"From the outset, Hurlands was built with scale in mind and community at its centre. Our role was to shape that ambition into a brand people genuinely want to be part of, creating something that feels as strong socially as it does commercially."

Jess Tofi. Brand Strategist

Defining a new standard for modern club culture through a brand built for growth, community and long-term loyalty.

When we first met the founders behind Hurlands, it was clear this wasn’t about building more courts. Pickleball and padel are accelerating at pace, but the real opportunity sat elsewhere, in creating a club that blends performance, community and experience into something people actively choose.

The ambition was bold from the outset. Backed by investors and driven by a genuine passion for play, the team wanted to build a destination that could stand apart from traditional sports centres. Not branding as decoration, but a brand strong enough to shape perception from day one and scale with long-term growth.

Our early conversations focused on the tension at the heart of the opportunity: how to combine competitive sport with social belonging, and how to create commercial value without losing authenticity. That clarity set the direction.

Building a brand that balances performance and belonging

The leisure market is crowded with functional venues that look and sound the same. For Hurlands to lead, it needed more than facilities, it needed a point of view.

Using our Value Realisation methodology, we established a strategic foundation shaped around three pillars: performance, community and experience. This included audience mapping across players, partners and investors, competitive landscape analysis within the fast-growing padel and pickleball sector and defining the white space between high-performance clubs and purely social venues.

From that work came a simple, ownable positioning:

Hurlands
A place to play. A place to belong.

This became the anchor for the identity and messaging system – confident without arrogance, ambitious without exclusion. The naming of key spaces, from The Clubhouse to The Holistic Studio and the Courts, reinforced the idea that every element was intentional and considered.

We delivered a complete strategic and creative rollout, including positioning, identity, tone of voice, messaging framework and launch assets, ensuring the brand was ready to attract players, partners and future investors from day one.