Fernando Blanca has given CMDsport a tour of the world of pádel from his perspective as director general of the specialized headhunting agency Padel Recruits and director of marketing and international business development at the consultancy World of Padel.
The state of the sport overall is “good,” with steady growth outside of Spain. There are new projects in more and more places, especially in “key territories” with “enormous potential,” such as Latin America, the U.S. and Central Europe.
The sport’s health is visible, for one thing, in its clubs, which are getting “more attractive all the time,” with “better installations, new services, better quality overall.” This will no doubt lead to higher prices, “but they will be sustainable” because pádel is “well-rounded” and has “everything it needs to become the number-one sport in any territory.”
Country by country
Having achieved “its own inertia,” pádel tends to grow to maturity before “self-correcting, without serious trauma, as necessary.” This is what Blanca believes has occurred in Sweden, where the number of courts and clubs outstripped demand after Covid. “This seems now to have been corrected,” Blanca says. Clubs have closed, but the courts remain full, and the market will “remain interesting, as Spain still is.”
The U.S. is a different matter – different from Europe as from the Middle East. Pádel is “already a reality” there, with “dozens of projects underway to add hundreds of courts in short order,” but the clubs will not be limited to the one sport. There “pádel will share space in multi-sport facilities with pickleball,” which Blanco views as more complementary to than competitive with pádel.
As for the mother country, Spain, the most mature of markets, Blanca believes the sector will have to prove “active and dynamic.” To retain its competitive advantage, it must focus on training and churn out complementary products and services – events, software, textiles and so forth. Blanca says the sector is turning more professional. Some 90 percent of the candidates he sees at Padel Recruits are club managers or coaches. Other sought-after specialties are marketing and sales. But there is a premium on candidates who can handle themselves both in the office and on the court.
The overstock problem
As we have been reporting, a number of professionals in the sport see gloomy days ahead. While pádel itself seems to be faring well, the many small brands that began doing business in the post-lockdown boom would seem to be headed for a reckoning. Enthusiastic order placement has led to excess inventory, which has, in turn, led to steep discounts. For Blanca, the situation suggests “inadequate management.”
Certain brands have put product on the market “at a ridiculous price, with offers channeled through the big online operators.” This has destroyed margins for specialty shops, clubs and small online operators, which “purchased the product at a higher price than the big online operators are offering to the final customer.”
“The buyer thinks, ‘I’d be stupid to buy a racquet at its original list price because it’ll be 40 percent cheaper in a couple of months.’ A list price that is shown to be above the real price, says Blanca, ends up devaluing a brand’s product and image.
“Let’s hope that by Q4 2023 or Q2 2024 at the latest, this will all be liquidated.”
Photo: Tomasz Krawczyk, Unsplash
