Reflections on RacquetX: It’s time to ‘love all!’

RacquetX has packed up its rackets, bats and paddles and exited the Miami Beach Convention Center – but the spirit of cross-court collaboration that it fostered will live on and prosper.

That’s the feedback from the thousands of visitors to this week’s landmark three-day racket sports festival, curated by Robyn Duda and Marco Giberti. For the first time, tennis, pickleball, padel, squash, badminton, table tennis and all its other racket-swinging relatives were brought together – not battling for market share, but in the spirit of mutual learning, cooperation and unity as a single industry.

RacquetX’s own research, released before the event, demonstrated the rise of the so-called ‘cross-court consumer’ who is making full use of the vastly increased choice in racket sports and not being tied to just one. New clubs are installing multiple types of court, and existing clubs are diversifying. If clubs and customers are doing that, why is the wider industry not doing the same? As the saying goes, ‘A rising tide lifts all ships.’

Another clever and insightful way of putting it came from Katrina Adams, former President of the USTA, who said: “It’s time to love all!” Co-founder Duda (pictured above) added: “I am Switzerland… we [the different racquet sports] can all co-exist. That’s what RacquetX is all about.”

As well as networking, expert speakers and workshops, RacquetX featured many activations on pickleball, tennis and padel courts (including one from Padel Courts Deluxe featuring an Instagram-friendly stars and stripes playing surface!).

With tennis and pickleball already being so established in the States, there was a noticeable buzz of curiosity about padel, this European/Latin behemoth that is beginning to create a lot of noise in North America.

Mejor Set, the official court of the Premier Padel tour and the International Padel Federation (FIP) had a court in the gigantic Miami Beach Convention Center. They already have a subsiduary in San Diego and court providers and installers at the giant new Club Ultra and PadelX clubs in Miami. They also have ongoing projects in Atlanta, Dallas, Philadelphia, New York, LA, San Francisco and more. “It’s gone boom,” said Mejor set’s US & Canada Country Manager Mario Scade.

Mario’s colleague, Hernan Auguste, Mejor Set’s Head of International Relations (pictured above, right), said he loved RacquetX’s ethos of togetherness. He told The Padel Paper: “In Miami, we were all cousins, not competing with each other.

“I was a speaker with people from pickleball and tennis construction. I believe these three sports can be together and will bring more revenue to clubs. The feeling I had all week was that we are here to support each other.

“From my conversations with people from pickleball and tennis, we agreed that the big success from RacquetX was padel. Not because we ‘beat’ them, but because Americans know tennis and pickleball already, so the interest in padel was very big. For me it was a big surprise.”

Mario, who has built Mejor Set’s presence in the US since 2018, told us: “We’re in a different world right now compared to six years ago. There’s so much traction. We’re talking to people in the US who are going to build clubs with pickleball and padel. And country clubs that already have pickleball and tennis want to add padel.

“There’s two kinds of people – people who are passionate about the sport and want to open a club, and then there’s the business side – people who can see the potential. They’re saying, ‘We want in.’ They don’t have the padel knowledge or expertise, so having a place where you can go and see the racket manufacturers, court builders and everyone in the industry, it was the perfect place to learn everything in three days!”

Marcos Del Pilar, director and co-founder of the Pro Padel League (which starts again next week) said in his standing-room-only speech: “The US is not a promise anymore. Padel is here. It has arrived!”

What will padel in the US (and worldwide) look like when RacquetX 2025 rolls around? A bigger and noisier relative within the racket sports family, at the very least.