Canal + presenter and journalist Lyes Houhou looks back on the successes of the television group around padel and talks to us about the future, with "always more padel in the house of padel"
“Padel on Canal +: an opportunity for everyone”
“When I learned that we had acquired the rights to padel, I had two reactions. The first, as a fan of racket sports (I was 2/6 in tennis), I was like crazy to have recovered a racket sport. The second, as I knew little about padel, was to tell myself that I was going to have to work on my knowledge to tell a great story of this sport. Who are the headliners, who are the best players, who are the French players. How is it played? Where is it played?
The consultants allowed us to get up to speed to be more credible.
Laura Clergue also gave me my first padel racket. It was an opportunity for me to immerse myself even more in this sport.”
“Communicate about padel before thinking about the audience”
“Today, there is no pressure from the channel regarding audiences. We have acquired the rights to Premier Padel and World Padel Tour recently. In the end, we haven't done a whole year with padel yet. We started last June in Marbella.
Before thinking about the audience, you have to interest people, make the sport as accessible as possible. Especially since for the moment, we have no French in the last four. So there is a lot of work to be done to professionalize this sport on the air.
But since September 2022, we have been offering almost everything, from World Padel Tour à Premier Padel. It is a clear and ambitious choice by the channel. We want to create this automatism of going to watch padel on Canal.
Finally, I remind you that thematic channels like Canal + Sport 360 are measured on a yearly basis. We will make a point at the end of next year with a full season.
“Offer padel on THE reference channel Canal +”
“We broadcast padel on our thematic channels, but we have already had padel on the reference channel such as during the finals of the Master Final 2021 in Madrid, the finals of the Human Padel Open and the final of the Greenweez Paris Premier Padel Major at Roland Garros.
And this will also be the case for December 18, 2022, when I can announce that the Canal + premium channel will broadcast the finals.
It is obvious that when we offer padel on this channel, we break the counters and it is therefore very good for this sport.”
“We gathered the World Padel Tour et Premier Padel"
“With the war between the circuits, we were afraid of finding ourselves in a complicated situation with one circuit per channel. This would have created some confusion for this sport when we must unify all the forces to promote padel.
When Canal+ won the tender for Premier Padel, it was a relief for me. We have become the home of padel where the two main professional circuits are broadcast.
In the end, we are a winner. Our offer is richer with the distribution of these two circuits. In terms of visibility and readability, perhaps a single circuit would work better.
On Canal, there is a tendency to unify the two circuits.
If in football or tennis we had two rankings, it would be complicated. But on Canal +, we have managed to combine these two circuits so that the offer is as good as possible.”
“A unique line-up for the Master Final in Barcelona”
“Padel will benefit from the most beautiful Canal + platforms for the Master Final weekend in Barcelona with a tailor-made graphic charter dedicated to the competition.
But all fans will be able to enjoy the best of padel on Canal + Sport 360 from Thursday with the quarter-finals.
It is from Saturday that the whole team will present this Master Final of the World Padel Tour with semi-finals and finals ladies and gentlemen all weekend.
And as I explained, we will have a special skin that allows us to raise the level of this set even further.”
"We do not change a team that wins in 2023"
“In 2023, we will continue with the same team. Never change a winning team. So we have three pairs: Sébastien Heulot / Laura Clergue, Robin Haziza / Charlotte Gabas and Mathilde Brun / Adrien Maigret.
We will be in the continuity of this end of the season. We are going to broadcast about twenty tournaments between Premier Padel and World Padel Tour. We will do a full season in 2023. It will be a first.
For big events, we will send a team like for the Human Padel Open, Roland-Garros, the Master Final.”
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.
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all this is great, good for us and good for padel. one thing intrigues me, out of pure curiosity about "how it works": premier padel being directed by the qatari of psg, we would have expected to see it on Beinsports, at the expense of canal which could have lost everything, especially if the wpt goes belly up. I am super-delighted that everything is on Canal, but what explains that Be in sport did not take it? do you have any information?