London P1: A Big Win for Padel – But Not Yet a Perfect Product

There was always going to be pressure on Premier Padel’s first London tournament.

For a sport that has spent the past five years being described as one of the fastest-growing participation sports in Britain, the London P1 was more than another tournament. It was a test of whether that participation boom could translate into something more difficult to manufacture: a professional sporting audience.

The answer, after six days at Olympia London, is encouraging – but qualified.

The event was undoubtedly a success. More than 20,000 people attended across the week, with the semi-finals and finals selling out the approximately 4,000-capacity centre court. Arturo Coello and Agustín Tapia won the men's title in a dramatic three-set final against Federico Chingotto and Alejandro Galán, while Claudia Fernández and 18-year-old Martina Calvo created one of the tournament's most compelling stories by beating world No.1s Gemma Triay and Delfi Brea. Calvo became the youngest player ever to win a Premier Padel title.

On the face of it, that is exactly what Premier Padel and the LTA wanted. But look a little closer and London P1 becomes rather more interesting – because it reveals both how far British padel has come and how far the professional game still has to travel.

The event looked like a major sport

The first big positive was the obvious one: Premier Padel looked the part.

The decision to put the tournament into Olympia's Grand Hall gave it a sense of occasion that a conventional sports centre could never have delivered. The £1.3bn Olympia redevelopment provided a suitably ambitious backdrop, while the organisers created a 4,000-seat centre court alongside additional courts, practice areas, retail stands, food and drink and fan experiences.

The Padel Paper's Mike Dale, writing from the tournament, captured something of the surreal nature of the occasion, while The Times' coverage noted the striking contrast between the traditional atmosphere of Wimbledon and the more entertainment-led London P1: music between matches, dance cams, player murals, VR experiences and children trying padel for themselves.

That was important. Premier Padel did not simply bring a padel tournament to London. It tried to create an event around the tournament.

The best modern sports properties are not simply selling two hours of competition. They are selling a day out, a lifestyle, access to stars, retail, food, networking and social media moments. London P1 understood that.

The practice courts were particularly effective. Rather than keeping the stars hidden away, fans could get surprisingly close to the world's best players as they warmed up. The Times reported that some of the biggest crowds were actually around the practice courts, with fans craning over barriers to watch players from only a few feet away.

For a sport still building its professional identity in Britain, that kind of access is enormously valuable.

The best thing about London P1 may have been the players

There is also no getting away from the quality of the product. For anyone who actually plays padel, seeing Coello, Tapia, Galán, Chingotto, Triay, Brea and the rest of the world's elite in the flesh was a powerful reminder of just how different professional padel is from the game played at most British clubs.

The London audience was not simply watching a new sport. It was watching the very best version of the sport. And that creates a potential development pathway that could be more important than the tournament itself.

The British players were given wildcards and, although none progressed deep into the draw, Christian Medina Murphy and his Spanish partner Alberto Garcia Jimenez recorded the first Premier Padel victory by a player carrying a British flag at a London event. Aimee Gibson and Catherine Rose also produced a highly competitive performance against experienced opposition.

For British players, coaches and juniors, the event provided something that television cannot: a physical reference point for what world-class padel actually looks like. That was one of the arguments made before the tournament by GB players and coaches, and it was arguably one of the event's biggest successes.

But there was a curious problem: people came to Olympia without necessarily watching the padel

This is where the first cracks appeared. The early rounds were noticeably less well attended than the weekend. Padel Roundup described the final weekend as sold out but noted that the opening rounds featured empty seats.

The Times made a similar observation in a different way. On the train to Olympia, the newspaper encountered regular British padel players who were excited about attending but could not name a single player in the draw.

That is perhaps the most revealing statistic of all. Britain now has something approaching a million people playing padel, yet the professional player recognition that exists in tennis, football or even some smaller established sports simply isn't there.

One million players does not automatically equal one million fans. That point was reinforced by the UK Padel CEO Nick Baker before the tournament, who warned that most British players still engage with padel as something they play rather than watch. And that is the strategic challenge Premier Padel now faces.

The London tournament successfully sold tickets. It has not yet proved that it has created a sustainable professional fanbase. Those are two very different things.

The early-round attendance needs a rethink

There is also an important nuance to the criticism of the empty seats. It would be unfair to suggest London was a failure because Tuesday and Wednesday were not packed.

This happens in tennis and other sports. A tournament lasting almost a week, with multiple courts operating simultaneously and matches spread across long days, will inevitably struggle to fill a single centre court for every early-round match.

Some fans on Reddit made exactly that point, arguing that the centre court was never realistically going to be full while three other courts were operating and spectators were moving around the venue. Others suggested that the event would have benefited from cheaper ground-entry tickets allowing people to come and go between courts.

That is an important distinction. The problem was not necessarily that people weren't interested. It may have been that the event's ticketing model did not always align with how people wanted to consume padel.

The Padel Paper's pre-event analysis, based on experience at Brussels, argued that padel works particularly well as a campus-style event where fans move between courts, discover matches and gradually become absorbed in the tournament.

London demonstrated the potential of that model – but perhaps also its limitations.

For future editions, the organisers could consider cheaper grounds passes, more flexible access and more deliberate ways of encouraging spectators to circulate.

The spectator experience still needs polishing

The strongest criticism came from the people actually sitting in the stands.

Ticketmaster's post-event reviews averaged 4.3 out of five from six reviews – positive overall, but with a remarkably consistent list of complaints.

One spectator praised the quality of the play and the seating but complained about a lack of central seating for eating and taking breaks, noise from a nearby Power Shot activation and the absence of replays of big points on the arena screens.

Another paid for a good seat only to discover that a large clock obstructed the view.

A further spectator praised the organisation but warned that the umpire's chair created a significant obstruction.

Another described the food options as poor, criticised the event compere for creating unnecessary noise and again encountered a restricted view caused by the officials' chair.

These are not existential problems. But they are exactly the sort of details that separate a good first event from a genuinely polished sports property.

If Premier Padel wants London to become one of the flagship tournaments on its calendar, these issues need to disappear. The fans paying for premium seats should not be discovering after arrival that their sightline has been compromised. And if the event wants spectators to spend an entire day inside the venue, food, seating, breaks and hospitality cannot be treated as secondary considerations.

Presentation: spectacle versus sport

There is another issue that London exposed.

Premier Padel clearly wants to create an entertainment product. That is understandable. But there is a fine line between making a sport entertaining and distracting from the sport itself.

Some spectators complained about excessive presenting, music and noise. One Ticketmaster reviewer specifically criticised the compere and another complained about noisy spectators.

Meanwhile, online padel fans watching the event complained about commentary that they felt lacked tactical explanation and relied too heavily on generic descriptions of spectacular shots.

For a new spectator, the professional game is difficult to understand at first. Why is the player moving back? Why did they let the ball bounce? Why did that smash fail? Why is the player deliberately hitting the ball against the glass?

And then there is the women's game

One of the more uncomfortable issues around London was the prize-money disparity.

The total prize pool was €479,068, but the men's champions received €26,000 each compared with €17,000 for the women's champions – a difference of more than 50%.

That sits awkwardly with an event that otherwise made a very strong case for the quality of women's padel.

Indeed, the women's tournament arguably produced one of the most compelling narratives of the week.

Fernández and Calvo's victory was historic, with Calvo becoming the youngest Premier Padel champion in history. The women's final also delivered a fresh pairing, a young breakthrough star and a genuine sporting storyline rather than simply another victory for an established superstar.

If Premier Padel wants to build a mainstream audience, that is exactly the sort of story it should be amplifying.

And it should be asking whether the commercial value of the women's game is being properly reflected in the structure of the professional tour.

So, was London a success?

Yes.

But perhaps not for the reason that some of the promotional material suggested.

London P1 was not proof that padel has suddenly become the next Wimbledon. It was proof that padel has earned the right to be in the conversation.

More than 20,000 people came through Olympia. The weekend sold out. The world's best players were in London. Mainstream media covered the tournament. TNT Sports and HBO Max added broadcast exposure. British players competed on the biggest stage of their careers. And the sport generated exactly the kind of visual, social and commercial energy that promoters want from a modern event.

But the next challenge is harder.

Premier Padel needs to convert the person who books a court every Tuesday night into the person who knows that Coello plays on the right, that Tapia is one of the most explosive players in the sport, that Brea's tactical game is different from the men's power game, or that a new teenage star such as Martina Calvo might be the next big thing.

That is fandom. And fandom cannot simply be bought with advertising, music and fan zones. It has to be built.

The event demonstrated that there is an audience. It showed that the world's best players can generate excitement in Britain. It showed that Olympia can provide a credible home for the tournament. And it gave the LTA and Premier Padel five years to improve the proposition.

The next London P1 therefore has a different challenge. It doesn't need to prove that Britain will watch padel. It needs to prove that Britain will care about it.

That is a much bigger test – and potentially the one that determines whether the London P1 becomes an important annual fixture or simply another successful event in the sport's extraordinary growth story.