With over 25 million active players across more than 110 countries, padel’s growth is bringing increased sponsorships and revenue and big investment into the sport at professional level too.
With revenue increases in any sport, there is a corresponding expansion of support services for its pro athletes and coaches. This expansion includes a wide range of services such as sports science, psychology and performance analysis (PA), all aimed at giving athletes a performance edge.
Performance and data analysis is nothing new in sport, with notational analysis traced back to Charles Reep and NFL teams capturing and dissecting video from 1985. We have seen the amount of data collected by sports organisations increase dramatically and advancements in technology mean organisations no longer need to rely on data charted by humans to measure performance.
For padel to further develop as a professional sport it must embrace technological innovations and develop in this digital age.
Data collection and performance analysis are still in the early stages in padel. Apart from Skylab‘s expanding Game Intelligence dataset, there are few comprehensive or accurate resources available. If the sport embraces advanced technologies, its efforts to develop and catch up will accelerate.
Our Senior Performance Analyst at Skylab, Joe Borrowdale discusses more here.