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The tournament, which debuted in 2024, features men’s and women’s players competing in teams for an equal prize fund of €1 million. (Credit: Hexagon Cup)
The Hexagon Cup padel tournament has been described as padel’s first World Cup for private teams.
The tournament, which began in 2024, features men’s and women’s players competing in teams for an equal prize fund of €1 million ($1.08 million).
The 2025 edition, set to take place from January 29 to February 2, will feature returning teams AD/vantage, co-owned by former tennis star Andy Murray and now British boxer Anthony Joshua, ElevenEleven, led by American actress Eva Longoria, and RL9, fronted by Polish soccer star Robert Lewandowski.
New entries this year, meanwhile, include Krü Padel by Taktika, supported by Argentine former and current soccer players Sergio Agüero and Lionel Messi, and 10 Padel, led by F1 driver Pierre Gasly.
Astrid Thams, commercial managing director of the Hexagon Cup, speaking to Sportcal (GlobalData Sport), explains the corporate changes that have been brought in for the second edition of the tournament.
Corporate Changes
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“From a corporate point of view this season we have invested big into the hospitality and corporate VIP side and everything related to general admission funds,” she states.
“So we’re going to be having branded corporate boxes this year that we have commercialized. This is different from last year when we had a VIP area, but we didn’t have these corporate boxes that we’ve sold out, which has been very interesting. They give you access as well to a corporate party networking event that we do outside.”
Additionally, each night of the cup, after the matches have been completed, there will be different theme parties with DJs, concerts, and food trucks, as part of an effort to combine sport and entertainment for an improved overall fan experience.
Famous team owners
In addition to combining sports and entertainment, the Hexagon Cup has identified other areas where it can find new fans for the nascent tournament.
The aforementioned famous team owners have been identified as a key way to do this.
Thams explains: “For us, our team owners are the main way of being able to enter into new markets. So our target is to be able to grow the sport of padel and to grow it outside of Spain or Argentina, which are the traditional markets.”
At the time of writing, the only player set to compete in the 2025 edition who is not Spanish or Argentinian is AD/vantage’s Sofia Araujo, who is Portuguese, with 10 Padel and Team Bella Puerto Rico fielding fully Spanish teams, and AD/vantage the only team that isn’t majority represented by Spanish players.
Thams explains how the Cup plans to address this: “Each of our owners come from an area from a different territory. So we have the UK team, which is Team AD/vantage, with Andy Murray and Anthony Joshua, Pierre Gasly, the Formula One driver, is representing our France team. And we have an LA team and Miami team to make sure that we are in the US market. So we choose owners from different parts of the world, so that later on, through them, we can expand in those markets.”
Thams also mentions that the team owners’ social media reach plays a large part in how they’re picked since this is a key marketing driver, with the final requirement being that team owners need to be active in padel in some fashion, but not necessarily at a professional level.
“They definitely need to be active in padel, in general, to make sure that through them, we will either develop courts or do the Pro-Am satellite events, so they don’t need to be very good padel players, but definitely active in the world of padel somehow,” she states.
Challenges and globalization
This is also being done to address one of padel’s main challenges, its relatively high user base, but its comparatively small professional talent pool.
According to the International Padel Federation (FIP), there are more than 25 million active players in more than 90 countries.
Thams says: “It’s important for everyone to understand that we’re currently the quickest growth sport, however, it’s mainly on the user side. So you have lots of new padel players, but on an amateur level.
“So for now, you still have mostly Spanish and Argentinian players playing, which means that the heroes or the people you can follow are not yet from most nationalities. And that is why the globalization of padel and these tournaments is so important, because to be able to get more money into the padel ecosystem, you need to have very successful players, and people following them.
“That will mean sponsors and money. To gain all this money ecosystem around sports, you need to have very well-known heroes. And it’s important that everyone can relate to them, which is why it’s important that they’re from different countries.”
The Hexagon Cup plans to address this via initiatives such as summer leagues and the setting up of padel clubs and academies globally to lay the foundation to produce future stars from a more diverse set of countries, which in turn will grow the sport, with the ultimate aim being to have padel eventually become an Olympic sport.
“We are now developing other projects such as entering into the amateur league world, which we will be announcing very soon, a big joint venture that we’re doing with another big padel company, where we’re going to be acquiring an existing amateur league and developing them worldwide,” Thams reveals.
“Through that project of amateur leagues, we will start targeting countries like the UK or other emerging countries.”
Sponsorship
In the meantime, the Hexagon Cup is having success with its sponsorship deals.
The competition has secured several sponsors for its second season, which included a renewed and expanded deal with French sports car manufacturer Alpine to become the title sponsor of the nascent competition.
A deal was also extended with padel court manufacturer Portico Sport, while new partnerships were agreed with Spanish department store chain El Corte Inglés, German sportswear heavyweight Adidas, Babolat, the French tennis equipment manufacturer, digital financial services company bunq, sports equipment company Slazenger, and Spanish fashion brand Scalpers and NH Hotels & Resorts.
“One of the successes we are seeing right now is that we’ve been able to renew with most of our sponsors from the first edition, and even expand some of them such as Alpine, who are going to be our title partner,” Thams outlines.
The competition will become the Alpine Hexagon Cup this year, with Alpine’s logo featured on the nets and sides of the main courts.
In addition to the cup’s successes with global brands, it has also made sure to grow its local Spanish portfolio.
“We’ve been able to grow in our sponsorship very early,” Thams explains. “We tripled already compared to last year. So that’s definitely one of the successes that we can see.
“And from a broadcast perspective, we’ve already been able to have a bigger broadcast distribution than we had last year, signing 35 broadcast deals compared to last year’s 28.
“It’s also worth mentioning that we’ve already tripled our ticketing sales, and we see good numbers from a commercial side for this year’s edition.
“Potentially next year we could move it to another territory, but currently we think that to have 50,000 viewers throughout our event in five days, this kind of fan base you normally find it more in a country like Spain.”
Broadcast
2025 has also seen the renewals of various broadcast deals for the cup, such as the renewals with UK commercial free-to-air broadcaster ITV and its global broadcast deal with major OTT platform DAZN, exposing the tournament to worldwide audiences.
The Hexagon Cup also recently secured a new domestic TV rights deal with GolStadium, the revived OTT streaming platform owned by Spanish sports agency Mediapro.
The long-dormant platform was resurrected by Mediapro in June 2024, and will now broadcast all matches from the tournament both live and delayed on-demand.
Since the last edition of the cup, live coverage has also expanded across Asia, including in China, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Broadcast deals are of course always vital to all sports, but with new tournaments, they serve as a vital tool to generate awareness, and this is even more significant in a relatively newer sport like padel.
While it was invented in Mexico in 1969, its world championship only began in 1992, in contrast to other sports such as soccer whose World Cup began in 1930, with the sport itself existing long before this date.
This makes broadcast deals vital to help grow the sport, a more important factor than generating revenue, for example.
“In terms of broadcast, our main target is to be able to increase awareness and breach padel, since it’s not yet a sport which has been historically broadcasted,” Thams says.
“So we definitely are not yet seeing broadcast as a revenue stream, but seeing it as a way of creating brand awareness for padel and brand awareness in general.
“We are keeping it open, so we don’t have to have any exclusive agreements. We try to go free to air access globally, that would be our main strategy and to be able to be live access to every match currently.”
According to the organizers, coverage for the upcoming second season is set to reach over 825 million households through an extensive global network of 38 broadcast partners having renewed key partnerships from the inaugural event and signing key new deals.
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