As the racket sport padel continues to boom in Europe, Latin America and India — and is making inroads in the United States — the Swiss watch brand Certina has increased its ties to the game.
In May, it introduced the DS-7 Chronograph Padel Edition by Marta Ortega, a 41-millimeter quartz timepiece created with one of the sport’s top professional players.
Why Ms. Ortega? Marc Aellen, Certina’s chief executive — who was interviewed earlier this month at Padium, a multi-court padel center in London’s Canary Wharf neighborhood — said she “has hundreds of thousands of followers — where there are people that are definitely interested in padel, that could be potentially watch buyers.” (According to Statista, the German online data platform, the sport has 30 million amateur players worldwide.)
The watch, which sells for 615 Swiss francs ($696), has a dial of black carbon, and “similar material is used in padel rackets,” Mr. Aellen said. He also noted that at six o’clock is a yellow ball, similar to the tennis-style ball used in the game. Ms. Ortega’s signature is on the case back.
Mr. Aellen said he first noticed the sport in 2020, when he visited a bustling padel center in Sweden and decided it might be a good match for the brand. “I had a feeling that it could develop very well,” he said.
Certina, owned by the Swatch Group, is an official padel timing partner of the Royal Dutch Lawn Tennis Association, which oversees tennis and padel in the Netherlands. And in 2022 and 2023, the brand was an official event partner of the Vienna Padel Open tournament.
As padel’s popularity has grown, other watch brands, including Richard Mille, Hublot and Girard-Perregaux, have sponsored tournaments or added star players to their ambassador groups.
A cross between tennis and squash, padel (pronounced “paddle”) is not as new a sport as it may seem: Similar games were played in the 19th century. The modern version was invented in 1969 by Enrique Corcuera, a wealthy businessman who built a padel court at his vacation home in Acapulco, Mexico.
By 1991, the sport was popular enough for the establishment of a federation to manage it worldwide; in 1993, the organization adopted its current name, the International Padel Federation.
Padel can be played as singles or doubles, but doubles is most common. Players hit the small, soft ball off the court’s walls and over a low net with a paddle-like racket that is “akin to a large-size table tennis bat,” said Jonathan Marks, managing director of the sports marketing agency MTC in London, who wrote in a later message that he played padel two or three times a week in Regent’s Park.
The game is similar to pickleball, as “anyone can play to a reasonable level,” Mr. Marks said.
Mr. Marks said he believed Certina’s sponsorship of a niche sport such as padel to be a smart move. It is still “a very cost-effective sport to get behind,” he said, so the brand “has an opportunity of getting a much higher visibility than they would do in another sport,” such as football, golf and tennis.
As for Certina, Mr. Aellen said the brand was working on developing new partnerships with padel federations in regions such as the Middle East. But while “the Qataris are investing a lot of money in the professional side of the sport,” he added, the brand’s focus is primarily on the amateur ranks “where we touch the biggest amount of people.”
So will padel become an Olympic sport? Watch this space for Brisbane 2032.
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