Real estate
Property owners and developers with exceptional locations — and space that deserves a destination.
Partners
Build what's
next with us.
weRally is a new padel and social club coming to the DC metro area. We're building it with the property owners, brands and organisations who want to build something people talk about.
Brands
Consumer, fitness, lifestyle, food, beverage and technology brands who want to reach this audience in person.
Corporate
Companies looking for a better way to bring their people together than another offsite.
Community
Organisations growing the sport, the city, and the number of people who play it.
What we're building
A four-court padel club built around organised play rather than court rental. Padel is doubles-only, which means every booked hour brings four people through the door — and a club that organises the play brings them on weeknights, not just Saturday mornings.
The operating thesis is simple: courts are a commodity, matching players is not. Programming — open play, level-banded sessions, leagues — is what drives midweek utilisation, and midweek utilisation is what makes the rent work.
What a padel club does for a property
We're interested in exceptional locations that can become destinations for play, community and culture — including space that's hard to let for anything else.
- Long dwell time
- A padel session runs 90 minutes and people stay afterwards. That's meaningfully longer than a gym visit and it lands in the evening.
- Counter-cyclical hours
- Peak demand is weekday evenings and weekends — the hours when office-adjacent retail is otherwise quiet.
- Repeat, local, affluent traffic
- Members come multiple times a week from within a short drive. It's recurring footfall, not destination footfall.
- Works on awkward space
- Courts need clear height and a rectangle. They don't need frontage, storefront glazing, or ground-floor retail position.
- An amenity, not a competitor
- Padel doesn't compete with food, retail, or fitness tenants nearby — it feeds them.
The category
A new category is emerging.
Padel is growing from a sport into a global social and lifestyle category. We believe the next generation of clubs will be built around more than courts — they'll be built around community, recurring experiences, and belonging.
- A growing sport
- Padel is one of the fastest-growing racket sports in the world, and the US is early.
- Recurring revenue
- Memberships, court time, coaching, leagues and events — repeat behaviour, not one-off visits.
- Community effect
- The more people who play at a club, the easier it is to get a game — and the harder the club is to leave.
- Multiple revenue streams
- Courts, membership, coaching, events, partnerships, food and beverage.
Growth figures are sourced on the padel primer. Financial detail is shared directly with serious counterparties, not published here.
What a site needs to do
Court dimensions are fixed by the rules of the sport. Everything else has some give, and we'd rather start from what you have than hand you a wish list.
- Footprint
- A padel court is 20m × 10m (about 66ft × 33ft) plus run-off and circulation. Four courts plus lounge and back-of-house is our working brief.
- Clear height
- To be confirmedconfirmed minimum clear height requirement from the court installer
- Total area
- To be confirmedconfirmed total square footage requirement, indoor and outdoor variants
- Power / HVAC
- To be confirmedconfirmed electrical and HVAC load from the installer and MEP
- Parking
- To be confirmedparking ratio needed, per jurisdiction and per hour of peak play
- Term
- Ten years including options is the working assumption — court and enclosure capex needs a term long enough to amortise and to satisfy a lender.
- Zoning
- We'll want a written zoning determination for commercial recreation before an LOI. We do this work ourselves and don't expect the landlord to carry it.
Deal structures we'll talk about
We're flexible on structure and we'd rather find the shape that works for the asset than push one model.
Conventional lease
Standard term with landlord TI toward base-building work.
Percentage rent
Reduced base rent against a share of revenue. Works well where a landlord wants upside and we need the early years to breathe.
Short term with revenue share
If the site has a redevelopment horizon, we'll consider a shorter term — priced accordingly, with a relocation right or early-termination fee.
Ground lease on surface parking or vacant land
Outdoor courts on underused surface area. Low-impact, reversible, and fast to install.
Public-private
We're set up to work with municipal and parks authorities on publicly-owned land through a property use or lease agreement.
Who's behind it
weRally is founded by Ahmad Al Zabidi. He originated and developed a DMV racket-sports club concept — vision, financial model, site strategy and investor materials — before starting weRally, and previously held racket-sports management responsibility at the University Club of Washington, DC. He is a squash coach.
The business plan, financial model, site analysis and competitive research are complete and available to serious counterparties on request.
Detailed financials are shared directly, not published here.
Start a conversation
Property, brand, corporate or community — tell us what you have in mind and the right person comes back to you quickly.