Belloni’s Padel Hero UK plans
Francesco Belloni is the founder of Italian padel club brand Padel Hero, an investor in New York’s first facility Padel Haus – and now he’s looking at the UK.
He tells The Bandeja what Padel Hero might have in store for the us – and why British players are more hardy than their Italian counterparts.
Q: Tell us about Padel Hero
A: Padel Hero’s concept is quite straightforward: we operate large-scale, padel-only sports clubs that are located in strategic places within key cities.
Our Pisa facility has 10 courts (four indoor, six outdoor) and in early July we expect to open our Versilia location, situated between Viareggio and Forte Dei Marmi. This will have a four indoor/four outdoor court mix.
By year-end we are going to open our Parma Padel Hero, which will have 12 courts (eight indoor/four outdoor). Once these facilities are fully operational by the end of 2023 we are going to take a view on whether to double down in Italy or focus internationally. We already have two purchase agreements in place for locations in the north of Italy contingent on them getting permits to expand. If they do, we will come in as a majority shareholder. Going forward any new facility we open will be the acquisition of an existing facility. I highly doubt we are going to build from the ground-up again in Italy; although many interesting avenues open up (financially) in that sense, the time lags are often much too significant.
We do have ideas to expand outside of Italy and the country we are most closely looking at is the UK. We are exploring different formats – direct purchase and management, a franchise deal or joint venture. Just like with Padel Haus, we look at investments in an opportunistic way when they come up: if there is a specific partner we’d like to be involved with and have a more passive role, we are not opposed to those situations.
Q: What are your plans for the UK?
A: We are in the early stages of looking for a site. We’d actually found a couple of interesting ones but they didn’t work from a structural perspective. We are predominantly looking for indoor space, which makes it a little more difficult, especially because volume is an important element for us so ideally we’d like to fit in at least 5-6 courts with a combination of indoor and canopy covers.
We are looking at London naturally, but also at other Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities.
We don’t have a specific timeline for the UK. We have learned to be patient and that permit and license situations can be complex. This said, we are actively looking (and not just alone but with friends and partners as well) because we want to get a foot in the UK market. We do see developments and new openings which is a great sign. But very few get close to our concept of indoor padel-only facilities. Our USP is quite simple: high-quality, large-scale indoor padel facilities with the highest technical standards.
Q: Does the UK pose any unique challenges?
A: The weather – we need to focus on indoor spaces only. I wouldn’t say it’s unique but it’s a much more important factor than in Italy. People in the UK don’t seem to be too fussy about the weather (or not as much as Italians for instance) but this doesn’t take away from the fact that if it rains on a non-sunny day it will likely be hard to use those courts that same day and the following one. If you have even 50-60 days of rain during the year this might mean 100-120 days where the turf isn’t great and has a potential 25-30% impact on operating days. The plus side is that you likely pay lower rent, have less issues with permits and so on, but we want to implement a concept that gives us consistency and puts padel players in the best conditions to play in and that is indoors.
Q: What’s key to developing a successful padel club?
A: Having the right people running the club and creating the right community of people that want to be around each other is certainly one of the key pillars. Another important element is to be aware of who your customer is and what they want. In Italy, for instance, we actually had a few preconceptions of clients that turned out to be incorrect. To give a simple example, we didn’t want to accept cash but Italians are still very much cash-heavy and this would have created pushback from clients.
Q: What is the appeal of padel?
A: I immediately felt padel had a more powerful social element than tennis, similar to five-a-side football. At this point the sport was somewhat here and there in Italy so I didn’t think about it much beyond playing. Then, when I later left London and the world of finance in 2021, I started thinking about padel as a business opportunity as there was more ‘noise’ around the sport. I travelled across Europe – mainly Italy, Spain and Sweden (the more advanced markets) – to understand the status of the game and intricacies in the markets where padel was already a thing.
One thing that was interesting was how fragmented the market was (and still is). This gave me the vision of creating these larger, one-stop facilities that could become anchors for given cities and, in a way, consolidate a specific local market.
The economics of a single court and the overall business model were relatively easy to grasp, but I was more interested in getting a grip on where the padel movement was headed and whether it could actually stand the test of time. Within a few months I had built up enough conviction that it would – and here we are.
Q: New York’s Padel Haus – why are you investing and how did the opportunity arise?
A: Ever since I started looking at padel from a business perspective I thought the movement needed the sport to take off in the US for it to become a truly global phenomenon. I was always intrigued by the fact that padel in the US was non-existent apart from Miami and Florida in general, where there is a large South American community and a favourable climate.
A little over a year ago friends put me in touch with the founder of Padel Haus, Santiago Gomez, when he first found the space. We got along well, shared a similar vision for the market and where it was headed in the US and worldwide, and I decided to partner with him. New York was a no-brainer given the large international community and the fact that there were no other facilities.
Q: What are key differences between the padel market in the US and Italy/Europe?
A: The market in Italy, and Europe in general, is a little more mature. You can see this by the infrastructure, by the level of the players, but also the money being invested into the sport.
The second main difference is that in Italy/Europe pickleball doesn’t exist. Pickleball has proven to be a large distraction for the development of padel in the US as it is easier to set up, you have no height obligations for indoor courts, investment is a lot smaller and most times the permit and license situation is a lot more favourable. This has accelerated investments in pickleball and slowed down investments in padel.
I was in NYC recently and I cannot find ways to compare pickleball to padel. It’s just entirely different – it’s not a sport where you can get drastically better over time. You can’t really give specific strength or direction to the ball and it’s quite monotone amongst different levels. Don’t get me wrong – that’s also its beauty – but I do think it’s a lot less exciting. The US will definitely catch up with other more mature markets though, it’s just a question of time.
Q: What’s your view of the new Pro Padel League in the States? Will it drive engagement with the sport and benefit padel?
A: Definitely. National and intra-national leagues are going to be one of the main drivers for the sport. It would be great if we had a sort of national league and then continental/global league like we see in many other sports. More importantly, it will drive engagement from younger generations in the US.
Q: What’s key to developing a successful padel club?
A: Having the right people running the club and creating the right community of people that want to be around each other is certainly one of the key pillars. Another important element is to be aware of who your customer is and what they want. In Italy, for instance, we actually had a few preconceptions of clients that turned out to be incorrect. To give a simple example, we didn’t want to accept cash but Italians are still very much cash-heavy and this would have created pushback from clients.
Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given about building a padel club?
A: A great piece of advice I received early on, and this comes back to the point about knowing your customer – was something to the effect of ‘demand for these types of sports facilities is hyperlocal, so make sure you tailor your product and services mainly around that’.
