Padel has never had so many players in France. And it has never required so many tools to play. Why this fragmentation, who is to blame, and how can we overcome it? Jean Vacca provides the answers, having mapped the 1,400 French clubs and their equipment before launching his own application. 

You play  paddle  So you know the drill. An app to check the club's Monday slots, another for Thursday's. A website to find the next one  tournament , a group  WhatsApp  To find a tournament partner, a registration form. And to see where you stand in the...  ranking , yet another tab.

A regular player juggles easily with  five or six applications  To answer three simple questions: where to play, which tournament to play in and with whom, and where I stand. How did we get here? We asked him the question.

Why so many apps?

"Because padel has grown faster than its equipment. In just a few years, we've reached almost..."  1,400 installations in operation Each club opened with the  booking software  which suited him—there are several on the market, and they do their job well. Tournament organizers did the same on their end, with their own solutions. Rankings are still consulted elsewhere. No one did anything wrong. It's simply that each group built a tool for its own use: the club manages its fields, the organizer manages its tournament, and the federation manages the rankings.  The player, however, was never the starting point.  »

So it's not an excess of applications, he summarizes, but  the absence of a common layer above "Each tool is coherent in its own corner. It's the whole that isn't."

What exactly is wrong?

"Taken individually, these apps work. The problem arises as soon as you leave your club. You're looking for  a pitch tonight "Without knowing where the rest are? You have to open each app one after the other. Hesitating between three tournaments on the same weekend? Three different websites, three ways of presenting the categories, schedules, and prices."

And there is, according to  Jean Vacca , a blind spot that no one addresses:  tournament partner .

"A padel tournament is played in pairs, and you register in pairs. The main obstacle to registration isn't the level or the price: it's..."  not having a partner for that tournament, on that date These days, it's all settled in club WhatsApp groups. Just in the  Bouches-du-Rhône , there are more  22,000 members in the WhatsApp groups of about fifty clubs "It works very well… on a club scale. For a tournament forty kilometers away, we don't know anyone, and we end up missing the tournament because we were still looking for a partner the day before the deadline."

Why is it so complicated to find your way around?

" Because  The information exists, but it's not in one place. "Available time slots are in the club's software. Tournaments are organized by the tournament organizer. Rankings are with the federation. Tournament partners are on WhatsApp. The player is the only one who needs the overview, and he reconstructs it manually every evening."

Paradox:  The more you play, the heavier it gets. .

"A casual player opens one app a week, that's fine. A competitive player who plays in three clubs and does two tournaments a month, that's  six or seven tools at all times "It's the most dedicated players who suffer the most from the chaos."

How to get out?

"Certainly not by asking clubs to change their software. They're well-equipped, and it's not up to them to fix this problem. The answer is..."  a layer above: a tool that aggregates what already exists and presents it from the player's point of view "We're not replacing the club. We're replacing the dozen or so tabs you had to open to play it."

That's the gamble he took with  Padel Now , the first version of which has just been released on  the App Store and Google Play .

The application displays the  Available time slots at the listed clubs , lists the  tournaments near you  with filters — category, date, distance, level, time — and integrates the  French ranking .

For the pair, the logic is simple: from a tournament's page, you publish an announcement  "I'm looking for a partner for this tournament." , or you can consult the profiles of players already searching for the same tournament. Once the pair is formed,  Registration is done in the app , without changing tools.

In addition to this, there is a  registration schedule , an  points calculator  and total  free online training .

He doesn't oversell:  This is version 1. It doesn't do everything, but it already answers the three questions.  »

The rest is as follows: after the  tournament partner The first part involves matchmaking to find three players of your skill level on a Tuesday evening without scouring WhatsApp groups, then the  booking pitches directly in the app The rest will be built with feedback from those who play.

For players who want to discover the app, it's happening here: Padel Now

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