Watch a professional padel final today and the court is wrapped in branding. Title sponsors sit in the tournament name, car makers and banks line the glass, and racket brands are stitched onto every shirt.
Behind that visual noise sits a simple question that most club players never ask: who actually pays for pro padel, and what are fans being asked to buy into along the way?
How the Premier Padel tour came to be
For most of the last decade, professional padel ran on World Padel Tour, a private circuit organised by Setpoint Events and owned by the Spanish drinks group Damm. In 2022 a rival arrived. Premier Padel was founded by Qatar Sports Investments together with the International Padel Federation and the Professional Padel Association.
The first Premier Padel event was the Qatar Major in Doha, played from 28 March to 2 April 2022 at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex. Its title sponsor was the telecom company Ooredoo, and Martín Di Nenno and Paquito Navarro beat Alejandro Galán and Juan Lebrón in the final.
For a while the sport had two competing tours. That ended in August 2023, when QSI agreed to buy World Padel Tour from Damm. Both circuits finished their 2023 calendars, and from 2024 the sport moved to a single Premier Padel tour governed by the FIP.
Qatar Sports Investments and padel money
The phrase Qatar Sports Investments padel tends to appear in headlines about prize money, but the real story is investment. QSI, the group that also owns Paris Saint-Germain, brought deep pockets, broadcast deals and big venues. In its first year Premier Padel played events at places like Roland-Garros in Paris.
That kind of backing changes a sport fast. It funds bigger draws, better television production and a calendar that reaches new countries. It also means a sport with grassroots roots now depends heavily on one major investor's plans.
For club players, the effect is mostly indirect. More television exposure brings new players to local courts, and more players bring more clubs. We have also seen how quickly growth can overshoot, as our piece on Sweden's padel boom and bust shows.
Where padel sponsorship money comes from
Padel sponsorship follows a pattern familiar from tennis and golf. Title sponsors buy the tournament name, as with Ooredoo in Doha or CUPRA in Rotterdam. Venue and host-city partners support individual stops. Broadcasters pay for rights, and equipment brands pay players to use their rackets, shoes and clothing.
Equipment is the layer most fans feel. When a top pair uses a particular racket, sales of that model follow. Our look at sport brands, Adidas and the money side of padel goes deeper into how racket and apparel deals shape what ends up in club shops.
Player rankings matter to sponsors too. The premier padel ranking decides seedings and entry into the biggest draws, and a higher ranking means more screen time. National systems sit underneath; our explainer on the French FFT ranking system shows how detailed that structure can get.
What sponsors get in return
Sponsors are not being generous. Padel offers them an audience that is hard to reach elsewhere: adults with money to spend on sport, travel and equipment, many of whom picked up a racket in the last few years.
The format helps. Matches are fast to follow, the glass walls make every rally readable on a phone screen, and short clips travel well on social media. For a brand, that means a logo on the back glass is seen far beyond the arena.
Local clubs follow the same logic on a smaller scale. A bank or a car dealer sponsors a court, a tournament or a junior programme, and gets visibility with members in return. That money often pays for new courts, lights and coaching, which is a direct benefit to the people who play.
The fan token question
Across other sports, a newer kind of sponsor has tried to turn fans into customers of a different product: the crypto fan token. Football is where this went furthest. Clubs such as FC Barcelona, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain partnered with the Socios platform to sell tokens that give holders votes on small club decisions.
The mechanics are worth understanding. To buy a fan token on Socios, a fan first buys the Chiliz cryptocurrency, then swaps it for the club's token. The tokens can be traded, which means their price moves, and fans can lose money if demand falls.
Regulators noticed. In December 2021 the UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled that Arsenal's ads for its fan token broke advertising rules. The watchdog said the ads trivialised investment in a cryptoasset and did not make the risks clear enough, including the need to buy another cryptocurrency first.
Arena naming deals tell a similar story. In Los Angeles, the Staples Center became Crypto.com Arena in 2021. In Miami, the home of the Heat carried the FTX name until the exchange collapsed in November 2022, after which the naming deal was ended and the arena was later renamed.
Why this matters to padel fans
Padel's money so far has come mostly from investors, broadcasters, title sponsors and equipment brands. That could change. A fast-growing sport with a young, mobile-first audience is exactly the kind of property that token platforms and exchanges look for.
If a club, a player or a tournament ever offers you a token, a reward coin or a "digital membership", treat it like any other financial product. Ask what you are actually buying, whether you can sell it, what it is priced in, and who sets that price.
A vote on the colour of a warm-up shirt is not the same as membership of a club. A free token that requires you to open a crypto wallet is a marketing funnel, not a gift.
A simple checklist before you buy in
Read the small print on what the token actually gives you. Many offers are limited to polls, discounts or early ticket access, all of which can be withdrawn.
Check whether you must buy another cryptocurrency first. Every extra step adds fees and another asset whose price can move against you.
Look for the risk warning. In the EU, the MiCA rules now regulate crypto-asset service providers, and a reputable platform should be clear about who supervises it and how you can withdraw.
Never treat fandom as an investment case. Supporting a pair you love by watching, travelling to an event or buying their racket is a different decision from putting money into a tradeable asset tied to their name.
If token offers send you down the rabbit hole of crypto prices, Coinasity covers the market news and the basics, starting from questions as simple as "what is one satoshi worth?" It is a calmer place to learn than a sponsor's sign-up page.
The sport you can touch
None of this needs to spoil the fun of watching the premier padel tour. The players are extraordinary, the rallies are long, and the investment has put padel in front of millions of new viewers.
But it is worth knowing where the money comes from, and what is being sold alongside the sport. The healthiest part of padel's economy is still the simplest: four people, a booked court and a tube of balls.
