All The Angles

We start Season 2 with a sleeping giant.

Some will have preconceptions of Decathlon. Some will think they already know what Decathlon does vis-a-vis padel.

I genuinely believe that most of our listeners will not be aware of the full range of angles from which Decathlon approaches and supports this sport.

Decathlon impacts padel across markets, products, technology, partnerships with global players, local coaches and pro events, court and club relationships and more.

Thank you to Frederic Oudeville and Federico Fraguela as they give us a virtual tour of all the ways Decathlon propels the sport forward. And thank you to Mark Hewlett of Soul Padel, one of the clubs that resides on Decathlon premises, who gives us the perspective of an outsider collaborator.

Hope you enjoy the episode and the new Season! Welcome back!

This week we tried something different. An experiment. We played Devil's Advocate.

What if we gave two expert observers of the sports business industry a chance to opine on the sport of padel: both the participation piece and the professional piece?

Neither had much of a grounding in the sport apart from some context we provided and we asked them where they felt padel sat in relation to the rest of the industry and what they would do to help padel in its next global phase.

They were good sports. And raised some interesting concerns, theories and suggestions.

Thank you Eben Novy-Williams of leading US sports business platform Sportico and Roger Mitchell, Founder of Albachiara and author of highly acclaimed book on the changing circumstances around the sport industry "Sport's Perfect Storm".

Sometimes it is important to step out of your own ecosystem and hear what outsiders think. This is that epsiode.

Anyone monitoring padel worldwide is monitoring the US. And anyone doing that, knows that Miami is where the momentum started.

Miami is now home to about 80 courts, making up one third of all US courts. And more clubs are springing up all the time. But how did the sport find a foothold there? How has it grown since then? And what is its, as well as the country's, future relationship with padel?

This week's episode brings Julian Wortelboer, who is the Founder of Padel Smash Academy, President of the Padel Coaches Association, and now EVP and Chief Padel Officer of key Miami club, Ultra Padel Miami; together with Marcus Jansson-Ryan, who as CEO of EEP Capital, is a key funder of numerous club brands growing and dominating the US scene.

We focus on Miami to unravel the catalysts there, as well as the full potential. But we also zoom out across the country in a bid to understand what is coming for the sport, how it can optimise that trajectory and how leading stakeholders can avoid pitfalls.

Modern sports now rely on third party content creators to grow recognition, drive fan engagement and entertain. Those who made a name for themselves early and who found a winning formula, have secured reputations, followings and relationships within the sport that are the envy of everyone else.

Two individuals who did just that in the last 5 or 6 years are Pablo Garcia of The 4th Set, and Sven Boele of Otro Nivel. While the first focuses more on the professional tour and players (both in Spanish and English), and the latter specialises in tongue-in-cheek coaching content for English-speaking amateurs, both have secured tens of millions of views on their respective channels.

In this week's episode, we discuss the viability, opportunities and challenges around building a padel content-creation brand and following.

The world of sport is increasingly waking up not only to the importance of women participants and players, but the need to meet them on their own terms.

In the rush to launch, build and roll out across the padel ecosystem, it can become easy to park, if not ignore, any such segmentation.

This week's episode doesn't look at women working in the padel business, nor does it explore the female professionals on tour. Those deserve (and will get) separate episodes.

This week, we bring some of those at the coalface of how padel attracts, retains and supports amateur women together. Pepita Stonor of Empower Padel, Nicola Beumer of Expat Padel Amsterdam and Belen Montes of Padel Nuestro join me to explore issues around:

• Womens only initiatives v mixed initiatives
• Insecurity and Confidence
• The Importance of Friendship and Community
• The Risk of Overgeneralising 'Women'
• The Need for Role Models (both professional players as well as coaches)
• Getting Padel in front of Girls Early
• Club-built communities v individual-built communities
• The Value that Giving Women a Focus Can Bring

and more.

Take a listen and let us know on Twitter or Linkedin if you agree, disagree or want to add anything to the discussion.

Difficult to argue against the idea that internationally, padel is riding a wave of discovery, growth and enthusiasm. Some call that a hype cycle.

But what comes with that? What characterises a hype cycle? And what are the positives that come with that status or moment?

Equally, what are the dangers and downsides of a hype cycle? 

And cycles tend not to last forever. What happens on the other side of the wave? Can you see it coming and can you mitigate against its worst effects?

These are all critical questions for the sport of padel. It has to plan for the future, otherwise stakeholders, if not the whole sport, will learn some painful lessons.

This week's episode looks at esports and women's football to draw out parallels and lessons. We speak to Nico Maurer, Co-CEO and Founder of Team Vitality, one of the world's leading teams across gaming titles year after year; as well as Maggie Murphy, a player and more recently CEO of Lewes FC, the world's first equal pay football club and target for Mercury/13 investment. 

Two sports that have enjoyed the hypest of hype cycles. And have learnt from painful contractions when the momentum dies down. What can padel learn? A lot.

Argentina is not a country or market to take lightly. It is one of the biggest markets in padel globally and one with a proud and long history in the sport.

So this week, we brought in two absolute heavyweights of the country to talk us through the beginnings of Argentina's adoption of padel as a national sport, the boom and the bust, the dividends of a history and dedication to the game, the tussles with tennis, its dominance on the global professional scene and what the future holds for this proud nation.

Nito Brea has been one of the most influential coaches in padel worldwide, taking names that would fill any Hall of Fame to their peaks and leading his home nation to victory across World and Continental championships. Gustavo Maquirriain has been called the "Platini of Padel" and is recognised as the world's first No1. Both were instrumental in the creation of the predecessor of today's Professional Padel Association for pro players.

In a wide-ranging discussion steeped in history, Alex Inglot looks to extract lessons and parallels with contemporary threats that padel faces: with new cycles of international circuits, with tennis stakeholders, and with economic and fashion phases that inevitably impact the development of the sport.

One of the areas outside the Spanish-speaking homelands that has really embraced padel in recent years is the Middle East.

Brought to Dubai by Sheikh Hamdan, the sport has flourished in the region to the point where now in 2024, the Qatar Sports Investments runs the sole and FIP-recognised global professional tour, Premier Padel.

In this week's episode of All the Angles, Alex Inglot and Hexagon Cup's Ben Nichols welcome two individuals intrinsically involved and invested in the Middle East's padel scene.

Najwa Salhab has represented the Saudi Arabian national team numerous times and is an ambassador of one of Riyadh's biggest clubs Padel Rush; while Anouar Idrissi is the CEO of Dubai's club brand Just Padel. Together we look at the begnnings, the impact of COVID, the amateur scene, the professional tour's impact, women's and youth padel and where the region goes from here.

This year saw the launch of the first editions of both RacquetX in Miami, and then Padel World Summit in Malaga. Why did both founders (Robyn Duda and Alex Ponsetti respectively) decide that the time was right, now?

Both talk about how padel and the wider racquet sport space have matured to a point where serious business is being done and needs to be done in person.

And yet padel is still struggling to flicker on the radar of wider, non-endemic sports industry conference organisers. Why is that? In the second half of this episode, James Emmett from Leaders shines a light on how the evolution has not gone unnoticed, but is still short of taking the sports B2B event circuit by storm.

This last June, IMG unveiled their entry into the padel space, by announcing men's Number 1 Arturo Coello as their first client and bringing on board industry heavyweights Auguste Hernan and Daniel Dios to drive the vertical.

It is a seismic moment when a company with the size, reputation, breadth and pedigree enters the market and in this week's episode, Alex Inglot and Hexagon Cup Managing Director Astrid Thams talk to these two captains as they steer this project and begin exploring how they grow the initial player management offering, but also how they provide other services and value.

We explore the lead up to the announcement, how the set up with King Arturo is already working, which other players are on their radar, and what the future holds for IMG in padel, and the padel business ecosystem.