Phillip Pereira has played padel for over 35 years — and he’s now taking a key role in the exploding British scene with the launch of his new company Target Sports.
Co-founded with business partner Jonny Palling, Target Sports (the brand under which Target Padel Limited operates) connects aspirational padel operators and clubs in the UK and Europe with best-in-class providers of padel courts, turf, canopies, lighting, installers, architects and technology from padel’s heartlands in Spain and Portugal.
Pereira is based in Epsom, Surrey, but is a born and bred Gibraltarian so speaks fluent Spanish. This, combined with a contacts book full of Iberian padel experts, makes him and Target Sports ideal for this key connecting role.
That contacts book was built up initially through Pereira’s involvement with the International Padel Cluster, who organise the annual Padel World Summit.
He was an ambassador for the inaugural Padel World Summit in Malaga in 2024, diving straight into the role after finishing a long career in publishing.
As a well-connected Spanish and English speaker who played padel in Britain, Pereira was perfectly placed to bring the UK’s club owners, operators, brands and influencers over to the Summit to forge links with the 120 exhibitors who were keen to expand their businesses to padel’s many emerging markets beyond Spain.
Through connections forged at the Summit, Pereira also went on to promote Padel Solta, a boutique padel resort in Croatia, and was key to activating the first Floating Padel project in Britain at the Hurlingham Club for last year’s Alfred Dunhill Padel Classic pro-am event.
Next, he became a distributor for LEDProjects, the world-leading professional padel lighting brand (who this week signed an agreement as FIP’s official lighting supplier). Because LEDprojects work closely with all other suppliers (courts, turf, canopies etc), Pereira’s network multiplied rapidly.
A partnership begins to form…
Pereira met Jonny Palling on court at the PADELHUB in Crawley in January 2024. Palling then attended the first World Padel Summit in May that year and made his own connections with the likes of Swedish booking platform Court 22 and Padelmaster ball machines.
Post-match chat soon turned into fertile planning meetings. With their networks and business attributes combined (Palling’s background is cyber security recruitment), they started to forge an idea for a turn key solutions company for the British and European padel industry. Target Sports was born.
“We offer choice, that’s the key thing,” Pereria told The Padel Paper. “We help source courts, lighting, turf, canopies, groundworks, installers… everything an operator or club owner needs to source but may know little about at the outset of a project.
“We work closely with clients to understand what they want in terms of cost, location or style. Sometimes they are not sure, so we guide them. We have the connections, the knowledge of the industry and we understand the nuances of doing business in Spain, Portugal and the rest of Europe.”
Target Sports are not aligned with just one manufacturer of each component part of a padel project, they have a portfolio to pick from. A technical team in Madrid is on hand to offer further advice, procure products, trigger orders and shipping.
Target Sports’ first big project, signed in late December, is a club in Shoreham, West Sussex, with six canopied courts, clubhouse and mezzanine, which is breaking ground this month. They’re hoping to sign on further projects in Surrey and neighbouring counties in the next few months.
“We’ve found in conversations with potential clients that there is a slight gap in knowledge and awareness of padel infrastructure,” says Pereira. “But why would they know? That’s what we’re here for, to fill that vacuum, find out what they’re looking for and help their project come to life.”
