Game4Padel among first clubs to roll out new PadelLevels rating system

After a year of club pilots and a review of the options available to the sport, MATCHi has chosen PadelLevels as its rating partner and will integrate it across its platform, with Game4Padel among the first operators to roll it out.

Padel has grown faster than almost any sport in the world, but it has grown without a single way of knowing how good a player is. Levels are set by clubs, by coaches, by individual apps, or by players themselves, and none of them travel. MATCHi, one of the world’s leading booking and club management platforms for padel, and PadelLevels, the padel rating platform developed by LevelTech, today announced a strategic partnership intended to fix that: one portable rating that follows the player across clubs, platforms and countries.

MATCHi assessed the rating approaches available to the sport before selecting PadelLevels as its infrastructure partner, judging them on accuracy, independence and whether a player’s level could travel beyond a single platform. Rather than build another platform-specific level, MATCHi has chosen to back an independent rating layer that works outside its own walls, on the basis that a rating is only useful to players if it is trusted everywhere they play. Game4Padel, one of the UK’s largest padel operators and a long-term MATCHi partner, will be among the first operators to deploy PadelLevels across its network.

Andreas Karlsson, Commercial Director at MATCHi, said: “We looked hard at the options before committing. Padel needs a rating system that follows the player, not one that stays trapped inside a single platform, and that means it has to be independent infrastructure rather than a feature of one booking system. The pilot work has proven the concept in real clubs. Now we scale it.”

This announcement follows twelve months of live pilots across clubs using Matchpoint, a club management platform within the MATCHi group. East Grinstead Sports Club in the UK was among the clubs leading that process, providing real-world feedback that has directly shaped the implementation. The results demonstrated clear player demand: PadelLevels membership is now included within some club membership packages, a commercial signal that players value a trusted rating and that clubs benefit from providing one.

The rating itself is already proven at scale. LevelTech’s algorithm powers SquashLevels, the world’s leading squash rating system, which has processed more than 7.5 million results across over 30 countries. It is also used to deliver the World Junior Ratings in association with the World Squash Federation, with SquashLevels backed by the Professional Squash Association. The underlying algorithm has been independently validated and received performance certification from the Global Sports Innovation Center, powered by Microsoft.

The partnership will now extend PadelLevels integration across the full Matchpoint club network, with integration into the MATCHi consumer booking platform, including its open match functionality, to follow later on.

Two padel players at a Game4Padel club, with 2 icons showing their new PadelLevels player rating.

Game4Padel’s long-term agreement with MATCHi will make PadelLevels ratings available to all players across its sites. For a multi-venue operator, a portable rating solves a practical problem: players who move between locations keep one level, matchmaking works consistently across the estate, and social and competitive play can be organised without relying on self-declared ability.

Vincent Hivert, Co-Founder at Game4Padel, said: "Our players move between our venues, and increasingly between clubs and countries. A rating that travels with them makes the game easier to organise and more rewarding to play. Combining MATCHi’s platform with PadelLevels gives us the tools to do that properly, and we are excited to bring it to our players.”

Jethro Binns, Co-Founder at PadelLevels and LevelTech, said: "Every racket sport that has reached maturity has gone through this transition, the moment when fragmented local ratings start giving way to a portable player identity. A platform of MATCHi’s scale choosing to back independent infrastructure rather than build its own walled version accelerates that by years. Having an operator of Game4Padel’s standing involved from the start matters too, because ratings only become infrastructure when the places people actually play adopt them. The ambition is not to own the ecosystem. It is to help connect it.”