Baptiste Poey and Jérôme Ingrand are the founders of Padel Sports Events, the communications agency specializing in padel. Baptiste talks about the implementation of the City Padel Tour by PSE. A project that the team is working on a lot. Padel in city centers, a dream that could come true?

Padel Magazine - We hear more and more about the “City Padel Tower ". Can you tell us more about it ?

Jérome Ingrand - Co-founder of Padel Sports events
Jerome Ingrand

Baptize Poey - We had this tour project in mind for a while with Jérôme. Padel Sport Events was born like this by installing a temporary padel court in public places.

At the beginning of the year, we recruited 2 trainees Master Management of Sport to work on the project of organizing a tour in all its dimensions, logistics, economic, sports and administrative. They worked well, and after that, we structured their work with the PSE team.

 

 

How would this tour be organized?

We would start on 6 stages in 2019, 8 stages in 2020 and 10 stages in 2021, all in large French cities. There would be 3 events in 1 on each stage. From Wednesday to Friday, it's a "social event", we bring a new practice to the eyes of people, tennis clubs, associations, MJCs, children, men, women, everyone.

From Friday to Sunday, it is an "event performance" and the organization of a tournament with an endowment to bring in the best players from the territory.

And finally an "event business", we bring in a truck with 3 levels of receptionists (boxes on the roof and inside the truck), there will be a partner village with exhibition stands and we are setting up animations for the different partners to meet and exchange. We are on a very qualitative event.

It's all wonderful, but who is funding this tour?

Ah yes it is true that it must be financed… To date, it is a private tour, financed by private advertisers. For 2 months, we spent our time with Jérôme meeting big brands and presenting the project. The feedback being positive is what pushes us today to communicate on this project… and we speak of “project”.

We are accompanied by SEVEN Agency in the relationship with the partners.

Are brands already interested in padel?

Of course! Much more than you think. In the presentation of the project, we emphasize several points. Even if padel does not yet offer brands the visibility of football, rugby or basketball, we are on activation budgets that are very far from them too.

Visibility will continue to grow and the craze around padel with it. There are still no reference brands on the practice.

The other point is that we have a "test country", where there is a real padel economy, a real business model and a real private tour with the WPT. We have "economic data" to show to the brands and that speaks for itself.

With the City Padel Tour, we give brands the opportunity to be associated with a practice that will have weight in the next 10 years. It's time to position yourself, to be at the beginning of the padel adventure in France. It's a speech that works.

And the French Tennis Federation is following you?

No idea. We know they know about the project but we have not been solicited. It's a great project for a sports federation, to bring a confidential practice to people in a public place.

We are moving forward with the advertisers and we are progressing rather well but it is obvious that the ideal would be that this type of project is accompanied by the FFT, we would be very happy.

After a "road show", brands still like it ...

What's next ?

Currently, we spend our time in Paris with Jérôme, between presentations to advertisers and discussions with the SEVEN Agency. We will start to communicate on our social networks (@padelsportevents) on the news of the project, the progress and the partners who support us. It is a lot of work but we think it is worth it and PSE is also growing slowly (staff of 5 people). We believe in it!

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovered padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since then, padel has been part of his life. You often see him touring France to cover major French padel events.