A TURNING POINT for PADEL RATINGS?

Could a partnership between Playtomic and DUPR signal the end to a regular issue for padel players – the difficulty in finding suitable opposition to play when scheduling a game with strangers? Jethro Binns, co-founder of LevelTech and PadelLevels, explores how to build a working ratings system

Here is a question padel hasn’t answered yet: if you play at a club in Bristol, travel to Barcelona for a week, and want to book a game with strangers, how does anyone know what level you are? Right now, the honest answer is: it depends which platform you’re on. And even then, it only works if the club in Barcelona happens to use the same platform as the one in Bristol. Play somewhere else and the number stays behind. And even when it does travel, ask anyone who’s tried it and the same word comes up: calibration. The number doesn’t quite mean the same thing in both places.

That might sound like a minor inconvenience. It isn’t. It’s one of the most important structural problems the sport needs to solve before it gets much bigger.

Solving a problem

A signal appeared recently in racket sports that mostly went unnoticed outside the industry. Playtomic, one of the largest booking platforms around, announced a partnership with DUPR — the dominant ratings system in pickleball. On the surface it looked like a routine business collaboration. What it actually signals is something bigger: the ecosystem is beginning to separate into layers. Booking platforms manage courts and payments. Competition platforms run leagues and tournaments. And ratings are emerging as their own independent infrastructure — sitting underneath the sport rather than inside any single product.

This has already happened in squash, where SquashLevels provides portable ratings used across federations, clubs and competitions in dozens of countries. For the significant number of padel players in the UK who came from squash, this isn’t a theoretical concept — it’s something they’ve already lived. They know what it feels like to turn up at an unfamiliar club, share a number, and get into a competitive game. They know the difference it makes. Padel deserves the same.

It’s happened in tennis too, with UTR and WTN providing portable ratings across clubs, tournaments and regions. And most recently in pickleball, where DUPR has become the common language of player level – significant enough that Playtomic just announced a formal partnership with them.

In each case, players carry one number with them wherever they go. Padel hasn’t got there yet. But it will. And how it gets there matters enormously.

Too much choice?

The problem today is fragmentation. Almost every platform entering padel builds its own rating system. It’s an understandable instinct — if you’re running a booking or competition product, attaching a number to a player profile feels like a natural feature. But ratings are much harder to build properly than most people expect. And when every platform creates its own version, the sport ends up with multiple versions of reality.

A rating system owned by one platform will always be limited to that platform’s network

One system says you’re a 3.5. Playtomic says you’re a 4. Padel Mates calls you something else entirely. A tournament platform has its own scale altogether. Players quickly ask the obvious question: which one is real?

A player moving from Bristol to Barcelona should arrive with a number that still makes sense in the new environment

For a while, inconsistent ratings feel like a minor annoyance. But the effects compound. Padel works because it is open and social. One of the genuine joys of the sport is turning up at a club, booking a match, meeting strangers, and having a competitive game without knowing anyone beforehand. That openness depends on trust. Players trust that the match will be roughly balanced. They trust that the numbers next to names actually mean something. When ratings become unreliable, that trust erodes quietly and quickly. If players start experiencing more mismatches, it means court time can get wasted. Matches can also become one-sided or uncomfortable. As a result, behaviour often shifts in a way that’s hard to reverse – people retreat into closed WhatsApp groups, organising games only with people they already know are at a similar level. Open matches become less appealing. New players struggle to break into established networks.

This can all lead to sport becoming less accessible, less social and less “itself”.

The fix isn’t complicated in principle, even if it’s hard in practice. Ratings work best when they are neutral – when they sit underneath the ecosystem rather than inside a single product. Even the largest and best-resourced platforms in the sport have found this hard to solve alone. That’s not a reflection of effort or ambition. It’s a structural problem. A rating system owned by one platform will always be limited to that platform’s network. The moment a player steps outside it, the number stops meaning anything.

Keeping things open

The solution isn’t building a better walled garden. Rather, it is an independent infrastructure that any platform can plug into. When that layer works properly, a match played through a booking app, a league fixture and a tournament result can all feed into the same number. Players carry that number between clubs, cities and countries. It still means something when they arrive somewhere new.

That portability is what keeps the sport open. It’s what lets a player book a game with strangers in Barcelona and have a reasonable match, not a mismatch. It’s what lets clubs run open sessions without chaos. It’s what lets new players enter the ecosystem without needing personal introductions to find a game. The open approach means ratings stop being a feature – they become a foundation.

Building a system that works at scale is genuinely hard. A good rating needs to be stable enough not to swing wildly after one result, but responsive enough to reflect real improvement. It needs to recognise the difference between expected and unexpected outcomes – beating someone you were already supposed to beat shouldn’t inflate your rating, but a strong performance in defeat should still count for something.

Context matters too. A national championship match should carry more weight than a local league game. And padel adds extra complexity because it’s a doubles sport – partner strength changes expectations, and any serious model has to account for that.

Most critically, ratings need to stay calibrated across geography and time. A player moving from Bristol to Barcelona should arrive with a number that still makes sense in the new environment. Without that, the numbers eventually mean nothing at all.

Time to act

Padel is still early enough in its growth to build an efficient and working rating system properly. Other racket sports have already learned that ratings are infrastructure, not features. The Playtomic-DUPR partnership is one sign that even the largest platforms are starting to accept this. Proprietary rating systems create walled gardens. Independent ones create a sport that can grow while staying connected.

Get this right and padel grows together – players moving freely between clubs, cities and competitions with a level that travels with them. Get it wrong and the sport quietly fragments into disconnected pockets, each with their own language for competitive level, none of them compatible.

Ratings are not just numbers. They shape behaviour. And in a sport built around openness and spontaneity, they may turn out to be the most important piece of infrastructure padel builds.