Ali Abdulla Al Arif

In this story

1. An idea for a warehouse
2. Taking the model to Mansfield
3. What happened after the opening
4. Why the junior programme matters to him
5. Making a network feel familiar
6. A tour and a healthcare partnership
7. A Gulf opening and a different kind of audience
8. From operator to an investment discussion
9. Two different kinds of partnership expansion

An idea for a warehouse

Ali Abdulla Al Arif's account of World Padel Academy begins with a modest idea: a couple of courts in a warehouse. He enjoyed padel and could see how few places there were to play in Dubai. In his interview with The Bandeja, he recalls that initial thought becoming four courts in Al Quoz, followed by further expansion. The business grew from a place he wanted to play into an operation he wanted other people to return to.

Al Arif is chief executive of SPADREC Investment Group, according to his Padel World Summit biography, and the founder of World Padel Academy. He also works within Abdulla Al Arif Holding, whose interests extend into construction and real estate. In an earlier Padel Magazine interview, he connected that construction-family background with the move into sport. His padel business therefore developed alongside experience of buildings, investment and operating companies, rather than as an isolated sporting project.

The Arabian Articles' published profile records a finance degree from Arizona State University and participation in the inaugural Hamdan bin Mohammed Student Personal Development Programme. It also describes lessons he drew from growing up around a family business: doing work thoroughly, treating sport as a place to build character and valuing the community around a company.

A more specific expression of those influences appears in the way he describes a venue. He wants a player to arrive before a booking, sit down, meet someone and remain after the match. His ambition is for the facility to become a familiar place in a person's routine. Courts are the reason to visit, but coaching, a front desk and somewhere to spend time are part of the business he is trying to build.

Taking the model to Mansfield

Mansfield gave that model a different setting. WPA's first British centre was developed with Mansfield Town Football Club, at the club's One Call Stadium. The Bandeja's interview described a four-covered-court project costing around £1 million and identified WPA UK chief operating officer James Bowring as instrumental in bringing it to his home town. It was a partnership with local knowledge, not a project Al Arif delivered alone.

The route was slower than he was used to. Al Arif told the publication that entering the British market had involved red tape and delays. He contrasted it with his experience of establishing operations in the Gulf. Rather than presenting the first venue as a repeatable success from the outset, he described it as a learning exercise whose experience could make subsequent openings easier.

The Stadium Business later reported that the Mansfield facility had opened, following council approval. Its account described four courts and a clubhouse with reception, food and beverage provision and a retail store. That report separates a completed site from the much larger network proposed around it. In the earlier interview, Al Arif discussed investment of up to £10 million and a minimum of five covered or indoor British centres. Those were expansion plans, not a report that the full network already existed.

His preferred concept involved more than fitting courts into an available plot. He described centres with coaching, training space, social areas, a shop and a café, with programmes for beginners, juniors and more experienced competitors. The British plans also included after-school activity and events for different groups of players. The shape of the intended business was recognisable from Dubai, even though securing a site and opening it required a different local process.

What happened after the opening

A subsequent account from Mansfield Town Community Trust provides evidence of activity after the opening announcements. The Trust reported that children from its holiday camps and school curriculum days had taken part in padel sessions. This is a concrete connection between the new facility and an existing local organisation with access to schools and families. It shows how the community idea entered a programme already operating in the town.

The Trust also recorded a visit by Al Arif, who played at the facilities and met people involved in the partnership. Its photograph identified Bowring, WPA Mansfield head coach Hugo Da Silva, Trust business development manager Alex Cartwright and former professional footballer Kris Commons alongside him. Those named roles make the partnership more specific: the business leader, local operating team, coach and community organisation each had a part.

Why the junior programme matters to him

Al Arif gives junior participation particular importance. In the Bandeja interview, he explained that a child who wants to attend brings a family to the venue. He also saw young players as the future of the sport. The programme he described began with helping children become comfortable on court, with dedicated coaches and the option to progress toward competition or continue playing for enjoyment.

Training was already prominent in his earlier Padel Magazine conversation. He described WPA as an academy rather than a conventional club, with more than thirteen coaches then working to the same methodology. In that interview he was also looking ahead to participation in an international club competition in Málaga. His declared ambition was to win and to represent the UAE.

A later report on the Dubai Open Padel Academies Tournament documents a wider competitive setting. Organised by Dubai Sports Council with the UAE Tennis and Padel Association and WPA, the event brought together twenty-nine youth teams comprising fifty-eight players from eleven academies. The categories were under-twelve, under-fourteen and under-sixteen. WPA's Dubai headquarters hosted the tournament, placing its facilities within a programme involving other academies and public sporting organisations.

Al Arif's comments in that report focused on giving younger players opportunities to challenge themselves, learn and develop. Other organisers discussed observing players and helping them move into further development pathways. The joint tournament extended WPA's competitive activity beyond its own regular lessons.

Making a network feel familiar

As the number of locations increased, Al Arif described a shared operating method managed from Dubai. Coaches and programmes were to follow a common approach. He even mentioned using the same fragrance across venues so that a visitor could recognise the environment before looking for the logo. It is an unusually tangible detail in an expansion discussion, showing his attention to the experience around the game as well as the playing surface.

Technology had a defined place in that model. The Bandeja reported Playtomic as the selected booking system for the British centres. Yet Al Arif's emphasis on a proper front desk and coaching team suggested that digital convenience was not meant to replace face-to-face service. The two served different parts of the visit: arranging time on court and helping a person feel comfortable once there.

His view of competition was also more open than a simple contest for existing bookings. He said WPA had benefited when other clubs opened nearby in Dubai because more people began playing, and those players then looked for a venue that suited them. He welcomed the improvement he had observed in London's padel offer.

For expansion, he placed people and partnerships ahead of a race to add courts. In the same interview, he warned against opening hundreds of courts quickly if standards could not be maintained. Choosing the right partners, landlords and locations mattered more to him than pursuing an impressive number. The Mansfield experience gave that preference a practical backdrop: an unfamiliar approval process and a local team mattered to getting even the first venue open.

A tour and a healthcare partnership

The Emirates NBD Padel Tour supplied another route into organised play. In its announcement, the bank described a season planned with WPA across the UAE and Saudi Arabia, involving eight events and an announced combined prize pool of AED 300,000. The partnership included players of different ages and levels. Al Arif's stated purpose was to provide competition while building a community around the sport.

The announcement also made the division of work visible. Emirates NBD was the title sponsor, while WPA was the sporting partner. The bank's representative spoke about support for participation; Al Arif spoke about a platform for players to compete and develop. That is a different kind of growth from opening a new centre: using a series of events and a partner's support to create reasons for players to stay involved.

A report on the Dune Classic supplies a later example of the tour in operation. The event took place at WPA's Al Quoz facility as the sixth stop in the series. It offered two men's categories: an open category allowing one coach per team, and another for emerging players. The announced prize pool was AED 31,500. Al Arif described the event as part of the community he wanted to build, with the sponsor helping WPA develop the competition.

A separate collaboration with Aster DM Healthcare addressed the services around participation. Its announcement named Medcare and Aster Pharmacy as health and wellness partners for WPA. Proposed services included on-call physiotherapy, rehabilitation and recovery support, sports nutrition advice, health screening activity and a wellness kiosk. Support for junior academy open days was also part of the announced programme.

Al Arif linked that partnership with his interest in athletic performance and personal wellbeing. The planned partnership would bring medical and wellness providers into an academy environment that already included court hire, coaching and retail.

A Gulf opening and a different kind of audience

The Bahrain opening added another example of the partnership structure behind WPA's growth. The published launch account described five indoor courts, including a main court, developed by Kanoo Real Estate through cooperation between SPADREC and Bahrain's Court Side Sports. The facility was also intended to become the headquarters of the Bahraini Victorious padel team. Al Arif spoke at the opening about bringing the academy's coaching offer into Bahrain, while local general manager Ali Dawani discussed developing local talent.

The responsibilities in that account were distributed across the developer, operating partners and local management. Bahrain offered an international step within the Gulf, while Mansfield required a different planning process and a football-club partnership. Al Arif's comments connected both with the academy's coaching standards, but the arrangements were specific to each location.

WPA's Sharjah venue also became a stage for people known primarily through another sport. In his remarks to Sharjah24 during the Week of Football Stars, Al Arif described thirty-six international football players and legends taking part in the padel event. The academy hosted the competition organised by Sharjah's tourism authority. He linked the event with sports tourism and attracting familiar sporting names to the emirate. It brought a different audience to the courts from the junior academy players and regular club users.

From operator to an investment discussion

Al Arif's public work also includes speaking about the investment behind sports venues. SPADREC's account of the Padel World Summit in Barcelona records him attending with chief operating officer Sigi Meeuws and speaking on the Investor Forum panel, Capital for Courts & Communities. The organiser's programme separately lists him alongside other investors and operators. The session concerned financing new clubs, property, partnerships and international growth.

This was a different audience from the players entering a WPA academy. He was representing a group whose official portfolio extends beyond padel: PractiCal, a meal-plan provider; SportsLab, focused on sports products and supply; and a sports-technology platform built around performance data and progress tracking. SPADREC also describes a partnership with Mouratoglou Tennis Center connecting tennis and padel through player development. Those are group activities, not products or agreements attributed to Al Arif alone.

The summit account named facility operations, coaching development, technology, events and participant experience among the discussions. That range corresponds with the operating details Al Arif had discussed in his interview, from the reception team to programmes for young players. His place on the panel brought an operator's experience into a conversation about capital: the decision to fund a court is followed by the work of staffing it, organising play and keeping the visitor experience consistent.

Two different kinds of partnership expansion

The SIRO One Za'abeel collaboration brought WPA courts into a Dubai hospitality setting centred on movement and recovery. SPADREC's account described the courts as opened and connected the project with coaching, community play and the host's performance-focused environment. It was an extension of the academy into another operator's destination, rather than simply another stand-alone club carrying the same name.

The Oman agreement was at a different stage in the available accounts. WPA and SPADREC announced a partnership with Crystal Shine Services to establish an academy in the Sultanate. WPA's account described a signing ceremony at the Mandarin Oriental Muscat, with plans for junior programmes, adult academies, private coaching, tournaments and community events. These programmes were presented as plans within the partnership announcement.

Al Arif's comments about Oman returned to consistency of coaching, operations and player experience. The country represented a further opportunity to use the academy model, but it would depend on another partnership and local delivery. The agreement added another partner to the developing network.

His wider ambitions include more international markets and a more digital player journey, with personalised training and performance assessment tools described in his published profile. These plans follow a series of more immediate projects: a warehouse idea, a British site slowed by approvals, named partners bringing children to play, a shared coaching approach and a series of collaborations around the court.