The B Side

Barcelona had a way of making padel feel both impossibly local and undeniably global. During Padel World Summit week, the city became less a destination than a meeting point. Club owners from Stockholm shared coffee with coaches from Buenos Aires. Investors drifted between exhibition stands while players stopped to greet people they had only ever known through WhatsApp groups or LinkedIn. Conversations moved effortlessly from court construction to community building, from software integrations to bandejas. Everyone arrived with a different agenda, but they left speaking the same language.

It was here, amid the organised chaos of the summit, that George Modler seemed entirely at home. He moved through the halls stopping every few metres, greeting club operators, founders, coaches and familiar faces from across the British game with the ease of someone who had become part of the furniture without ever trying to. In a sport still young enough that many of its key figures knew each other personally, Modler had become one of the connectors. Not because he was the loudest voice in the room, but because he had spent the past three years quietly creating the infrastructure that allowed everyone else to find one another. His journey, from launching one of Britain's early inter-university padel tournament series through Golden Point to co-founding The Padel Directory, had unfolded at remarkable speed.

Casually chatting with him before our interview, it struck me just how different this was from the first time we met. That was just before the inaugural Golden Point tournament, when British padel still felt wonderfully improvised. There was energy everywhere but very little structure. Clubs were opening faster than information could keep pace. Players discovered tournaments almost by accident. Businesses trying to enter the sport rarely knew who to speak to. George was still a university student then, organising events with the kind of enthusiasm that often came before experience caught up. Yet even during that first tournament there was something distinctive about the way he approached people. He seemed less interested in building a business than building relationships. Looking back now, it was already there in the way he worked.

Golden Point was never simply about hosting competitive tournaments, albeit a big factor. It became the place where conversations started. One of those conversations happened on a court in Bristol. It would matter more than most.

"I met Ben, my business partner, on court through an open game," George recalled. "We just started talking. It wasn't really like, 'I need to start a padel business.' It was more like, there's a problem here, let's try and solve it."

That problem would start a journey neither George nor Ben could've anticipated. While George had been building Golden Point, he kept running into the same obstacle. Finding sponsors was difficult. Finding clubs was difficult. Finding coaches, brands or reliable information required endless searching across disconnected websites and social media pages. Every conversation began from scratch because there was no single place where Britain's emerging padel community could find itself.

Ben Harris had arrived at exactly the same conclusion from a different direction. From the outset, The Padel Directory was never George's project with Ben joining later. It was a partnership born from that shared frustration and complementary experience. Harris brought years of sports business knowledge; George brought the perspective of someone discovering every friction point first hand while trying to grow the game. Their ambition was simple but surprisingly ambitious: connect everything.

As George put it, "When I was looking for sponsors or partners or clubs, I struggled to find information in one place. I played a game that afternoon with Ben Harris... and we spoke about the lack of connectedness." The answer, they believed, was not to compete with existing clubs or businesses but to bring padel together. That philosophy still defined everything they had built.

The obvious question, particularly from the outside, was why this happened in Bristol rather than London. It was easy to assume Britain's padel story revolved around the capital. Investment, media attention and many of the country's highest profile clubs naturally gravitated towards London. Yet Bristol offered something arguably more valuable during padel's formative years: proximity without distraction.

Bristol was a growing hub of padel activity, an ecosystem of ambitious coaches, entrepreneurs and operators experimenting with what British padel could become, with clubs across the South West beginning to flourish. It was large enough to create momentum but small enough that everyone knew everyone else. What better place, then, to try out the concept and see if it had the adaptability to grow. Instead of navigating corporate hierarchies, founders simply met each other on court.

Perhaps that explained why The Padel Directory felt less like a technology platform and more like an extension of the community itself. Its roots were never Silicon Valley. They were Saturday morning open games.

"We still hit the ball too hard."

Stood as we were in Barcelona, surrounded by many of the same people who were part of those early days, the continuity became obvious. The conversations that began in Bristol had simply become international.

George still carried himself much as he did at that first Golden Point tournament. There remained an understated quality to the way he worked, rarely seeking the spotlight despite increasingly finding himself in it. Yet the scale had changed dramatically. What began as solving practical problems for fellow players had evolved into helping shape the infrastructure of one of Britain's fastest growing sports.

If Barcelona offered a glimpse of where padel was then, George Modler was equally interested in where Britain sat within that story. For all the headlines surrounding new clubs, celebrity investors and sold out events, he believed British padel was only just beginning to discover what made it uniquely British.

The temptation, particularly in a young market, was to measure everything against Spain. It was the benchmark almost by default. The world's best players were Spanish or Argentine. The country's clubs had generations of history. Children grew up with a racket in their hand, learning the geometry of the glass almost before they understood tactics. Britain was different.

"We still hit the ball too hard," George said with a chuckle, not as criticism but as observation. It was a simple sentence that captured a much wider truth. Most British players arrived carrying habits from somewhere else. Tennis players instinctively looked for winners. Squash players attacked every loose ball. Badminton players favoured speed and sharp angles. They brought athleticism and competitive instincts, but they also brought games shaped by entirely different environments. Spanish players, by contrast, had simply grown up playing padel.

It was why George believed British padel was only then beginning to establish its own identity. As more juniors came through dedicated academies rather than crossing over from other racket sports, styles would evolve. Coaching philosophies would mature. Domestic competition would deepen. Britain would stop borrowing quite so heavily from elsewhere and begin developing its own way of playing.

That patience extended beyond the court. Despite the extraordinary growth figures that dominated conversations around the industry, George resisted the temptation to describe padel as having arrived. "We're still right at the beginning," he said.

The evidence, for him, came from everyday life rather than spreadsheets. "I'll get into an Uber now and the driver knows what padel is. Or you'll walk down the street with a padel bag and someone will stop you and ask about it." Small moments, perhaps, but revealing ones. A few years earlier those conversations simply did not happen. By then they occurred often enough to suggest awareness was moving beyond the relatively small community that built the sport during its infancy.

Recognition, however, was not saturation. For George, those passing conversations were encouraging precisely because they represented curiosity rather than completion. The public had started noticing padel. The challenge then was turning awareness into participation.

That opportunity had not gone unnoticed internationally. Over the past two years Britain had become one of the most attractive padel markets in Europe for brands, operators and investors looking beyond Spain and Portugal. International court manufacturers were expanding into the UK. Technology companies were tailoring products for British clubs. Overseas investors increasingly viewed Britain not as an emerging market but as one with genuine long term potential.

George understood why. Participation was rising rapidly, disposable income remained comparatively strong, and perhaps most importantly, the market was still far from mature. There were cities with populations capable of supporting multiple clubs that still had only a handful of courts. Demand continued to outstrip supply across large parts of the country. It created an environment where growth still felt possible.

The arrival of Premier Padel in London was another marker of that progress. Elite tournaments mattered, George believed, because they provided legitimacy. They introduced new audiences to the sport, attracted media attention and gave British players the chance to watch the world's best without travelling abroad.

Yet even then, he returned to the same principle. "Padel is very much a playing sport," he said. "People love playing more than anything." It was a subtle but important distinction. Many sports built their commercial success around spectators. Padel, at least in Britain, had developed in the opposite direction. Most people discovered it not through television coverage but because a friend invited them for a game. They became participants before they became fans.

That dynamic shaped almost every conversation around the industry's future. It also influenced George's perspective on one of padel's most debated subjects: court pricing. The discussion often centred on whether clubs charged too much compared with competitors nearby. George thought that comparison missed the point.

Instead, he believed padel should be measured alongside other leisure activities. A group splitting the cost of a court for ninety minutes compared favourably with many evenings out, cinema trips or other recreational pursuits. Viewed through that wider lens, the value proposition became much clearer. The challenge, he argued, was ensuring enough facilities existed to give players choice rather than simply driving prices down in isolation.

The conversation inevitably broadened beyond Britain. Earlier that year George had travelled extensively through Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, partly to experience new markets and partly because curiosity had always been one of the defining features of his approach to the sport. Everywhere he went, padel appeared to be accelerating.

One story from Kuala Lumpur had stayed with him. Courts were being booked almost instantly and, in some cases, reservation slots were being resold because demand was so high. "Padel over there is crazy right now," he said. The enthusiasm reminded him of Britain's early years, only compressed into an even shorter timeframe. Infrastructure struggled to keep pace with participation. Investors rushed to secure locations. Communities formed almost overnight.

Yet it was another country that George believed would ultimately define Asian padel. India. "The money that's being put into the sport over there is second to none on the continent." His prediction was not based on hype but on scale. Population, investment and sporting ambition combined to create an opportunity unlike anywhere else in Asia. Already, British players were travelling to India to train, compete and experience a market expanding at remarkable speed.

It reinforced something George had increasingly recognised through international travel. Padel's future would not belong to one country or even one continent. Spain might remain the spiritual home, but the next chapter was being written simultaneously across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and beyond.

Even so, The Padel Directory had no intention of chasing every opportunity that appeared on the horizon. Its focus remained firmly rooted in the UK. That clarity had become one of the company's greatest strengths. While international conversations continued to grow, George was careful not to lose sight of the original purpose that emerged from those early discussions in Bristol: helping people navigate British padel more easily.

Maintaining trust had been central to that mission. As the industry had expanded, so too had the commercial pressures. Clubs competed. Booking systems competed. Brands competed. Every business wanted visibility.

George had always believed The Padel Directory could only serve the sport effectively by standing above those rivalries. "You can't be biased towards one racket brand or one booking system or one club. You have to be neutral." It sounded straightforward. In practice, it was one of the hardest philosophies to maintain in a rapidly commercialising industry.

Yet neutrality had become one of the reasons operators, manufacturers, coaches and governing bodies alike continued to engage with the platform. They understood that its role was not to decide winners but to help the ecosystem function more effectively. In many ways, that philosophy reflected George himself.

Throughout our conversations over the years, from that first Golden Point tournament in Bristol to countless events since, he had remained remarkably consistent. The scale had changed dramatically. The audience had become international. The responsibilities had multiplied. The motivation had not.

Back at the Padel World Summit, that consistency was impossible to miss. Every few steps another conversation began. A club operator from Scandinavia. A British coach. An investor exploring the UK market. A familiar face from last year's event. The introductions blended into discussions about participation, facilities, technology and ideas before George moved on to the next handshake, the next conversation, the next connection.

Watching him then, it was difficult not to think back to that first Golden Point event where our paths crossed years earlier. Neither of us could have known quite where British padel was heading. Fewer still could have predicted that the university student organising tournaments in Bristol would become one of the people helping connect an entire industry.

George, characteristically, measured success rather differently. "As long as we've connected and promoted the sport and made it accessible for everyone, I'll be happy." It was a deceptively simple ambition. Yet perhaps it explained why his influence had grown so naturally. George Modler had never appeared interested in becoming the face of British padel. He had simply kept identifying problems, bringing the right people together and quietly helping solve them. In a sport built on partnerships, those qualities mattered more than most, and they were precisely why, as British padel entered its next chapter, he had become one of the people helping shape where it went next.