The Daily Mail’s venture capital sideline business DMGT has invested in a new celebrity team padel tournament, the Hexagon Cup, with an unprecedented $1million prize pot.
The competition, which will be held in Madrid from 31 January – 4 February next year, is intended to become padel’s equivalent of tennis’s Laver Cup or golf’s Ryder Cup. It will feature six teams owned by celebrities and packed with the world’s best players.
DMGT has previously invested in start-ups aimed at disrupting particular industries such as the F1 Arcade franchise, the stationery company Papier, online home valuation site Zoopla and car sales platform Cazoo. DMGT’s founders include key figures behind Formula E.
World No.8 Francisco Navarro and world No.4 Alejandra Salazar are already signed up to compete, with celebrity owners and broadcast deals set to be unveiled.
To perhaps hint at the stature of celebrities who might get involved, the DMGT group’s recent E1 boat racing world championships saw NFL megastar Tom Brady, Indian cricketer Virat Kohli, F1 driver Sergio Perez, tennis legend Rafael Nadal and Chelsea’s Champions League winner Didier Drogba line up as team owners.
Manuel Lopo de Carvalho, chief executive of DMG Ventures, said: “We’ve conducted a broad analysis of the padel space, delving deeply into the driving factors behind the sport’s growing popularity and exploring which areas of padel are the most attractive for venture investment. The outcome was our investment in Hexagon Cup.”
The DMGT investment is just the latest big-money arrival in padel – an industry which this year’s Deloitte Global Padel Report estimated to be worth $2billion.
Lopo de Carvalho said that DMG Ventures had explored investing in clubs but was put off by what is perceived to be slow payback period.
Instead the company opted to pursue an investment in professional padel through the Hexagon Cup. Lopo de Carvalho admitted it would make a loss in year one, but predicted it would reach profit in year two and was expected to produce margins above 40 per cent “in the long run.”
