Minter dials in to the Padel World Summit
Padel World Summit
by Minter Dial
The second Padel World Summit (PWS) was held in Barcelona this year. With more than 100 stands and an estimated 6,000 professionals in attendance, it presented a fascinating view into the future of padel. Between the products and services on offer, the start-ups in the innovation centre and the content presented on the different stages, the PWS underscored the growth of the game worldwide and its healthy future prospects.
From circulating on the show floor, which included eight padel courts, I determined that there were four main types of exhibitors:
- Padel club tech and services (think: Playtomic, Matchi, Padel Mates…)
- Padel court suppliers and materials (think: Galis, Mondo, Portico…)
- Major multi-sport brands who’ve jumped into padel, à la Babolat, Adidas and Head.
- The fourth corps were pure padel suppliers such as Joma, Siux and Black Crown, that were mostly promoting padel clothing and racquets. (For the padel connoisseur, meanwhile, it was also interesting to see who among the padel heavies were not present, including Bullpadel, ranked by some as the market leader, plus Nox and Starvie).
Small world
What can one take away from a stroll around the PWS floor? First, it does still very much feel like a small world. Every few metres I would bump into someone I knew. Always fun. In this, the padel world still feels a cozy and collaborative world. Yet, of course, we know commerce is hard at work. While at the top end the professional players was battling it out in Buenos Aires, it was still nice to see a few former rock stars of the padel world roaming the floor, for example Fernando Belastaguín (aka the Boss) and Carolina Navarro. There was also Bebe Auguste (another former world number 1) who works at court supplier MejorSet, as well as Ramón Morcillo, President of the Spanish Federation (FEP).
Padel tech
It’s clear that because padel has become of age in the digital era, much of its imprint and development is technological. I counted over a dozen initiatives that included (or vaunted) artificial intelligence (AI) such as AIBall, PadelAI, Spash and Matchlytics. Under further investigation, it felt that the use of AI was still in its infancy or more of a wish than a bona fide reality. I highlight PadelVR and CourtBrain as two of the more interesting and disruptive tech concepts on the floor. The former is looking to bring padel into the bedroom, per se, with a VR headset and specially connected racquet. The latter is one of two efforts on the show floor to be the ‘Skyscanner’ for booking reservations.
Innovation centre
The last area of interest among the stands was the group of 20 start-ups selected for the Innovation Centre. The organisers of the summit sought to find initiatives that were providing a value-add for padel and that were innovative or at least different. The bulk of these were around match statistics (eg scoring) and player analytics. I picked out a couple of note (other than those mentioned above):
- Padelike – to motivate players (typically for mature markets, like Spain) to play more through gamification
- Ballify – to help clubs and coaches with tracking and filling lessons (via Whatsapp)
- Netx – patented 3D-printed items to help ‘soften’ the blow of padel. For example, a quieter racquet core, or an innovative ball that bounces similarly to a padel ball but dampens the sound upon being struck. At the eye-watering price of over 40 euros per ball, there’s going to need some more work before this becomes commercially viable. But I liked the underlying intention relative to the complaints about the noise.
In any event, the future looks padellingly positive. 🎾
