Corporate events built to compete
Corporate events, done different — away days and leagues built around real competition, with the sports-driven edge that gets your people actually turning up.
The events
Start with a single day or run a season — your company, or against others in your industry. Every one is handicapped so everyone takes part.
A 2-hour session, a half day or a full day, built as a real competition — handicapped so everyone plays, and nobody's forgotten it by August.
Book a callOne of your teams across several days — something to keep turning up for, not a one-off high.
Book a callA bigger day with several companies on the same field. Your people meet their peers at other firms — and try to beat them.
Book a callThe full thing: your company against others over a season, ending in a Finals.
Book a callWhat a session looks like
Coaching to get everyone going, games to mix the teams, a mini tournament, then sports-day games to finish. Everything is handicapped, so a first-timer and a county player both have something to lose.
Quick coaching tips to get everyone playing, whatever their level.
Fun, fast games that mix the teams up and get people talking.
Short padel and tennis tournaments, handicapped so anyone can win a match.
Relays, dodgeball, capture the flag, tug of war — nobody stays on the sideline.
A 2-hour session, a half day or a full day. We build the programme around your time.
Our home venue
Ludus runs at Down Hall Hotel, Spa & Estate — a 110-acre country estate 45 minutes from London, and the only hotel in the South East with its own padel court.
Down Hall Hotel, Spa & Estate — Hatfield Heath, Essex.
Down Hall is our designated events venue — and Ludus is theirs. It's a reciprocal partnership: their corporate guests come to us for the competition, and our companies bring their people to the estate.
It's the home of the Ludus Games — two courts, 110 acres of grounds, and everything a full day or an overnight needs, in one place.
Visit Down HallFilmed on the day
No conference room and no lanyards. Your people pull up at a country estate with the courts already set and the kit laid out.
Book a callThe case for it
You already know sport is good for people. That isn't the argument. The argument is participation — and it's the one thing most wellbeing spend can't buy.
Because there's a fixture in the diary and teammates who'll notice an empty slot. Accountability plus rivalry beats willpower — which is why people who won't open a meditation app will turn up for a match with their name on the team sheet.
Competing alongside someone does what a workshop can't. Juniors and directors end up on the same start line, and people who've only met on Teams find out what each other are like when it's hard.
We report participation, attendance per event, repeat participation and squad retention across the season — plus a short pulse before and after. Compare that to what your benefits stack can tell you.
Every event is filmed and cut properly, and the footage is yours — for your careers page, socials and all-hands. Recruitment content that isn't stock photography of people laughing at a laptop.
The case, in numbers
of UK employees are engaged at work — half the global average, and flat for years.
Gallup, 2026
of employees with an EAP actually contacted it in a year. Most benefits go untouched.
EAPA UK, 2025
a year lost per employee to presenteeism — against six to absence.
Vitality · IPPR
a head buys a whole year of Ludus — about what one premium away day costs for a single day.
vs £150–300/head/day
Why I'm building this
There are two things outside my family that I properly care about: sport and business. This is the first thing I've built that's both.
Sport taught me the things I actually use. Discipline. How to work as a unit. How to control my head when it isn't going my way — which, in business, is most of the time. It makes you think strategically, read a situation, find another way when the first one shuts.
And here's what I believe most: competitive drive is what gets people out of bed in the morning. Even when things aren't going great. Especially then. If there's a match on Saturday and people expecting you, you get up. For a lot of us that isn't a small thing — it's the whole thing.
Most companies now take their people's wellbeing seriously, and they're right to. I just think the best version of it isn't an app or a webinar. It's giving people something to train for, and someone to beat.
— Oliver, founder
Questions
Get in touch
A one-off day, a league for your team, or the full company-versus-company season — tell me a bit about your people and what you're trying to do, and I'll come back to you personally, usually the same day.
Planning it yourself? The away-day planner is free: one page, from the five questions to settle first to the week after.
