Padel X Club Just Opened 10 Courts in Downtown Miami

Padel, a racquet sport with more than 25 million active players in 110 countries, is about to blow up in South Florida.

The company known as Padel X recently opened one of the biggest padel clubs in the U.S.

The location? Beautiful downtown Miami at 141 NE 13th Terrace – and it’s right next door to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

The Padel X ownership group has opened 10 courts at that location, but the momentum won’t stop there. The Miami club is just the beginning. Miami is the first of three South Florida Padel X clubs to open this year, with Boca Raton and West Palm Beach to follow.

Source: Padel X

Padel X’s ownership group – including co-founders Juan Pablo Leria and Nalle Grinda — is making a $10-million initial investment on those first three clubs. In addition, within the next five years, the goal is to open 30 Padel X clubs throughout the U.S.

“We believe the ‘Padel Revolution’ in the U.S. is here to stay,” said Leria, who is also the CEO of the company. “We think there will an explosive growth of padel clubs in the next couple of years.

“Padel X is a new brand. It’s a dynamic name. Padel has been a rather informal industry in the past decades, and we intend to professionalize the sport, and that’s why we chose our name. We want to elevate padel to the Power of X.”

Grinda, who is also Padel X’s Chief Director of Sport, played pro padel in his native France from 2004 to 2010. In 2010, he quit his pro career and moved to Miami to work in real estate.

Still, he couldn’t forget about padel and his passion for the sport.

“There was no padel in Miami at the time,” Grinda said. “I started building a few courts, introducing the sport to my friends on the beach. We kept on inviting people to play, and they got the virus.”

Source: Padel X

When the Miami Padel Open was held here in 2022, that’s when Grinda and Leria came up with the idea for Padel X.

“Padel is happening now in the U.S., but it’s been happening in Europe and Latin America for the past 30 years,” Grinda said. “The sport is growing like an epidemic.”

While Grinda has impressive credentials as a pro padel player, Leria has more than 20 years of experience managing award-winning wellness clubs, padel facilities and other hospitality-type venues.

Both men share a passion for padel, which has been described as a mix between tennis and squash.

Padel is played on an enclosed court, with tempered glass walls behind each end line. Balls are in play off the walls or off the side fencing as long as they bounce once on the court.

Source: Padel X

Scoring is identical to tennis. The game is most popular in Spain, where there are 3.7-million players, and in Argentina, where there are 2.1 million players.

Amazingly, padel is more popular than tennis in both of those countries.

The sport is also catching on all over the world. For example, padel could make its Olympic debut in 2032 in Brisbane, Australia.

Celebrities are getting the bug, too. Argentina native and soccer superstar Lionel Messi, now of Inter Miami, is known to be a huge padel fan. The same can be said of Brits such as retired soccer star David Beckham, now the president/co-owner of Inter Miami; and Andy Murray, a former World No. 1 in tennis. Spain’s Rafael Nadal – on the short list of the greatest tennis players ever – has padel courts at his tennis academy in Mallorca. Americans are catching on, too. In the U.S., as of the end of 2023, there were 70 padel venues with more than 200 total courts. That’s a huge increase from just 30 padel venues in 2022.

Tournaments are also on the rise. The U.S. Padel Association hosted 15 tournaments in 2022. That number increased to 40 last year. This year, the number of tournaments is projected to rise to more than 75.

Grinda, who said they will start a top-of-the-line padel academy for all level of players, is confident that this sport will be a major hit in the U.S. market.

"We want to innovate with video technology on our courts, our Level Up training program and a vast array of padel tournaments, clinics and experiences,” Grinda said.

Padel X will also have a pioneering recycling program.

“With the recycled waste from padel balls and plastic bottles, we will produce the apparel and furniture in all our clubs,” Leria said.

“Each item will show the number of recycled bottles needed. For example, 11 bottles of plastic for a T-shirt or 1,550 bottles to manufacture one of our iconic benches.”

Leria said padel is relatively unknown for Americans – but not for long.

“We think Americans are going to adopt this sport because it is dynamic, sophisticated, and social,” Leria said. “It’s a cool sport.”

Of the roughly 200 padel courts in the U.S., 80 of them are in Miami. That makes Miami the epicenter of the sport in this country.

Leria knows there is a big demand for padel courts in Florida with little availability at peak hours between 4 p.m. and midnight. And, as new clubs open in the coming years, players will flock to Padel X because of its superior club experience.

The official court manufacturer of Padel X is MejorSet, which is a premium Padel courts manufacturer for over 20 years. Lacoste is the official clothing line of Padel X club staff and is branded on the nets and net posts.

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Source: Padel X