On September 23, sports data technology company iGame Media announced it had secured exclusive authorization from Premier Padel: starting from the 2027 season, official data and low-latency live streams for over 2,400 matches across the tour's full year will be distributed uniformly by it to platforms in various regions. This is the first time padel has authorized its data rights as a whole to a single technology company; previously, padel had no systematic official data product.
Padel is currently the fastest-growing racket sport. According to official figures, global participants exceed 38 million. This year's Paris Major drew 81,000 spectators over one week, up from 64,000 last year; Pretoria and London, hosting for the first time, also broke attendance records.
The official reasoning is straightforward: padel is structurally similar to tennis — fast-paced, high in scoring points, and with a year-round calendar that never has gaps. Tennis supports one of the industry's largest real-time data businesses, and padel is seen as the next replicable example.
What's being delivered this time isn't just raw data: referee desk data, ultra-low-latency live streaming, scoreboards, and odds provider interfaces are packaged into a complete product. The tour has 26 stops across the year, covering Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa, with Buenos Aires, Rome, London, and Paris all on the 2027 calendar.
The supply landscape for sports content is shifting. Copyright prices for top-tier events have long been driven through the roof by major platforms, and new events are the remaining window. For teams working on sports platform solutions, when selecting options, list the data source details carefully: whether there's official authorization, how low the latency is, and whether it's exclusive distribution. Exclusivity means competitors wanting to carry the same event can't get around this supplier.
The threshold is also rising. Data supply is shifting from scraping and price comparison to official authorization plus live streams. Solution providers that haven't secured copyrights will see their content pools grow thinner and thinner. The proportion of data sources in standard platform solutions is worth recalculating.
Whether to include niche events depends first on where your users are. Padel's popularity is concentrated in Europe and Latin America; players in Southeast Asian markets may not buy in. Match content to the market, not to news hype — this holds true for any platform solution.