Playtomic Buys Italy’s Sportclubby

Playtomic acquired Sportclubby, a social platform for booking sport and leisure.

What’s happening: The Madrid-based operator of a racket sports app for players and software for clubs snapped up its Italian counterpart, creating a single platform for padel players in Italy.

Adding the 1K sites and 1.5M users to its existing 5.5K clubs, 23K courts and 3.6M players, Playtomic once again strengthens its goal of being the world’s leading padel community.

Game on. Launched in 2017, Playtomic has orchestrated more than a dozen strategic acquisitions to now operate in 50 countries.

Of note, after acquiring Kourts in 2021, Playtomic hit 31 US states. Following a €56M raise, it scaled up Europe-side, securing Swiss-run GotCourts and Finland’s SL Systems Oy in 2022, and Portugal’s Aircourts the year after.

Already having a presence in Italy through a 2020 acquisition of PrenotaUnCampo, Felix Ruiz, Playtomic’s co-founder and co-CEO, says Sportclubby completes the plan for the country.

“With this acquisition we finalise the consolidation in Italy. Now we are ready to offer the best experience for the players, with a robust network effect that will make it easier for them to find other people to play with.”

Only up. Padel’s ~€2B worldwide ecosystem increased 249% over eight years to reach ~9.7K clubs, casting an estimated value of €6B by 2026.

With 25M players across 90 countries, around €1B will be invested in padel court construction across Europe by 2025. In the US, courts are expected to grow from 200 to 30K and 8M players by 2030.

Looking ahead: The new golf, the new tennis, the new pickleball… padel keeps drawing comparisons as it heads mainstream. With UK broadcaster ITV winning rights to show the Hexagon Cup live next month, a sustained turbo trajectory is likely, especially with the International Padel Federation hoping for Olympic inclusion in 2032.