Padel data
When it’s actually hard to get a court in Lithuania
We went through 154,691 time windows at 63 arenas over two weeks. The short answer is 19:00. The longer one is more interesting.
Across the whole network, occupancy runs at 35%. That sounds like “there’s always something free”, but the average is lying to you. A third of those windows are 07:00 on a Thursday or 23:00 on a Sunday, when the court is waiting for you like a loyal dog. Real life happens in three hours of the evening.
The hour-by-hour heatmap
The day goes like this: a sleepy morning, a middling lunchtime, and then everything catches fire at 17:00. After work it’s a wall. Indoor courts hit 56% at 19:00; outdoor ones only 33%. The numbers in the table are occupancy, in per cent.
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All courts | 28 | 29 | 32 | 36 | 38 | 36 | 34 | 33 | 31 | 33 | 38 | 46 | 50 | 43 | 32 | 28 | 18 |
| Indoor | 30 | 32 | 36 | 41 | 43 | 41 | 39 | 38 | 34 | 37 | 43 | 53 | 56 | 48 | 36 | 30 | 20 |
| Outdoor | 16 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 22 | 21 | 19 | 18 | 18 | 20 | 25 | 29 | 33 | 30 | 17 | 18 | 4 |
Indoor vs outdoor: not really rivals
Indoor occupancy is 39%, outdoor 21%. In early July, with 25°C outside, you’d expect the opposite. But padel players pick the roof: no wind, a consistent bounce, no sun in your eyes. An outdoor court in Lithuania is still the “if there’s no indoor left” option rather than a first choice.
The third, quiet winner is the singles court— the narrow one-on-one kind. There aren’t many, but they run at 47%, the highest of the lot. The clubs that have one know it.
Cities: Kaunas doesn’t let go
The capital has the most courts, but not the worst crush. At peak (18:00–20:00) Kaunas hits 57%, Vilnius 54%, Klaipėda 47%. Kaunas holds 52% occupancy around the clock on roughly the same supply as Klaipėda — the people there simply play more.
| City | Windows | Booked |
|---|---|---|
| Kaunas | 23,592 | 52% |
| Vilnius | 50,062 | 41% |
| Palanga | 3,983 | 38% |
| Klaipėda | 26,246 | 35% |
| Panevėžys | 10,065 | 11% |
| Šiauliai | 12,523 | 9% |
The bottom of that table is partly misleading. Some regional and outdoor courts don’t report live booking state into our system, so real occupancy in Panevėžys and Šiauliai sits somewhere above what you see. Even allowing for that, the picture holds: padel demand is still concentrated in Kaunas and on the coast.
Pricier ≠ emptier
Logic says the cheap slots go first. The data says the reverse. Windows at €15–20 are 37% booked; the cheapest ones, under €10, only 27%. The median booked court costs €12, the median free one €10.
The reason is simple. A pricier court usually means a new indoor arena in Vilnius or Kaunas at the height of the peak. People aren’t paying for cheap — they’re paying for 19:00 with a roof over it. Price here isn’t a barrier, it’s a symptom of peak.
The weekend isn’t the busy day
The most surprising detail: the days barely differ. Thursday is the densest at 38%, Sunday one of the emptiest at 34%. Padel in Lithuania has become a weekday evening ritual, not a weekend outing. Want to play with friends at 11:00 on a Saturday? There’ll be room. Tuesday at 19:00? Call ahead.
What to do with it
If your schedule is flexible, play before 17:00 or after 21:00 and you’ll get almost any court the same day. If it has to be the evening and every indoor slot is gone, take an outdoor court in July: at 19:00 an outdoor court is free three times as often as an indoor one, and the weather is fine anyway. And if you haven’t booked an 18:00–20:00 indoor court in Kaunas or Vilnius, you simply aren’t playing.
Calculated from 154,691 time windows at 63 arenas (2026-06-24 – 2026-07-08). Occupancy = booked windows / all windows. Data for regional and some outdoor courts may be partial where an arena does not report live booking state.