Spain’s Provincial Court of Murcia has confirmed the sentence of the same province’s Third Commercial Court against Team Sport DM S.L., the company behind the e-commerce websites padeliberico.es and padelman.net – as Diffusion Sport and others have reported.
Bullpadel brought suit against Team Sport for an apparent bait-and-switch operation. As the courts have ruled, the websites were selling pádel racquets under the Bullpadel brand at a substantial discount from the prices to be found elsewhere online and dispatching on purchase racquets of other brands, especially Middle Moon, for which Team Sport holds exclusive rights and which are of “inferior quality and price.” The explanation to customers was that the Bullpadel merchandise was out of stock.
In addition to behaving in an anticompetitive manner, the courts have ruled Team Sports has committed acts of “denigration” in its dealing with customers, “making false affirmations about the quality and price of the product” and “undervaluing the appreciation that the objective public has of pádel racquets of the Bullpadel brand.”
Team Padel is to withdraw commercial offers for Bullpadel products when it lacks sufficient stock, pay about €47,000 in damages, and publish, at its own cost, the text of the judgment in the Multisports section of the Spanish sports newspaper Marca, in both the print and digital editions.
