The Britain Padel Tour will shake up the UK’s competitive landscape and give our top players “the awareness and recognition they deserve,” according to founder Fabian David.
Slazenger Padel in Leeds hosts the Britain Padel Tour’s second event this weekend (7 December) following its debut at True Padel in Durham in September. With £2,000 per pair on offer for the men’s winners and (somewhat controversially) £1,000 per pair for the women due to its smaller draw, the Britain Padel Tour offers the largest prizes in UK padel.
As he sits down with The Padel Paper for a coffee at Slazenger Padel in the build-up to Saturday’s competition, Fabian reveals that the Britain Padel Tour’s prize purse will increase in 2025, supported by a first funding round in January.
Kicking off in March, the 2025 calendar will feature eight events culminating in a BPT Tour Finals just before Christmas. Part of the three-year plan is to host BPT events in major arenas by 2027.
A 39-year-old entrepreneur from Romania, Fabian is candid about his ambition to disrupt UK’s top-level competitive circuits, chiefly the LTA British Tour Grade 1 competitions (of which there were six events in 2024) and the HOP tournaments, both of which have their own rankings systems. There are also a handful of FIP Rise tournaments in the UK each season – which is the level Fabian wants the BPT to reach.
“Until BPT was launched, players in this country were not appreciated enough,” he tells us. “They don’t have the awareness or recognition they deserve. They don’t have the prizes. With BPT, you’ll see that happening very fast. I want to help grow the sport in this country, but at a professional level. I want to be the Premier Padel of the UK.”
He adds: “Who has the motivation to compete for £500 winners’ prize money [at LTA Grade 1 events]? It’s impossible to have that motivation to wake up in the morning, train, travel, book hotels… all to compete for £500. That’s something I’m trying to change.”
The cast for the second BPT event in Leeds this Saturday (7 December) includes GB’s Sam Jones, Nikhil Mohindra, Chris Salisbury and Alfonso Potacho, plus women’s top 100 duo Pilar Albarran Villalon and Aitana Garcia Roman, and A1 Padel duos Ismael Trigo and Pedro Alonso and Jose Fernandez and Javi Hernandez, so the credentials of the field are high.
A big part of BPT’s model is its rankings. Performances in its tournaments will translate into points and Fabian’s ambition is for the BPT’s rankings to become the de facto ratings system for British professionals, superseding the LTA rankings.
He explains: “When we talk about professional players in the UK, we refer only to players who are competing internationally and who gain points in the FIP rankings. The aim is to change that. We want to reach the point where you become a professional through playing and earning ranking points in the BPT. We will bring players from Spain, Mexico, Portugal and Argentina to compete against British players.”
These developments obviously threaten to disrupt the UK’s current top-level system of the LTA’s Grade 1 events, of which there were six this year at clubs in England, Scotland, Jersey and Guernsey.
“To be honest, I don’t have any interest in getting in touch with them [the LTA],” states Fabian. “They do their job and I know what I’m doing. My doors are open and we can potentially work together for the industry, players and community. But to make it 100% clear, the BPT rankings will be completely separate. I’m really confident in our path.”
A former tennis player, Fabian worked in software development and then became a restaurateur for seven years in Romania before moving to Tenerife. It was there, during a difficult period after his father died from cancer, that he was “looking for something” and discovered padel.
Two years ago, he moved to Manchester with his family and started travelling 45 minutes around the M60 to The Padel Club in Wilmslow virtually every day. “It was an addiction – but what a great addiction to have!” he says. One day, he told an ex-girlfriend that he wanted to turn pro. She laughed and said he was too old (then 38). “I couldn’t sleep for a week!” he remembers. “I thought, ‘I’ll show you!'”
He started having three lessons a week with renowned coach Leo Padovani, then went to the M3 Padel Academy in Madrid and trained alongside the legendary Alejando Galan for six hours a day, taking part in tournaments across Spain. In March, he returned to the UK and entered a HOP tournament. It was there he identified the gaps in the UK competitive padel scene. “I realised where the problems were. I thought, ‘This is the moment!'” he says.
Alongside his tournament director Mark Hinchcliffe and business partner and fellow Romanian Razvan Pasat, Fabian will now focus on executing a great event in Leeds then charting 2025 and beyond. “We don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” he says. “We’re trying to be two steps ahead. From now on, it’s planning, planning, planning, work, work, work. We won’t rest.”
