Racket sports at Basildon Sporting Village

The hall where league table tennis is played now shares its site with the borough's first padel courts.

Basildon Sporting Village on Cranes Farm Road has been a table tennis venue for years — the league's own site listed sessions there under the SETTS banner back in 2017, on Friday afternoons and evenings. It is still the largest indoor sports site in the borough.

Padel arrived in May 2025

On 2 May 2025 the site opened four padel courts, the first in the borough. Three are covered and one is open-air, all with automated LED floodlighting, and a clubhouse with a café and bar was built alongside. The courts were opened by Everyone Active, Basildon Borough Council and the operator, PadelStars, with the first full weekend of play on 3 May.

Booking is through the PadelStars app. Pricing is charged per player per session rather than per court — between £7.50 and £10.00 at the time of writing. That distinction matters: several listing sites republish the figure as a per-court hourly rate, which makes padel in Basildon look four times more expensive than it is.

How the two sports compare for a newcomer

Table tennis in the district runs on a club and league model: you turn up to an open session, and if you want competition you join one of the clubs and play in the league. Equipment is cheap, sessions cost a few pounds, and the season runs September to spring.

Padel runs on a court-booking model: you book a slot, bring three other people or join a mix-in, and pay per session. There is no league to join locally yet. Rackets are available to hire at the venue, so the entry cost is a booking rather than a membership.

The two are not competing for the same evening. Table tennis in Basildon is played in community halls on club nights; padel is booked by the hour at the Sporting Village and at David Lloyd on Festival Leisure Park.

Why padel grew so fast

The LTA estimates that around 860,000 people played padel in Great Britain during 2025, more than double the previous year. Basildon's courts were part of that wave, and Essex now has venues in Billericay, Brentwood, Grays and Southend as well.

Table tennis participation has not moved the same way. Search interest in the sport across the UK rose during 2026, but the rise tracked two events — the ITTF World Team Championships Finals at Copper Box Arena and Wembley from 28 April to 10 May 2026, and a film release — rather than a lasting change in how many people are looking for somewhere to play.

Both, if you like

The overlap is real: racket sports players tend to try the other codes, and the Sporting Village is the one site in Basildon where you can do both. If you came here looking for a table tennis session, the open sessions are the place to start.

Details checked 2026-09-17. Venues and session times change — if something here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed and re-dated.