Sara Essa interview: Founder of Dubai padel community plans to open new site amid growth of sport in UAE

Sara Essa – a British padel player, coach, commentator and event producer living in Dubai – set up the Padel Collective in August 2022 to offer a community-focused alternative in a market defined by competition and money. She tells Padel Business Magazine about its rapid expansion and future plans, and how the UAE padel market is starting to change.

In just five years, Sara Essa’s journey in padel has taken her from playing the sport in London’s Hyde Park to commentating for Red Bull TV on the 2024 World Padel Championships, taking place this week in Doha. 

The British expat, who switched from playing tennis to padel in May 2021, moved to Dubai in August 2022 and now works as a sports presenter, commentator and event producer, covering motorsport, golf and watersports as well as padel. This year she has also commentated on the Premier Padel Madrid and Rotterdam P1s.

After previously working for the UN Climate Champions her career turned, unexpectedly, after playing her first game of padel and immediately falling in love with the sport.

“I started playing padel in Hyde Park five years ago when a friend offered me a game,” she tells Padel Business Magazine. “I loved it, and never looked back.” She adds: “I never intended to work in padel. It was all very accidental.”

Gap in the market for community-focused padel club

Essa began competing as a padel player in London and took coaching qualifications with the Argentinian professional player and coach Mauri Andrini. And after moving to Dubai she was inspired to set up her own padel club after seeing a gap in the market.

“I noticed there wasn't really anywhere for people to go and play just for fun and socialise – everything was really competitive,” she recalls. “It was all about prize money and just winning. None of the clubs here were really community-focused. A lot of people investing in the sport were just going in purely for the financial opportunity.”

She decided to build her own padel community and began setting up Padel Collective within a month of arriving in Dubai. Today, it has over 2,000 players, with a diverse mix of expats and locals, who can play up to twice a week and enter events such as the ‘Social Mix Ins’, where they are grouped with players of similar ability.

Padel Collective also runs coaching sessions for beginners and a number of leagues across the year, each lasting seven weeks and split across three divisions. The leagues are sponsored by Tecnifibre, and while the winners earn prizes, no prize money is on offer to help maintain the appeal for players of all skill levels.

Corporate events are also organised for companies such as the global property agent Savills, and the British sustainable performance wear brand Reflo, which is backed by England footballer Harry Kane.

Essa stresses that having a sense of community remains at the heart of Padel Collective’s raison d'être. “Every so often we’ll run big social nights where around 100 players come down, and it's just free-for-all padel,” she says. “Players can bring family and friends who have maybe never played padel before, and it's an opportunity for people to connect outside of just playing padel.”

She adds: “Some clubs have started to realise the value in building community into their strategy but often there’s a culture of just renting a court and no loyalty to a specific club. When players get to know other people in the club and frequently see the same people around, that's when a community starts to form. A lot of that relies on having the right team and coaches in place who care about the players and listen to their needs.”

Talks underway over setting up new site in Dubai

The next step for Padel Collective is to have its own facility. Currently it has agreements with different clubs in Dubai to use their sites, but Essa reveals that the ultimate aim is to have its own home.

“We have found a piece of land and are in early discussions to lease it,” she says, adding that the aim is to build a club “in a different locality to where the majority of clubs are in the city.”

Most padel clubs in Dubai can be found in Al Quoz Industrial Area 1 in the western part of the city. “A lot of the clubs are there as they can just rent a warehouse because it's easy and low-risk, but we're looking elsewhere in a complete gap where there's no courts or clubs,” she says. “Most people travel 30 minutes to get to a court and sit in terrible traffic. Our site will be nearer to where most people live.”

UAE padel market ranked high for growth in interest

The plans for Padel Collective come amid continued strong growth for the sport in the UAE. In Playtomic’s latest Global Padel Report the country was ranked 14^th in terms of growth in interest in the sport, sitting behind Argentina and ahead of France. The ranking was based on Google searches as at May 2024 compared with the same point last year.

According to the International Padel Federation (FIP)’s first World Padel Report, published in May 2024, there are an estimated 250,000 amateur players in the UAE, with 320 clubs and 950 courts, and a population to courts ratio of 10,017 (by comparison, in Spain that figure is 2,970).

Essa notes that alongside its rapid growth, she is also starting to see encouraging signs that the padel industry is beginning to evolve in the UAE.

“Historically, a lot of the clubs would try and fight for each other's market of players,” she observes. “Now they're starting to try and grow the market by attracting new people that aren't already playing, which is the smarter way of doing it, because then you can grow the market for everyone.”

Consulting with padel clubs on becoming sustainable businesses

Last year, Essa set up her own consulting firm NineOne to help clubs in the UAE and across the wider region, including in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, grow sustainably, and also to help large-scale sporting events in the region incorporate padel.

“The aim is to help clubs build a profitable long-term business plan for padel incorporating different social and community activities,” she explains, adding that she believes the sport can have a bright future in the region if the right approach is taken.

“People need to invest for the right reasons, and then it will grow sustainably over the longer term,” she says. “We need more and more people that truly love the sport, over and above the financial opportunity, and who carefully craft and build their clubs over a longer period rather than just for a one-to-two-year return on investment. They need to build in more strategic locations and look beyond filling a court tomorrow.” 

Call for more women in leadership roles across the padel industry

Another topic Essa feels strongly about is the lack of women in leadership roles in padel in both the UAE and globally.

“There are so many businesses set up with, say, two or three men as the co-founders,” she says. “And there are so few businesses actually run and owned by women. When the recent FIP report says 40% of the people playing the sport are women, why are we not bringing more women into leadership roles?”

She adds: “And that's not just here, that's globally, that's in the UK as well. You've got three or four women in the business side of padel there, and that's it. I would really encourage any male-led businesses to consider bringing a female into their founding team. I know many brilliant women with strong backgrounds in sport, property and business strategy who could easily adapt their skillset over to padel, just like the men are doing.

“Women understand women and with a large segment of the playing market being female you can really capitalise by having a woman on your leadership team or advisory board. So that's a massive area of potential growth that is being completely overlooked.”

As she looks to continue having an impact on the padel industry in the UAE and elsewhere, Essa is also preparing a new podcast called the Padel Series. She reveals that the first season will explore the lay of the land across different parts of the world, featuring episodes with padel club owners and developers including Robin Haziza, Christ Ishoo, Erin Purtle and Sara Kroik. The podcast is due to launch in December.

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