At the same time as two operators collapsed, the city’s largest padel center opened in Turku.
Several padel halls have experienced a crash in just over a month. Padel Park, which ran hall operations in Turku, Naantali and Raisio, closed its doors this week.
PadelPark oy was filed for bankruptcy in mid-June.
Later this week, Padel Club Finland’s subsidiary Padel Turku oy was also filed for bankruptcy. It also closed the doors of its warehouse in Raisio Kuninkoja.
In both bankruptcy cases, the applicant was the debtor party.
Morning paper on the other hand, it was reported that PDL Center, which operated in Lempäälä Ideapark, closed its door in May, and Padel Tampere’s Nokian hall followed.
Did the bubble burst? Did the boom disappear?
At least the players in the industry still have enough to believe.
– I don’t think that padel will just become a quick phenomenon like squash that will disappear. It is here to stay, says one of the founders of Turku’s Boost Sports Club Kristian Vuorenvirta.
The chains fell off
The padel boom also hit Finns a couple of years ago. PDO
At the same time that two padel players in the Turku region went under, the city’s largest “padel hall” was built on the outskirts of the city center.
The plans of Vuorenvirta and his business partners changed quickly during the construction phase.
– As the name of the company (Åbo Padel oy) says, it was supposed to be a padel hall first. However, we noticed the market situation and the decline of the boom. That’s when we decided to turn the hall into a sports center. The gym was expanded, and padel’s share of the business is only about 40 percent or a little less.
Seated on the board of Padel Turku oy Calvin Andersson told To Turku Sanomatthat the city’s padel competition is tight and there were more courts than the population base.
Voorenvirta recognizes the problem.
– But bankruptcies heal the market, he says.
The padel hall of Kristoffer Strandberg (left), Casimir Linnaila, Paavo Koivisto and Kristian Vuorenvirta became a sports center. It opened its doors in June. Vesa-Matti Väära / KL
According to Vuorenvirta, there are still enough players, and there is a unifying factor in the background of the halls that have gone awry.
– There are also entrepreneur-led places in Turku, and they are doing just fine at the moment. Big chains, on the other hand, are in trouble.
– The same thing happened in Sweden: there was a padel boom and hall chains spread all over the place until they went bankrupt. The same is now happening with a delay in Finland.
In other words, the rush could bring down many padel halls.
– This is just my own analysis, but I think the concepts are better thought out in the entrepreneur-led halls.
– When the market suddenly grew, chaining happened very quickly, and the concepts had not been thought through to the very end.