By Mike Dale
Padel has arrived in Albania with 600 members joining a new deluxe four-court club in Tirana and plans afoot for a national team, a federation and 250 more courts in the next five years.
The Albania Padel Group (APG) is the brainchild of Italian entrepreneurs Alessandro Pallini and Pasquale Minasi. Having launched the Tirana club with a lavish opening party and a string of commercial partnerships, they will now focus on building more courts in the capital, the north and south of the country and then in neighbouring Kosovo.
APG brought over a padel expert from Italy to re-train a local tennis coach, who is now installed as resident coach at the Tirana centre and leading classes for adults and children.
Padel in Albania is starting from absolute ground zero – which makes APG’s claim that 80% of their members are resident Albanians (as opposed to ex-pats Italians, who knew the game already) very impressive.
What’s more, they claim 70% of members have never played a sport before, showing that “padel can attract any type of person, whatever their gender, ability or age, without differentiation.”
The club opened in December with a glitzy ceremony featuring national celebrities, influencers, the Mayor of Tirana, a message of support from the Albanian prime minister, food, drinks and exhibition matches. It was covered by national TV and print media.
After launch, they offered free padel for a week for anyone who wanted to visit and give it a try. Word quickly spread, with growth accelerated by APG’s strategy of connecting with local businesses.
Era Gjoni, Assistant Manager at APG, told The Padel Paper: “From a strategic point of view, we offered several companies the opportunity to visit the padel centre. The idea was: ‘You don’t know this new sport in your country, let’s meet, come visit our centre, we will visit your office, understand what you are doing and see if we can join forces.’
“From these meetings, many companies saw something interesting and attractive in this sport and in our centre, so decided to collaborate and benefit from each other. We are offering different packages to their employees and they are supporting us with their services and products and in organising tournaments or events.”
So far, APG has linked up with Coca-Cola, Balfin Group, Teleperformance, Banks, Consulcesi and EY Albania, as well as forging sponsorships with the likes of Italian Padel (who built their courts), Playtomic (the online court booking system) and padel merchandise company Drop Shot.
Co-founder Pallini and Minasi certainly have the business credentials to make their venture a success. Brescia-born Pallini, formerly of McDonald’s and TWG Tea UK, is a real estate investor in London, northern Italy and Albania. Minasi, from Naples, is founder of the Istanbul-based Blue Magic Group which specialises in hair transplants, as well as an investor in over 100 start-up businesses.
Their joint venture into Albanian Padel Group came about when Pallini visited Minasi in Albania last year and noticed the poor state of many of the country’s sports centres. He decided to capitalise on the stratospheric growth of padel while also offering customers a holistic service including physiotherapists, nutritionists, professional coaches, high-quality facilities, services and staff.
The next stage is establishing an Albanian Padel Federation and a national team to represent the country in international competitions. “We have already started the process and are in contact with the Olympic Committee of Albania as well as the International Padel Federation,” said Gjoni. “We are waiting to be approved and to start opening more clubs throughout Albania in order to spot future talents.”
She added: “We believe padel will become a very big movement, a go-to sport, more than just a game to enjoy with friends and lose some calories.
“More centres will open and everyone will start to play padel across Albania, because of all the special characteristics it has as a sport.
“There is always scepticism when something new and innovative is presented to the public. What we did is attract people to the centre to just try once or even see it; then the magic of padel does its part.
“Knowing how easy to play and quick to learn it is, having no limits of age or physical abilities, people fell in love with the game and kept coming back. Even players that had never played any sports before were feeling like champions when playing padel.”
See more about the Albania Padel Group here.
