The Padel Podcast

Andy is a real retail guru. 

He worked for Head for over a decade and now he is the UK country manager for Tennis-Point/Padel-Point.

Really interesting insight on how padel is evolving in retail and if there is more to come. How are padel players choosing their gear, what is the best seller and is offline or online bigger in the sport.

This week we go to the deep end. 

A lot of nerdy content from Fran (Francisco) Villaverde, who grew up with padel. Started to play when he was really young and carried on ever since.

He is the CEO of The Padel Company, which is carrying the likes of Varlion, RS and Volt, and distributing them all over the UK.

His knowledge is immense and it has been a great chat for sure. 

He shared a lot of information about his past, his present and his future!

This week it's a bit different again.

Get behind the scenes and get to know Norbi and myself's back stories.

We are planning to do some content going forwards, while what are the odds, that Padel has two Hungarian hosts on two separate podcasts!

Please do enjoy and let us know if you've liked it!

In this special episode I have taken the wheel and speaking about current court openings, a FIP Rise Tour event with Chris Warren and the new project of Padel Shift, which has opened two by two courts in the Cotswolds.

A bit different than the usual, but hopefully as enjoyable!

Sam is a brilliant player, who learnt a lot of his trade in Spain. 

After leaving his home in Essex, played in the UAE and moved to Spain for several years. Only covid made him move back to England, where he evolved into the UK's second best player. Since then he has been making the most of his professional padel player life, with traveling, working hard to achieve his wildest dreams and being one of the household names in padel.

The episode in short is a pro's everyday life. 

Kristina Clement is a true padel enthusiast!

As a  player she has played 5 world championship in total with France and Germany as she has 2 passports, and soon she will feature in the 'small Olympics', the European Games. As a coach and padel club developer (her first club close to Monaco and then she developed a club in Birmingham where she trained her Padel Baby alias Tia Norton, UK's number 1, who at the time only had 2 months of padel.

She is now the export manager of the prestigious padel brand Nox and has been building the brand ever since.

She is a great chat and her knowledge about the sport is second to none!

He has been one of the most well known faces around the padel courts for decades now.

He is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina and been world number 1 in padel for 4 consecutive years. Has been playing competitively for 22 years and won literally everything to be won in padel. 

As a previous professional tennis player, it has been a fairly seemless transition for him to get into professional padel.

After hanging up his racket, he became International Director of Development for the World Padel Tour. The growth could be seen from Mars and when he knew WPT was in safe hands, he went on to become Chief Padel Officer of the Ledap Group. 

Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Poland, Austria, Spain, the UK, Germany and the UAE,

operating more than 130 padel clubs, e-commerce, a booking platform, a padel court manufacturer and operates as an organiser of padel events.

In his role as Chief Padel Officer of LeDap, Hernan and the team are striving to make Padel available to all, to expand the sport by providing infrastructure and inspiration for all types of Padel players.

Barry Coffey, AdiDaddy is a retired business who is now living in the South of France. He is originally from Dublin, Ireland, where he was an Irish National Badminton champion and a member of the national team. He discovered padel in 2015 and has been an unashamed addict ever since. He is competing in international level and is the president of the Irish Padel Association. He is the founder and promoter of the Six Nations Masters Padel Tournament which is coming up to it's fifth year. He is a proud ambassador of Adidas, hence the nickname AdiDaddy (take a listen on how he got the nickname). Please find him on Instagram and follow what he is doing.

Emma Kimber is founding editor of The Bandeja, the only magazine dedicated to grassroots padel players in the UK (and further afield). The idea for the magazine was borne on a padel court and since its launch last year The Bandeja has attracted thousands of online readers. It recently went into print, an immense achievement in a digital era, and a new website is on the way. She is a real pioneer, and she has had help from several key figures in the padel industry in the UK as well as in a broader spectrum. We had a great chat and she is a real padel enthusiast, who sees this sport as the next real thing! "We need more of everything"