Powerleague does padel

Originally founded in 1987, Powerleague are one of the world’s leading providers of small-sided football. Boasting 42 clubs and over 350 leagues across the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands, they are a household name within the football community.

Whilst football will always be at the heart of Powerleague’s offer, their core belief as a business is in the power of team sports to transform the health and fitness of people across the country. With this in mind they are always looking to diversify and enhance their offer through innovative, best in class facilities and exciting new sports.

With padel tennis being the fastest growing racket sport in the world – Powerleague saw an opportunity to introduce something new to a few of their flagship venues. Played in fours, highly addictive and a great mix of action and socialising, padel perfectly aligns with Powerleague’s values, so they asked us to help them create a launch campaign for their new venture.

Whilst there is clear crossover with their existing audience, Powerleague saw padel as an opportunity to widen their reach and introduce new people to their brand. They wanted a campaign that would engage their members whilst also attracting new audiences. They also felt it was important that the campaign helped democratise padel and introduce new people to the sport, as although its popularity is huge across Europe and growing quickly in the UK, it’s still a fairly new concept to many people.  

To help deliver on this we developed the campaign idea of ‘A different ball game’. This worked to effectively engage new and existing audiences with the concept of padel, whilst also cheekily acknowledging the fact that historically, Powerleague have been synonymous with football.  

To support our campaign idea we developed a series of messaging that can flex to target different audiences. Certain messages are designed to engage existing members by drawing fun parallels between football and padel, whilst other messaging is intended to communicate the benefits of padel to a broader audience.

Visually the campaign is inspired by the existing Powerleague look and feel which makes use of various textures and torn motifs that match the urban feel of many of the brands venues. We embraced this by using the tears as a way to illustrate the narrative of a new direction for Powerleague. We also selected a couple of new colours inspired by the courts and the balls and a now font to compliment the existing brand font, adding pace to our messaging and designs. 

The overall campaign sits neatly as an extension of Powerleague’s core brand with its playful, authentic feel. It has been pushed across a sponsored social campaign and also applied physically to billboards and hoardings in London’s Shoreditch and Birmingham’s Digbeth – so if you live near either of these areas and fancy a game, keep your eyes peeled!