Winning Padel in the Lowcountry: Ben Nichols, aka Mr. Padel, on Why Charleston Is Next

yeah i i was reading a little bit about paddle it seems like it originated in in mexico a gentleman there kind of started and it's just kind of spread virally from there over the years and the there's 35 million people playing it right now that's crazy right

It's crazy.

It's got a very interesting story of, you know, it's not an old, old, old sport in terms of, you know, compared to the traditional sports you and I know.

But it is, you know, it was born in 1969 in Mexico.

It then spread quickly into Spain and to kind of elite society in Spain, a very wealthy sport.

And then it spread right across South America in the kind of 70s, 80s and 90s.

So it was very much a Latin sport.

And it's had this really interesting journey where it's been a big, big kind of Spanish-speaking sport, I suppose.

And then for one reason or another in the rest of the world, I suppose the English language world, it then took off during the 2010s.

During COVID, it became massive in European countries.

And it's spread kind of like wildfire across Europe, across the Middle East.

Parts of Asia are now adopting it.

Right.

And now North America.

So, you know, why has it been so popular in other countries and not the US? I suppose pickleball has kind of stolen its thunder of being the sport that people became addicted to.

Right.

But paddle is very much now at that stage.

You've got about here in the US, you've got about.

1,300, 1,400 courts.

I would say that's probably double of the year ago.

So we're at that point where it's growing rapidly now.

That's predicted there'll be kind of, you know, 10 million players in the U.S. in three, four years' time and 10,000 courts.

So we're at that, we're going to see a hockey stick growth with this sport in the space.

And it's a very exciting time to come and, you know, as my mission is to evangelize paddles and

To the low