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At last month's Padel 22 Media Sessions at Padium in London, a former Olympic silver medallist said something that stopped the room. "The Olympics needs padel more than padel needs the Olympics." It's the most considered thing I've heard on this debate in years.
The fashionable line to parrot is “padel must get in the Olympics - at all costs” - myself included, all too often - and it’s also the campaign led by the likes of the International Padel Federation, brands such as Checkout, and top stars such as Ale Galán. However, at last month’s debut Padel 22 Media Sessions forum at Padium in London, it was the words of someone that knows more than most about the benefits, and perils, of Olympic sport who gave pause for thought.
Gail Emms, a Team Great Britain former Badminton World Champion and Olympic Silver Medalist, offered the standout line of the day when she said “The Olympics needs padel more than padel needs the Olympics”. As a strong advocate of padel’s, and indeed pickleball’s, growth, the Athens 2004 Medalist made clear that her view, far from a reluctance to see it on the Olympic stage, reflected the sport’s strength.
“I’d love to see padel in the Olympics, but it has to be at the right time. The sport is building something really special, and the pathways, coaching, and structures need to be in place first.” Drawing on her own experience within Olympic systems, she added: “It becomes a very different proposition overnight. Funding, governance, performance targets – all of that comes into play. We’re not quite there yet [in the UK].”
It is indeed an interesting view, and one that doesn’t get considered enough amidst the hype around the sport’s Olympic goals. What baggage does Olympic admission bring for a sport across areas, as Emms says, such as funding, governance and performance? Is the sport ready for its time in the Olympic sun? With approximately 80% of the world’s top 100 players emanating from Spain and Argentina, just how compelling a contest would it be? What chance would emerging padel nations have at Brisbane 2032 when, as many predict, padel could make its debut in Australia?
And perhaps most importantly of all, padel is doing just fine without the Olympics. A $4 billion global industry is brimming with ambition, investment, without the Olympics and all it entails. Don’t forget, padel is still a very young sport.
I for one would love to see padel in the Olympics, and I earnestly believe that Brisbane could be the perfect showcase. Wouldn’t it be a perfect story if that most sporting of nations, Australia - a nation that is remarkably slow off the mark with padel, but one that will surely embrace the sport when it smells the coffee - became host of the sport’s debut in the Games?
Well, yes, it would. But let’s look at culturally how snug the fit is for padel in the Olympics because while some would say it’s the holy grail for the sport, is it where padel should be focussed right now? Isn’t padel, with its entrepreneurial, maverick flair, doing just fine without - perhaps in spite of - the Olympic Games mantle, and all the weight, good and bad, that brings?
Olympic status isn't just recognition — it's a demand letter. Pathways, coaching structures, selection policies, anti-doping, funding models, high-performance centres. In countries like the US, UK, and Canada, most of that is still being built. Right now the focus is on courts. Clubs. Places to play. Nice looking apparel. The infrastructure of a movement, not a medal programme. Besides, if the likes of the U.S. Great Britain, Canada, South Africa and other New Padel World nations aren’t medal ready, how badly do we want to see that likely one-sided contest?
What stands out when speaking to people across the padel industry is its entrepreneurial spirit—its swashbuckling, gold-rush energy. Pro-business, fast-moving, and largely unbureaucratic, that is what has taken the sport this far. It's something we see reflected in the businesses we work with at Padel 22 — the ones moving fastest are the ones least constrained by institutional thinking.
The Olympic movement, by contrast, is inherently institutional and Euro-centric: culturally old school, governance-heavy, and lacking the nimbleness and daredevil attitude of all that makes padel great.
If the Olympics were a political institution, it would sit closer to the European Union—process-driven, red tape-heavy, consensus-led, and slow to turn—than to the fast-moving, risk-taking world that padel currently inhabits. More Zurich conference hall than Vegas casino floor.
Padel has not reached this point by accident. It has been driven by entrepreneurial instinct — swashbuckling, unbureaucratic, fast. More of that, not less. The Olympics will come. But on padel's terms.
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Ben Nichols is one of the most influential figures in global padel — an entrepreneur, industry builder, and communicator who has done more than almost anyone to shape how the world sees and understands the sport. He is Founder & CEO of Padel 22, the world's leading communications and industry consultancy for padel and emerging racket sports, and co-founder of the Anglo American Padel Cup — widely known as ‘the Ryder Cup of Padel’.
Ben is Founder of Insider 22, a global membership network of business leaders across 22 countries.
He is also On-Screen Contributor and Executive Producer of Amazon Prime's Travel Racket. He has placed the sport in front of audiences that previously didn't know it existed — securing coverage in Forbes, the FT, the New York Times, CNN International and BBC.
He doesn't just tell the sport's story. He helps build it.
