Emily Kilner has established a trusted reputation as stadium announcer, courtside reporter and TV presenter at domestic and international padel competitions — and her dulcet tones will soon grace the BBC airwaves too.
If you’re ever watched a padel event in person or on a screen, the chances are the voice you heard adorning the action was Emily’s, whether it’s Premier Padel, LTA British Tour Grade 1 competitions or celebrity, corporate or community events like the Pro Am Padel Tour.
Having worked in a corporate role for five years, Emily recently expanded her ‘side hustle’ of sports presenting into a full-time job, having carved out a name for herself within the padel community as the go-to MC in the sport.
Late last year, she sent a sample of her padel commentary as an entry into the BBC Sport New Voices competition — and a few weeks ago she was announced as one of two winners out of more than 1,100 entrants!
Yet Emily admits she was “one of those people who never really knew what I wanted to do” when she left Durham University in 2020 with a BA in History and Spanish. She had been assistant manager on the Durham Uni radio station and played hockey for the uni team and England U21s.
She joined the graduate scheme at global beer company AB InBev which took her to the Canary Islands for a year and took in sales, marketing, supply, logistics, commercial strategy and corporate finance functions.
She loved it, but also did regular side gigs as pitchside presenter and stadium announcer at England and GB hockey matches, starting with hosting the fan village at the 2018 Women’s Hockey World Cup in London. “It was a great summer side hustle as I just love hockey and talking about sport,” she says.
Something of a breakthrough moment was a role as hockey stadium announcer for an unforgettable fortnight at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. “It was a bit of a game-changer,” she admits. “My only thought after that was, ‘I’ve just had the best two weeks of my life, how can I do more?'”
After that, she did a ‘Matchday Diary’ series for The Hockey Paper and it was only a short hop from there to its sister title, The Padel Paper, where she worked on our coverage of the World Padel Championships qualifiers in Derby in 2022.
“I was on the train to Derby looking up the rules of padel on my phone!” she admits. “I’d never heard of it before, but that weekend was a catalyst moment.
“I thought, ‘There’s a real niche here!’ I could take everything I’d learned in hockey into a brand new sport, which was really exciting. That was the start of my journey in padel.”
Through building up connections and keeping in touch with the right people, she has since built up her portfolio to commentating and reporting for Premier Padel, hosting Padel TV (all LTA Grade 1 events plus FIP events held in Britain), MCing at Pro Am Padel Tour events and many ad-hoc gigs plus continuing her similar roles in hockey.
And since being one of only two entrants selected as winners of the BBC Sport New Voices competition, she has had an incredible summer shadowing broadcaster Rob Nothman, starting at Eastbourne then into the Centre Court commentary box at Wimbledon.
“Rob is my mentor and he’s training me across loads of sports,” Emily explains. “I go to different events with him and dive straight in. I’m being trained and we record it ‘as live’. He gives me unbelievably detailed feedback and the aim is to get me up to a level where I can be live on 5 Live.
“I’d only ever done TV before, so radio is a whole new skill. After being at Wimbledon I just thought, ‘This is definitely where I want to be in a couple of years!’ I’ll be doing some pitchside football reporting when the new season starts, then other sports from there.”
But she certainly won’t become a stranger to the padel world. “No way!” she laughs. “I’m now taking that training into my padel work in order to get even better. If anything, I’m hoping to pick up even more work in padel because I love it so much.”
