“I live in a community in Delray Beach, Florida. We had 14 tennis courts, two padel courts and eight pickleball courts. We are now going to have four padel courts, and the way that we can build those additional courts is by converting tennis courts. The sport that is going to suffer at the expense of padel is tennis.”

Advertisement

David Eisen, one of the newest investors in the North American Pro Padel League (PPL), believes he is at the start of a revolution that will upend the existing order of racket sports. Given he has just acquired the Los Angeles Beat padel franchise, at a valuation of $10 million (£7.6m), it is probably in his interests to say that — and for his community’s ratio of tennis courts to padel courts to swing further in his favor.

Padel, played on an enclosed court using skills and rules that make it a kind of hybrid of tennis and squash, is experiencing a wave of investment in the United States, with PPL franchises being acquired at rising valuations. The league currently comprises 10 teams in nine cities and one state: Toronto, San Diego, New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Cancun, Los Angeles, Houston, Orlando and Arkansas.

U.S. tennis player Frances Tiafoe, who is ranked inside his sport’s top 30, recently became an adviser to the New York Atlantics PPL franchise, as part of a funding round that the league said exceeded $2 million. The deal valued the Atlantics at over $10 million, up from the $200,000 entry fee that franchises paid to join the league in 2023.

Perhaps this explains Eisen’s buoyancy.