How padel clubs are ranked here

Every list on this site is in one order, produced by one number. There is no editor's pick, no featured slot and no way to buy a position. This is what the number is made of and what it deliberately leaves out.

One score, three inputs

The Ranked Score is a single value between zero and a hundred, built from three components with fixed weights:

• Player upvotes — 45 per cent. How many people say this is a good place to play.
• Verified reviews — 35 per cent. What people who have been there actually rated it. Collected on Ranked Pro clubs only — see below.
• Profile completeness — 20 per cent. How much of the information you need before you book is present.

Put in one sentence: every club is ranked on player upvotes and profile completeness; Ranked Pro clubs also compete on verified reviews. No one can buy a position.

The weights are the same for every club in every city, and they are applied by the database, not by a person. Two clubs with identical inputs get an identical score. The three percentages above are the weights in force as this is written; the values the score actually runs on are published, live, on how we rank.

Player upvotes

An upvote is the simplest signal there is: one player, one vote per club, no comment required. It costs nothing and takes a second, which is exactly why it is the biggest single component. Reviews take effort and only a minority of players write them; votes come from everyone.

Votes do not count linearly. They are scored on a curve with diminishing returns, so the difference between five upvotes and twenty-five is large, and the difference between two hundred and two hundred and twenty is small. That is deliberate. Without a curve, a list would simply rank clubs by how big their membership is, and a very good club in a small town would never appear near a merely decent club in a city.

Verified reviews: a Ranked Pro signal

This is the one thing on this site that differs between a free listing and a paid one, so it is stated here rather than buried.

Reviews are the second component of the score, and collecting them is a feature of Ranked Pro, the paid listing. A free club is ranked on upvotes and completeness and collects no reviews: its page shows an upvote button where the review form would be, and with nothing collected its review term is zero. A Pro club additionally competes on the ratings its players leave. A club that was on Pro and left keeps the reviews it already earned — they were written by players, and we do not delete them when an invoice stops.

That is a commercial decision and it deserves to be said plainly: a club that pays gains access to a signal a club that does not pay cannot earn. What money still does not buy is a position. Reviews are written by players, they are moderated before publication, the average is blended with a prior, and a bad review counts exactly as much as a good one. Paying opens the channel; what comes down it is out of the club's hands.

Ranked Pro is open. A club joins it from its own page: claim the listing, start the 14 free days — no card — and the review form appears on the profile the moment it does. Until a club joins, its page says so, in as many words, where the form would be.

Reviews contribute their average rating, not their number, but the average is blended with a prior before it counts. In practice the score starts every club at a neutral rating and moves towards the club's real average as reviews accumulate.

This is the part people find least intuitive and it is the part that protects the list. Without it, a club with one five-star review would outrank a club with eighty reviews averaging four and a half, which is obviously wrong: one review is not evidence, it is an anecdote. Blending with a prior means a single glowing review barely moves the score, five reviews move it noticeably, and fifty reviews essentially determine it.

Reviews are moderated before publication, and reviews that are clearly not about a visit do not get published at all.

Profile completeness

The last fifth of the score is the least glamorous and the most useful: does the listing tell you what you need to know? Completeness looks at whether the club has a description, photos, opening hours, contact details, a location and its key facilities filled in.

It is in the score because an incomplete listing wastes your time. A club whose page does not say how many courts it has, whether they are indoors, or when it closes is a club you have to phone before you can decide. Rewarding completeness pushes clubs to answer those questions once, in public, for everybody.

It is also the only component a club fully controls, which makes it the fastest way for a good club that is new to the site to climb.

What the score is not

It is not a quality inspection. Nobody from this site visits clubs, measures the sand or tests the lighting. The score aggregates what players say and what the club has published; it does not add an opinion of our own.

It is also not a review of coaching, atmosphere or price. Those are the sorts of things reviews discuss, and reading a few reviews will always tell you more about whether a club suits you than the number will.

And it is not stable forever. Scores move as votes and reviews arrive and as clubs update their information, so a list you look at in December will not be identical to the same list in June.

Why there is no paid placement

Because a ranking that can be bought is not a ranking, it is an advertisement, and everybody can tell the difference within about two visits.

Clubs cannot pay to appear, to appear higher, or to have a competitor appear lower. If advertising ever appears on this site it will be labelled as advertising and it will sit outside the list, never inside it. The ordering rule is published on how we rank and the numbers behind it are on every club's page.

What a club can do

The honest answer is short. Fill in the profile completely, because that fifth of the score is free and immediate, and it is the same fifth whether you pay us anything or not. Ask the players who already like you for an upvote — and, once the club is on Ranked Pro, for a review. Asking is fine, buying is not. And correct anything that is wrong on the listing, because out-of-date opening hours cost you visits long before they cost you score.

If you run a club that is not on the site yet, add it. Submissions are checked before they go live, listing is free, and a new listing starts on exactly the same terms as everybody else.