Off the wall: The broadcast tech powering Padel

In 1969, while enjoying their holiday in the Las Brisas suburb of Mexican seaport city Acapulco, businessman Enrique Corcuera and his wife Viviana created a game that initially stemmed from boredom. The game was a blend of tennis and squash. Corcuera then modified his squash court to welcome elements of platform tennis, and thus ‘Paddle Corcuera’ was born.

In the seventies, Alfonso de Hohenlohe, an entrepreneur and close friend of Corcuera, brought padel to Spain and built two courts at the Marbella Club. Hohenlohe’s love of padel ultimately led to its rise in popularity, and he served as the main driving force behind making it an internationally recognised sport.

Throughout the eighties and nineties, it continued to grow at a rapid pace, and the introduction of transparent walls meant that spectators, commentators and cameras could view the whole courts. The first international tournament was the Corcuera Cup, which took place in Mexico in 1991. This was followed by the first World Championship in Spain the next year. In 1991, the International Paddle Federation was formed and, in 1993, the Sports Council of Spain officially recognised it as a sport. The council decided to change its spelling to ‘padel’ for pronunciation purposes in the Spanish language. In 2005, the first professional world tour, Padel Pro Tour, was created, which was renamed as the World Padel Tour in 2013.

Padel is currently the fastest-growing sport in the world with over 25 million active players across 110 countries, attracting top players and expanding its international fanbase. Spain has more than 20,000 padel courts, with an estimated six million active players. It’s currently the country’s second most popular sport behind football and has become increasingly popular in Mexico, Italy, Argentina and the US. Premier Padel is the leading official pro padel tour, founded by Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) with the International Padel Federation (FIP) and Professional Padel Association.

Padel is also one of the fastest-growing sports in Britain. The British Paddle Association was formed in 1992. Recent figures from the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) revealed that, at the end of 2024, more than 400,000 people in the UK played padel at least once in the preceding 12 months – up from 15,000 in 2019, 89,000 in 2021 and 129,000 at the end of 2023. This growth is supported by expanding infrastructure, with 893 padel courts now available across 300 venues in Britain. As of February 2025, the LTA has invested around £6 million towards the growth of padel across Britain, including £4.5 million towards the development of 80 courts at 42 venues – representing approximately 10% of all padel courts nationwide.

In 2023, it was announced that QSI would acquire World Padel Tour to create a single global professional padel tour – called Premier Padel – governed by FIP. From 2025, Premier Padel includes 24 tournaments in 16 countries, as the tour continues to grow the sport in new territories and in every dimension.

Hitting the airwaves

Globecast is a major provider of media integration and managed services platform for broadcast, media and entertainment, and has been an important part of padel’s media-tech journey.

“Padel is very exciting. They have actually opened up a new court just down the road from me and people are going berserk for it,” begins Steve MacMurray, head of digital media development at Globecast. “It’s the world’s fastest-growing sport and is incredibly accessible for everyone. It’s traditionally very popular in hotbeds of Spain and Italy, but it has really taken off in the UK and elsewhere. One of the advantages of the game is that it’s really enjoyable for people to pick up, especially for people like me who aren’t great at serving. Premier Padel also has the appetite to essentially be an Association of Tennis Professionals equivalent. Its aim is to really gain traction as the number-one tool for padel and to develop the stars playing. It has had a huge amount of backing from the tennis world, as well as other high-profile sports figures.”

The sport is broadcast worldwide on Red Bull TV and YouTube, as well as other platforms. Red Bull TV will cover every stop of the Premier Padel tour throughout the 2025 season, with quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals livestreamed for both the men’s and women’s competitions.

“There’s a good relationship between the people who want to consume that content and the sport’s growth as it becomes established as a televised sport,” adds MacMurray. “What makes it well suited to that growth is the fact that you can get three padel courts in the space of an outdoor tennis court. So, it’s a great way of converting a potentially underutilised resource at a sports centre or local facility and get people out there and active. Once you’ve played the game, you get a taste for it and it’s really good for that to translate into you wanting to watch it and follow the action.”

The sport is also starting to gain massive traction in the US. “Pickleball is very popular there at the moment, but without sounding cliché, this is a whole different ball game,” says MacMurray. “It’s really starting to develop that brand and product, and Premier Padel’s output has only increased. With Net Insight’s support, we’ve really been able to power that kind of shift.”

IP-based models

By leveraging IP and cloud technology, Premier Padel has managed to streamline operations, reduce costs and increase efficiency while guaranteeing quality coverage across multiple platforms and markets. To support this expansion, Globecast has integrated Net Insight Nimbra Edge into its service offering. This has helped to enable Premier Padel to transition entirely from traditional satellite distribution to an IP-based model. By leveraging Net Insight’s Nimbra Edge platform, Globecast ensures seamless and cost-efficient live content distribution to broadcasters and digital platforms worldwide, enabling Premier Padel to reach a broader audience with high-quality coverage.

“The shift from a traditional satellite distribution base onto an IP distribution model has opened up a huge realm of possibilities and growth that can service lots of different media rightsholders, and that has been key to Premier Padel’s success in terms of how it’s represented on screen,” continues MacMurray. “We are conscious of the fact that there is an enormous paradigm shift in the industry from traditional solutions to newer ones, and there’s a whole legion of benefits that come with it. When we sat down and spoke with Premier Padel, at the time, it was putting on about eight events each year – and there were particular limitations that came with the more traditional satellite way of doing things.”

Despite this, he maintains that traditional satellite has definitely still got a place, as it is very reliable and a lot of broadcasters possess that infrastructure already, although there were certain constraints that came with it. “In particular, network contention and overbooking capacity, because these padel events are quite long and last from Monday until Sunday,” explains MacMurray. “If you just follow the centre court, there’s about ten hours of action per day – which is fine during the week, but things can get a little tricky at the weekend, particularly if you want to cover things like secondary court action. You want to facilitate that, and IP and SRT distribution was great for achieving that because you completely avoid that network contention and having to over-provision capacity straight away.”

Jonathan Smith, business development director at Net Insight, adds: “The Nimbra Edge platform is quite interesting in that it takes a bit of an enterprise approach to these internet-delivered feeds. One of the things Edge does really well is diversity and delivery, as well as monitoring and gathering metrics across the network. You can have a distributed network, where you can place different points of presence across different infrastructure.”

From a technology perspective, Smith acknowledges that the Edge platform is perhaps a little unusual in the industry because it uses a container-based deployment approach. “We use Kubernetes that allow us to be able to scale the footprint of the network up and down on demand. It makes it quite easy to deploy and scale and then bring down again, which is important when you’re doing occasional-use events. You don’t just want this monolithic beast that you have to maintain for the weekend alone, or whenever the peak load is.”

There is also an operational dimension to it that, according to MacMurray, is essential. “The user interface and the interaction with the user story simply has to work from an operational point of view,” he explains. “That’s something that’s completely baked into the philosophy of Nimbra Edge and its design. This needs to be integrated in a very simple, clean and effective way into a live master control environment – and that works for us. You can’t be doing 300 clicks and going into multiple screens when you’ve got live match delivery. It has to be very efficient from that point of view and integrate into existing systems. That has worked really well and the guys at Net Insight have been very good with the feedback we’ve given. To have that dialogue has been really constructive.”

Growth begets growth

In 2022, it was reported that padel was played in 57 countries around the world. In order to qualify as an Olympic sport, it must be played in at least 75 countries across four continents by men, and 40 countries across three continents by women. Recent figures suggest the sport has now gained popularity in over 130 countries. Whether or not the sport will feature in the summer Games in LA in 2028 remains to be seen.

As padel continues to grow on a global scale, keeping up with the demands is essential. One of the main challenges for Net Insight and Globecast is looking ahead to see how they can support this growth. “We’ve already got to that starting point and it’s bedded down nicely,” concludes MacMurray. “Going forward is about looking at what else we can do and how we can facilitate more coverage, customised feeds and localisation so they’re absolutely getting the maximum value for their content. These are quite big tournaments, so ultimately there’s lots of coverage. Being able to make that process more seamless, in terms of delivery to an even broader audience, is crucial. We’re building on what we’ve already got. We have already had that paradigm shift and that’s working, but we’re not going to be resting on our laurels with that. We are looking at how we can be in line and in step with Premier Padel’s appetite for growth – and helping them to establish the sport.”

Connected courts

Technology is changing how padel is played. Customised rackets, smart courts, smart wristbands and ball control tech are all shaping the future of the sport. Smart sensors have also been incorporated to track player movements and improve performance. The sensors provide real-time data and help players refine technique. PadelPlay is an AI-powered sensor that attaches to any padel racket and works with an app to track shots, analyse performance and help players improve with smart, data-driven insights.

A number of companies are also utilising tech to create a range of smart rackets to improve shot mechanics. One of the most popular products used is the Padel Band – a physical device that incorporates a variety of electronic sensors. The device is attached to the handle of the racket and is supported by an app designed to present the results. The band is linked via Bluetooth and, at the end of a match or after a training session, players are able to see the data transmitted to servers and are able to access results visually.

Padelgest is at the forefront of padel courts and recently launched HIT-X to create a fully immersive experience where technology interacts with training, matches and live events. One of the many features is the net pole padel, a smart post feature that is connected to a strategically placed weather station on the court, providing real-time readings of wind speed and direction, humidity, temperature and air pressure. Padelgest’s smart courts are custom-built and equipped with a range of padel accessories.