How Playtomic surfed – and fuelled – tidal wave of interest in padel
If you have caught the padel bug then the chances are you will have used Playtomic. Founded in 2017, it has quickly become the go-to app for booking a court or, perhaps more importantly, finding a game with players of a similar level.
It has surfed the tidal wave of interest in padel and now boasts 1.4m active users in Europe, up 40 per cent on last year. Even in the late-adopting UK, Playtomic is thought to have an 80-90 per cent share of a court booking app market estimated to be worth $3.6bn globally.
Pablo Carro, one of three co-founders who started the business with both tennis and padel in mind, admits even they didn’t foresee the lesser-known sport becoming, by some metrics, the fastest growing ever, with 50 new clubs opening worldwide every week.
“It’s complicated to prove that but if you look at the numbers and you see how it’s booming, you think, okay, it might be possible that this is the fastest growing sport, at least at the moment, for sure,” Carro tells City PM.
“We thought it was going to be a combination of racket sports. But more than 90 per cent of our bookings are related to padel. I mean, we know how attractive padel is and how engaging it is, but before Covid time, that was not expected.”
The remarkable rise of Playtomic, which makes money by charging clubs a setup fee and then taking a cut of each booking, is distilled by the fact that tennis superstar Rafael Nadal stars in its new advertising campaign.
It’s some statement for a company that Carro says had no big idea beyond filling a yawning gap in the market for a digital court booking solution.
“Playtomic is not a very disruptive idea or very innovative concept, and it’s not an ideation process. What we should be proud of is the execution,” he adds.
“It’s the execution and, more importantly, understanding the driving force of the sport. We’ve built a product that perfectly fits with that.”
Why pandemic boosted padel and Playtomic
Carro is referring to the social aspect of padel. Unlike tennis, it is typically played as a doubles match and this makes an app that helps individuals to not only find courts but also people to play with especially useful.
He also wonders if it might be the reason padel has rocketed in popularity since the pandemic, when socialising – and exercising – were severely curbed.
“Covid was a game-changer. It was an absolute disgrace for society. But for padel it was quite positive,” he says.
“Maybe Covid was the perfect momentum for empowering even more appetite. But I think the most important effect was that people tried padel for the very first time.”
Playtomic has had several funding rounds from institutional and angel investors, the latest in 2022 valuing it at $225m.
It has now been profitable for “many months”, Carro says, but more funding may be in the pipeline as it prepares further pushes in the UK, Germany and the US.
Just don’t expect him or his co-founders to cash in any time soon.
“We have zero appetite for selling,” Carro says. “We love what we do. At a certain point, any relevant-sized company would have to think about that. But I tell you, not in the next three-five years. It’s not in our plans at all.”