Bay Padel Club on Strava: Building a Community Around a Fast-Growing Sport

In the San Francisco Bay Area, padel looks different.

In most places, you show up with the same three friends and book a court. Here, the sport is still new, and has evolved differently. Padel in the Bay is as much about building community as it is about playing. Open play, clinics, and the chance to meet new partners have become the foundation.

Bay Padel is a young, growing community, with its Strava club acting as a hub. Members use it to organize play, track progress, and stay connected. With just under 30 members today, it’s small but expanding in a natural, grassroots way. Many were already using Strava for other activities and wanted a single place to bring padel into the mix.

“Strava makes it easier for members to share their padel activity with their network, which helps build community and momentum,” said co-founder Matias Gandulfo. “As peers start logging sessions, it creates a natural motivation to keep up, and as a result, members are becoming more intentional about their training. 

That momentum reflects a larger shift. Padel is one of the fastest-growing sports globally, with more than 30 million players worldwide and rapid expansion in the U.S.

“I started using it recently and really enjoy having padel recognized as its own sport rather than logging it under something else,” Gandulfo said. “I track my workouts with my Apple Watch, and it helps to get more accurate metrics, especially around calories burned.”

Gandulfo grew up playing padel in Argentina and always believed it would take off in the United States. Two years ago, he set out to build that future in the Bay Area. It wasn’t easy. Finding a space proved difficult. The sport requires high ceilings and large indoor facilities, limiting options and making it a hard sell for landlords unfamiliar with padel.

“There were moments of real doubt, but something always kept us going,” Gandulfo said. “We would make another call, knock on another door.” 

What kept him going was the vision: a place where all types of padel players could belong. Older players who could no longer play tennis might find a second home in padel. Kids just starting out might grow up to become the first generation of professional padel players. 

“We’ve seen members who arrived disengaged and now live much healthier and more active lives,” he said.” Not because they were chasing fitness, but because they found a community.”

That sense of discovery is part of what makes padel unique. Played with walls and built around partnership, it blends strategy, movement, and collaboration in ways that are hard to explain until you step on the court.

When Bay Padel opened its first location, players started arriving before the courts were even finished. Early adopters, many from Europe and Latin America, had been waiting for a place to play. But the goal was always to grow the sport locally, introducing the sport to new players through coaching, clinics, and community-building clubs like the one on Strava.

As padel grows, Strava has evolved alongside it, adding the sport so players can log sessions, track improvement, and build community in one place.

“I’ve started using it recently and really enjoy having padel recognized as its own sport [on Strava],” said Gandulfo.“ It’s been helpful to get more accurate metrics, especially around calories burned.” 

Bringing padel to the Bay Area was a bold bet. For Gandulfo, the future is clear: continued growth, deeper competition, and more ways for players to connect.

“Strava is the perfect partner to help padel become something that everyone in the US knows and wants to play,” he said. “The people who have truly grown this sport aren’t us; they’re every player who walked in, fell in love with it, kept coming back.” 

That’s how sports grow. That’s how communities are built.