How long does it take for spot to become full instead of pending?

This is another instance where we users have no real knowledge, but some pretty good guesses.

First of all, there is no difference between a pending and an approved club aside from that they're just listed in different places in the browse clubs function; they function the same.

Second, for a club to be "promoted" it has to:
* have an icone image
* have a banner image
* have a minimum number of fans
* not be an obvious duplicate of an existing club and/or not have a large overlap in topic with another club

Often smaller clubs have been promoted because they were the first to be created for a particular topic. Even though a duplicate club created later might have plus activity and plus fans, it's still a duplicate and shouldn't exist, let alone be promoted.

Finally, it's only the staff (and maybe the site admins) who can promote a club, and there's no sure way to know what criteria are used beyond what I mentioned above (deduced through observation) to decide. The staff are very busy, and they're human besides, so they probably don't go through the whole liste of pending clubs very often and even when they do, they may not see something as a duplicate ou see something as a duplicate when it really isn't/is. toi might try sending a note via the "Contact us" link if you're really concerned about getting a particular club promoted. If toi do, make sure to identify the club and describe how it is unique (ie, not in any way a duplicate of an existing club).