OpenCourt

The challenge

Padel is the UK's fastest-growing sport, but actually getting a game is still organised chaos: WhatsApp groups, message chains, and the eternal hunt for a fourth player at the right level. Courts are bookable — games aren't findable.

The hard part isn't the feed, it's the last slot. When two players race to join the same game, exactly one of them can win — and the app has to get that right every single time.

What we built

OpenCourt lets any player host a session — venue, time, format (doubles, americano, mexicano and more), a level band on the standard 1.0–7.0 padel scale, and open slots, including guests the host brings along. Everyone else gets a geo-filtered feed of nearby games based on their home location and radius.

Joining is instant and race-safe: capacity is enforced inside the database transaction itself, so two players grabbing the last slot can never both win. Roster changes, cancellations, and match reminders arrive as push notifications driven straight from the database — 24 hours and 2 hours before you play.

Sharing is built for how padel is actually organised: one tap posts the session to WhatsApp, and the link opens a public session page that works without an account — sign up and you land straight back in the game you came for. Underneath sits a trust layer: peer level ratings that verify a player's self-rated level, reports and blocks, and attendance history ready to power reliability badges.

• Host sessions with format, level band, and open slots
• Geo-filtered feed of games near your home radius
• Instant, race-safe joining — enforced in the database
• Standard 1.0–7.0 padel levels in plain English
• WhatsApp-first sharing with public session links
• Push reminders and live roster updates
• Peer level ratings that verify player levels
• Reports, blocks, and attendance reliability built in
• iOS, Android, and web from one codebase

The outcome

OpenCourt turns 'anyone up for a game?' into a two-tap flow — post it, share it, watch it fill. Built on the same engineering standards as our commercial platforms, it's launching around London's anchor padel clubs first, with real venues seeded across the UK.