How to Find a Padel Court in London Using Claude or ChatGPT

Q: What other sports does this work for?

The same connector handles tennis, football, squash, and swimming in addition to padel. Try prompts like "find me a tennis court near Clapham for Saturday morning" or "show me swimming lane times at Better Camden tomorrow."

You can now find a London padel court using Claude or ChatGPT by connecting LayUp's Model Context Protocol (MCP) server — paste one URL into your assistant's connectors menu, then ask for the court, time, and price you want in plain English. The assistant searches every major platform LayUp aggregates — Playtomic, Matchi, Padel Mates, Royal Parks, and ClubSpark — in a single query and returns direct booking links to the provider.

This guide walks through the 60-second setup, the prompts that work best, and an honest note on what the AI does and doesn't do for you. Today, the assistant finds slots; you complete the booking on the provider's site. No payment, no account access, no on-your-behalf booking yet — that comes in a later phase.

Why this is useful for padel specifically

London padel is split across at least five booking platforms that don't share inventory. Playtomic covers most independent venues — Rocks Lane, Padel Box Bermondsey, Social Sports Society, Padel4Everyone, Padel Tree, Stratford Padel Club. Matchi covers the Game4Padel group exclusively — Crystal Palace, Vauxhall, Wandsworth, Coldharbour, Heathrow, Southall. Padel Mates covers Padium Canary Wharf and Rocket Padel Battersea. The Royal Parks team handles Hyde Park and Regent's Park. And ClubSpark catches the LTA-affiliated outdoor courts.

The result: a player who looks on Playtomic, sees "nothing available," and assumes London is full — when the other four platforms have open slots they never checked. Last week alone, LayUp's database held 29,861 bookable padel slots across London in the next 7 days, sourced from all five platforms.

Connecting LayUp to Claude or ChatGPT collapses that "check five sites" problem into one chat prompt. The assistant calls a single API, gets back results from every platform, and presents them as a unified list.

Set it up in 60 seconds

Claude (claude.ai)

Open Settings → Connectors.
Click Add custom connector.
Paste this URL: https://mcp.layupsport.com
Save. The three tools (search_slots, list_sports, get_venue) appear automatically.

Available on Claude Pro, Team, and Enterprise plans. No LayUp account required — the server is anonymous.

ChatGPT

Enable Developer mode in your ChatGPT settings (currently required for custom MCP connectors).
Add a new custom MCP server with the same URL above.
Start a chat and ask away.

Cursor, Cline, Continue, or any MCP-capable assistant

Open your client's MCP config (often ~/.cursor/mcp.json or equivalent) and add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "layup": {
      "url": "https://mcp.layupsport.com"
    }
  }
}

Reload the client. The same three tools become available.

The same dedicated instructions page is also available at app.layupsport.com/connect if you'd rather follow it there.

What you can ask — five prompts that work well

Once connected, treat the assistant like a search bar that understands sentences. Some prompts that map cleanly onto what the server can do:

1. Specific filter

"Find me a padel court in Hackney for Friday evening under £30."

The assistant calls search_slots({sport: "Padel", area: "Hackney", time_from: "18:00", max_price: 30}) and returns up to 15 results ranked by start time. Each result shows the venue, London-local time, price (or Check App if the provider doesn't publish it), the provider, and a direct booking link.

2. Comparison

"Compare padel availability at Padium Canary Wharf vs Rocket Padel Battersea this week."

The assistant typically runs two searches — one per venue_slug — and synthesises the difference in availability, pricing, and peak-slot density.

3. Last-minute

"Anything for padel tonight in central London under £25?"

search_slots with a tight time window. Useful for catching late cancellations across multiple platforms in one query.

4. Drill into one venue

"What else is on at Padium Canary Wharf this weekend?"

The assistant calls get_venue with the venue_slug from a previous result, returning the venue's full upcoming schedule.

5. Orientation

"What sports does LayUp cover and how much is available next week?"

Calls list_sports, returns the count of bookable slots across the five sports LayUp covers (Football, Tennis, Squash, Padel, Swimming). As of June 2026: roughly 30,000 padel, 38,000 tennis, 10,000 football, 7,000 squash, and 15,000 swimming slots in any given 7-day window across London.

What it does (and doesn't do)

Being honest about the boundaries matters — overpromising will lose your trust on the first failed prompt.

The assistant CAN:

Search every London padel platform LayUp aggregates in a single tool call.
Filter by sport, borough or venue name, date range, time of day, max price, and booking type (court / pitch / spot).
Return London-local times, published prices, spaces remaining, and provider names.
Hand you a direct booking link to the provider's own site.
Drill into a single venue's schedule.
Compare areas, time windows, or price tiers across multiple queries.

The assistant CAN'T (today):

Book on your behalf. Every result is read-only — the AI shows you the slot and hands you a link. You sign in on the provider's site (Playtomic, Matchi, Padel Mates, etc.) and complete the booking there.
Pay through the assistant. No Stripe handoff yet. The provider takes payment on their platform.
Hold or reserve a slot. The MCP server is stateless. The assistant can't lock a slot while you decide.
Access your LayUp account. The server is fully anonymous. No favourites, no past bookings, no personalisation.
Find slots outside London. The dataset is London-only.
Find sports outside the five. Rugby, basketball, climbing, golf, etc. aren't in the dataset.
Search by walking distance or postcode. The area filter is free-text match on borough, council, or venue name — there's no geocoded radius.

The Phase 2 surface — booking-through-the-assistant via OAuth and Stripe Checkout — is on the roadmap, gated on the partnerships we're working through with each platform. Today's "find and link out" surface is genuinely useful for the cross-platform padel problem; it just isn't a one-click-book channel.

Tips for getting better answers

A few prompting patterns that consistently produce cleaner results:

Be specific about time. "Friday evening" works; "the evening" is too vague — the AI may pick a random day. Pair area + day + time-of-day for sharpest results.
Use real area names. "Hackney", "Southwark", "Canary Wharf", "Clapham" all match cleanly. "Near the river" or "central-ish" don't — the server does free-text matching, not semantic geography.
State a price ceiling. Most padel slots in London fall between £20 and £101 per court. A max_price of 25 or 30 filters out premium venues; 100 includes everything.
Treat "Check App" results as legitimate. Some providers (especially Playtomic and ClubSpark) don't publish prices in the feed. Those slots are kept in results with a Check App flag — usually meaning the price is members-only or depends on peak/off-peak. Click through to the booking link to see the actual number.
Ask follow-ups. If the first search comes back empty, ask the assistant to widen the area, the time, or the price. The tool call is fast — there's no penalty for iterating.
Ask "how confident are you?" for unfamiliar venues. The assistant can tell you the provider, location, and any eligibility flags (e.g. members-only or women-only sessions are surfaced as eligibility_restricted: true).

How this compares to the LayUp app

For browsing, comparing, and quick filtering, the LayUp app is still the cleanest experience — visual map, calendar view, multi-day comparison side-by-side, and detail pages with photos.

For sentence-driven queries while you're already in a chat — drafting a Slack message, planning a session over WhatsApp, or asking your AI assistant something completely unrelated and then pivoting to "actually find me a court" — the MCP server is the more frictionless path. You don't switch tabs.

In practice, regular users seem to use both: the app for browsing and venue research, the AI assistant for "I have 90 minutes free at 7pm — find me something" prompts where speed beats UI.

Privacy and how the data flows

The MCP server is anonymous — it accepts no credentials, writes nothing back to LayUp, and is purely a read interface over the same public availability data the LayUp app shows. Your AI assistant sees only what a member of the public sees.

Provider data sourced via the OpenActive Open Booking ecosystem (Better, Everyone Active, Gladstone, Bookteq, Premier Tennis) is licensed CC-BY-4.0; the rest comes through direct integrations with the operators.

The full install instructions, tool descriptions, and example prompts live at app.layupsport.com/connect — that page is the canonical reference, kept in sync with this post.

Frequently asked questions

Does this cost anything?

No. The MCP server is free to use, requires no LayUp account, and asks for no API key. The cost on your side is whatever your AI assistant subscription is (Claude Pro, ChatGPT Plus, etc.).

Can Claude or ChatGPT actually book the court for me?

Not today. The assistant finds the slot and hands you a direct booking link. You sign in on the provider's platform (Playtomic, Matchi, Padel Mates, or wherever the venue lives) and pay there. Booking-through-the-assistant is a planned Phase 2 surface that requires OAuth and per-provider partnership agreements we're still working through.

Why not just use the LayUp app or the Playtomic app directly?

You can — both work. The MCP connector is useful in two specific moments. First: when you're already in chat (drafting a message, planning over WhatsApp, asking the AI something else), pivoting to "find me a slot" without leaving the assistant is meaningfully faster than opening five apps. Second: when you don't know which platform a venue uses — instead of guessing between Playtomic and Matchi, the assistant searches both at once.

What if my favourite venue isn't returned?

A handful of London padel venues aren't in the LayUp dataset yet (typically very new openings or invite-only clubs). If you can find a venue on its platform's app but not in a LayUp search, ping us — adding a new source usually takes a few days. The 29,861 bookable padel slots LayUp returns in any given week is current at time of writing, but the dataset grows continuously.

Will the AI see my LayUp bookings or account?

No. The MCP server is anonymous and read-only. It has no access to your account, no favourites, no past bookings, no personal data of any kind. The assistant sees exactly what an anonymous visitor to app.layupsport.com sees — public availability only.

What other sports does this work for?

The same connector handles tennis, football, squash, and swimming in addition to padel. Try prompts like "find me a tennis court near Clapham for Saturday morning" or "show me swimming lane times at Better Camden tomorrow."

What does "Check App" mean in a result?

Some providers (especially Playtomic and ClubSpark) don't publish prices in the data feed — usually because pricing depends on membership tier, peak/off-peak, or a member-only discount. Those slots are kept in your results with a Check App flag rather than dropped. Click through to the booking link to see the actual price.