Press release
Founded in 2012, MATCHi has quickly established itself as the international racket sports enabler of choice for players and venues. MATCHi offers comprehensive services to more than 1400 venues, over 1 million players, and partnering with some of the largest padel chains in the world. Having recently acquired streaming platform Padelgo, the Sprints Capital and Verdane backed racket sports platform are now further strengthening its position as a key partner for the global padel community by acquiring Padelboard – thereby enhancing its tournament platform and expanding its product portfolio.
Padelboard, founded in 2020, offers a tournament tool for padel to engage, challenge, and enable the padel community to meet and compete. The app is used by more than 35 000 padel players in Europe, welcoming thousands of new users every single week. As the padel market evolves, so does the need for venues to engage and retain their player base. One way of doing that is through tournaments. In 2021, according to MATCHi’s own data, light tournaments have seen a 20x increase. A trend that’s also noticeable on the Padelboard platform where the number of tournaments created has doubled during the past 6 months. To meet venue demands, Padelboard just released Padelboard Arena – a service that allows venues to manage their own tournaments, and is already being used by more than 70 venues in Europe, a number that is expected to grow rapidly. Daniel Ekman, CEO at MATCHi is excited about the acquisition, increasing offering, and creating value for the padel community, both venues, and players.
“We always strive to improve the racket sports experience for the whole community. Padelboard’s widely appreciated tournament tool will be a great addition to MATCHi’s product portfolio. Bringing together our broad set of services such as Backhandsmash, recently Padelgo and now Padelboard, MATCHi will be able to create the ultimate tournament platform for players and venues of all types. From amateur to seasoned competitors, we will enable venues to find new and exciting ways to engage their audience and players to connect with each other, spreading the joy and competitive side of padel.”
“We’ve always felt that MATCHi is the perfect partner for us to scale our product with, sharing the same vision as us, working together with venues to create value. In addition to this, MATCHi’s broad knowledge, expertise, and experience about padel will be invaluable on our journey going forward – making the sport more tournament based together with players and venues, the ultimate padel community” Says Robin Lundgren, Co-founder and Chairman of the board at Padelboard.
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About MATCHi
MATCHi exists to empower people in racket sports through user-friendly tech. MATCHi’s booking platform helps clubs administer less and connects venues with players through its marketplace. Founded in 2012, MATCHi was created to facilitate the growth of racket sports and has in recent years grown to become one of the world’s largest companies in the segment. With over 1400 venues, over 1 million players, and close to 80 employees spread out across the globe, MATCHi’s vision is to be the go-to platform for the global racket sports community.
About Padelboard
Founded in 2020, Sweden, by Robin Lundgren, and co-founders Bengt Thorn, Maximilian Leiding, Caroline Lundgren, and Axel Nilsson, Padelboard offers a tournament creation platform and a player community for padel players looking to challenge each other in competitive matches. It also provides venues with a cloud-based tool that allows venues to manage and promote their tournaments from any browser.