With over 25 million active players across more than 110 countries, padel’s growth is bringing increased sponsorships and revenue and big investment into the sport at professional level too.
With revenue increases in any sport, there is a corresponding expansion of support services for its pro athletes and coaches. This expansion includes a wide range of services such as sports science, psychology and performance analysis (PA), all aimed at giving athletes a performance edge.
Performance and data analysis is nothing new in sport, with notational analysis traced back to Charles Reep and NFL teams capturing and dissecting video from 1985. We have seen the amount of data collected by sports organisations increase dramatically and advancements in technology mean organisations no longer need to rely on data charted by humans to measure performance.
For padel to further develop as a professional sport it must embrace technological innovations and develop in this digital age.
The average pro sports team is now estimated to collect one million terabytes, or an exabyte, of data across a season. The infrastructure requirements to store, process and create insights from such vast datasets are growing.
Top football clubs often have a large performance data department with data engineers, data scientists and data visualisation specialists who work together to make data usable, create predictive models and provide easy-to-understand insights for performance staff.
Data collection and performance analysis are still in the early stages in padel. Apart from Skylab‘s expanding Game Intelligence dataset, there are few comprehensive or accurate resources available. If the sport embraces advanced technologies, its efforts to develop and catch up will accelerate.
As the sport adopts performance analysis (PA), two things will happen. Firstly, the new technologies will enable much quicker generation of data in padel compared to previous sports. Data generation will be automatic and less human-resource heavy, insights will be unlocked rapidly, and it will be crucial for organisations to stay informed to reach their potential.
Secondly, the teams and athletes that incorporate PA into their coaching process will gain a significant competitive advantage.
The role of a PA, whether in an established organisation or an emerging one, is vital for building a high-performance team. Without it, organisations are essentially operating blindfolded. This discipline adds value through its objectivity, providing pivotal support in understanding, interpreting and offering insights to maximise performance for athletes and technical staff.
Decision makers make more well-informed decisions with stronger confidence. The touch points include; ‘What it Takes to Win’ models that guide your strategy on and off the court; tournament support to find your edge vs the opposition; discovering trends to develop athletes fit for the future; talent identification so no-one falls through the net; establish benchmarks to set realistic performance objectives and educate coaches in creating training scenarios as close to real performance as possible.
The sport of padel, with its burst in popularity, now has its sights on Olympic inclusion. Padel has been given Association of IOC Recognised International Sport status but is yet to be recognised fully as the International Olympic Committee continues to monitor its suitability as an Olympic sport. The International Padel Federation are lobbying and driving progress to meet the criteria.
The ever-expanding popularity of padel and the development of the sport in new countries will help push the sport towards Olympic status, but undoubtedly the implementation of widespread performance analysis will accelerate the professionalisation of the sport and hopefully allow for inclusion at Brisbane 2032.
Joe Borrowdale | Senior Performance Analyst at Skylab
