The dream of playing at the foot of the Eiffel Tower came true with this first edition of the Betclic Remontada Padel. Babolat, which accompanies 4PADEL in this exceptional event, gives us an interview behind the scenes of the project, the 2025 news including a passage on Juan Lebron, the state of the market…
The Betclic Remontada Padel, a padel festival
This collaboration is based on a desire to create a real celebration of padel. Following all the qualifying stages that took place in the regions, we wanted to do the final phase in Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower for all the stage winners. And this will continue next year.
For the second edition, the objective will be to come back here, to do something crazy again. The remontada is a leisure tournament, unsanctioned and ultra fun, with jokers and bets.
4PADEL Academy by Babolat
In France, there are still very few young people, juniors who play padel. It’s starting to grow but slowly. And for young people to play padel, the centers must offer training for them. And this is what 4PADEL does in all its centers and we Babolat as an expert in padel, we provide products and teaching with our entire network of coaches and players. We will support 4PADEL in the creation of this program and this academy to offer all young people from all centers adapted equipment but also adapted training. It’s under construction.
Be present at practice locations
We really experienced a lot of activity in the first half of the year with a lot of things, especially with the Remontada. We have a lot of strong partnerships like ALL IN PADEL, PadelShot. Our strategy is to be present on the practice sites, with these three partnerships, but also the partner tennis clubs which equip themselves with padel, we are very present at the player level. And then we have the release of the new Lebron range which is big news. It comes out at the end of the year.
Lebron’s pala, a racket that makes Par 3s all by itself!
It takes two or three years of work to release a collection, and the 2025 collection is finished, it has already been presented to our stores. The products will be released in January 2025. With the Lebron Viper: you touch the ball and it makes a direct par 3, the racket does it for you! It is not a racket for everyone, rather the profile of experienced players who manage to handle a very demanding racket.
If there is one padel player who brings emotions to everyone, it’s him. He brings his sport to life like no other player, sometimes it is with his crises at the edge of the field, sometimes it is with his extraordinary shots, but Juan LeBron is exceptional. In his emotions and in his reactions, he is whole, there is always something happening and that’s great for padel, because that’s what interests the fans.
Padel goes beyond badminton
The padel is growing enormously: at the end of 2023 it was 17% of our turnover. This is the first time that padel has passed badminton (13%)!
We are still at 70% for tennis, it is essentially linked to the places of practice, with many more tennis courts. It is estimated that padel will gain and rise to around 30%, this sport is surprising. The 20/25% will arrive quickly but it will of course depend on the places of practice.
We arrived on the Spanish market being very strong on shoes, a little less on rackets. Even players not sponsored by Babolat played with the Jet. We are an expert in shoes, and we took players on shoe contracts without rackets, it was also a way of penetrating the market, which was much less saturated on shoes than on rackets.
Belgium a little faster than France
There isn’t a big difference in approach; but Belgium was faster in terms of infrastructure. There are many private clubs in Belgium, padel courts in tennis clubs. The development is quite similar. In France, things are going a little more slowly but surely. Belgium is a very dense racquet sports country. Padel has a great future, whatever the country!
Watch the interview in its entirety below:
Passionate about Padel since 2018 with numerous experiences in communication and content creation, I want to share my passion with you through my writings.