​An 80-year-old tennis club fears it could be forced off its courts at the Victory Sports Ground Complex in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, replaced by a padel facility. The Victory Ground Tennis Club currently pays about £4,000 per year to rent two courts at the complex. The club’s membership secretary, 52-year-old Steve Daniel, told the BBC that he had been informed a padel company is interested in the site and would be prepared to pay a substantially higher rent to base itself there. Victory Sports Ground CIC, which runs the site, confirmed to the BBC that talks with other potential buyers or tenants had taken place but that no final decisions had been made yet. Daniel said the club would like to reach an amicable resolution to the situation.
Daniel noted that the tennis club, one of only two in the town, has been actively growing its membership since the Covid-19 pandemic and now has around 170 members. He claimed that the facility is considering repurposing the courts currently used by the club. “We’ve offered to double our rent, and we could afford that because we are now bringing in more money,” Daniel, a PE teacher, added. “But we simply cannot afford prices rising by 500%—that’s just impossible.”
For those who want to play padel in the area, alternatives include Risbygate Sports Club, which offers padel alongside tennis, and the Padel Shed in Whepstead. The David Lloyd gym in the region also has padel courts for its members. Daniel’s own family has connections to the club, with his children including his daughter among its members.
Padel is rapidly expanding globally, blending elements of tennis and squash. Last year, research from the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) indicated that 860,000 adults and juniors in the UK now play padel, more than twice the number recorded the previous year. Over the five-year period from 2019 to 2023, the LTA found that the number of adults playing tennis at least once a year rose by 44% to about 5.6 million, with annual participation among children increasing to around 3.6 million.
Victory Sports Ground has a long history. It was initially bought by a Greene King Brewery director to celebrate the survival of his children in World War One. In 1975, the ground was sold to the former St Edmundsbury Borough Council, and in 2013 Victory Sports Ground CIC, a not-for-profit organization, purchased the freehold. Paul Whittaker, a representative of the ground, disputed the claim that the tennis club had returned to the negotiating table offering to pay double the rent for its two courts. He did confirm that the organization had been approached by a padel company and a five-a-side football club interested in potentially using the space. “We do not want to get rid of tennis, but we are trying to increase participation numbers and maximise the use of the facilities,” Whittaker said. He added that padel and five-a-side football are two viable examples of activities that could take precedence if they deliver greater usage.