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. That is twice as many as in the whole of 2025. September was the busiest month yet, touching 80,000 evening bookings.

Driving this trend are 25- to 44-year-olds, accounting for 63 per cent of these slots. These are working people, finishing their day and looking to socialise with friends. Not long ago, that meant the pub; now, it can mean padel.

Social padel is winning over Britons

Not every booking is pints lost, but habits are shifting for younger Brits. They are health-conscious and a round is not cheap.

Padel gives people much of what the pub once did. It’s played in groups of four, it’s sociable and fun for all abilities, and everyone leaves happy. Think of it like this: for the price of a couple of drinks you can have an hour’s good fun with your friends, with added cardio.

Increasingly, padel clubs are working out that cafes and courts go hand in hand. I walk into many busy padel clubs on weekday nights and see happy, sweaty groups, still in their kit, discussing great shots, often with a beer in hand. The social aspects of padel, on and off the court, are part of the reason why Brits have fallen for this sport.

The stats back up my anecdotal conclusions. The 2026 Playtomic and PwC Global Padel Report shows that UK padel has grown 86 per cent year-on-year since 2021, with many courts at 85 per cent occupancy or more and about half of UK players saying they struggle to book at peak times. 

Our own stats show that, on average in 2026, 62,000 people per month played padel for the first time. Over 60 per cent of them played again within four weeks. 

So, what does all this mean for the pub? The stats and stories suggest that the after-work social crowd hasn’t disappeared. Their want for routine, community and familiar faces hasn’t evaporated. They have simply found new pastures.

I hope the pub will always be part of British life, and I hope it gets the support it needs because it is one of our greatest exports. But if you want to know where a lot of Brits go at 7pm on a Tuesday night, increasingly, the answer is a glass and metal box with a net across the middle, four laughing, sweaty friends and a tipple afterwards.

Alan Douglas is Regional Manager UK and Ireland for Playtomic.