the table by the fire is always taken. For generations, the local has been where Brits go to socialise, unwind and set the world to rights. It’s an institution. But pubs are, sadly, in trouble. The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) says 295 pubs closed in the first nine months of 2026. That’s roughly 5,000 jobs, most held by under-25s. This raises a question: where is everyone going to socialise now? From where I sit, a growing number of them are playing padel. Playtomic is the community platform for padel, running approximately 85 per cent of UK padel bookings, so I see the stats in real time and one specific trend strikes me: weekday evenings are booming. In the first nine months of 2026, players made nearly 600,000 weekday bookings between 6pm and 9pm. Th