I developed Padelfans in 2011. At that time I started playing this sport that is quite popular here in Spain and was looking for people to play with. Also, I wanted to try Python for web development (until then I had used Python mostly for scripting) and chose to develop a site using Django.
Implementation
Django + MySQL. It also included Google Maps for selecting padel locations (click on image for full view).
I found the development in Django pleasant. At least for a smallish site like Padelfans (my next project, SellerCompass, was also developed in Python but I chose the more light-weight framework Flask). Django does a lot/all out of the box, which I’m normally rather against because sooner or later one starts fighting the framework when things don’t fit into the boundaries. But PadelFans is quite straight forward to implement and Django was a good match.
Business
Padel is very popular in Spain and I found only 2 competitors. A very basic forum and one site that requires membership and offers a service to find players and make reservations. PadelFans was in between. It got constant regular sign-ups. Many players came to the site searching for the address of a court that I had in my database. But soon I found out that almost no one wants to organize a game. Most members expect others to pick a date and court. With the result that the site suffered a kind of chicken and egg problem which it never solved. Sometimes organizer of padel tournaments used the site to advertise their events. Even though I had zero maintenance work, in order to get free for new projects I decided to stop Padelfans (besides, since the last few years I happen to play more Tennis ;) ). I still own the domain and have the project source, if anyone is interested in continuing the site (it showed it has potential) feel free to contact me.