A new website for the London padel community called Playskan condenses the major court booking sites into one hub and scans them to easily find available times and relevant prices.
Playskan was created by Henri Happonen and Sara Farzanehfar in order to give players a more useful way of booking a court and shortening the efforts it takes to find a slot that works for you.
Speaking to The Padel Paper, co-founder Happonen explained where the idea for Playskan first developed: “Playskan is effectively a padel search engine, the first of its kind, where you can find all your information in one place.
“Think similar to something like Skyscanner for travelling. There was not anything within the padel industry that acted as an online aggregator. Now I live in London, it could be quite difficult to find a court, so that was where my idea first come to mind.”
Happonen moved to London to study Economics at King’s College London, but developed a passion for coding during his COVID-affected final year at university.
After gaining experience in the tech industry, Happonen became a data scientist and currently works at travel website Expedia, allowing him to build the foundations for the creation of Playskan.
“It started as more of a side project, really,” said Happonen. “The idea came to mind at the start of 2025, but it is only in the last two months or so that I have thought of it as a serious project and that it could become a big thing.”
During his youth in Finland, Happonen was raised in a sporting family. His father played tennis, while his two sisters played tennis and golf. This encouraged him to take up junior tennis for 10 years, before deciding against turning pro in 2016 in order to focus on his education.
“I used to play maybe four times a week, but when I stopped playing tennis, me and a few friends started to play padel. This was around 2016, which was when it really peaked in Finland, and it was a great way to socialise with people without going to the pub or a party.
“I was surprised when I came to London to see that padel had not peaked yet and it is still a growing sport. I have rediscovered the sport since I moved here and it is great to see so many people playing, even celebrities like Tom Holland and Stormzy.
“For a growing sport, we have still managed to get some good feedback on the site. Of course, there are still things that we would like to add, but we probably have around 600 users a month at the moment, so it is nice to see that people are finding it useful this early on.”
