In South Florida, new fitness trends tend to start small and then spread everywhere.
Zumba began here before turning into a global workout brand. Orange Theory built its studio model in the region before expanding worldwide. Barry’s – now headquartered in Miami – has become a regular stop for local founders and startup employees looking to squeeze in a workout between meetings.
Now another movement is taking shape, this time on glass courts instead of inside a studio.
Key Biscayne-based Racquet 360 just announced that it has raised $9 million from a mix of sports-focused investors, including Sunrise Padel Capital, Profluence Capital, and Taktika Equity. The startup, founded in 2023 by serial entrepreneur Emiliano Abramzon, is trying to build a full ecosystem around the sport of padel as it expands in the United States. (For the uninitiated: padel is a racquet sport that blends elements of tennis and squash.)
Why padel? For Abramzon, it was natural. “I’ve always been passionate about sports, and I wanted to try something different,” he said in an interview with Refresh Miami.
Abramzon previously co-founded Nearpod, the Dania Beach-based education technology company that sold to Renaissance Learning in 2021 for about $650 million. With Racquet 360, he said the goal was to combine several parts of the sport’s infrastructure into one platform.
The company now operates four core businesses: the National Padel League, an amateur team competition; RacquetX, a racquet sports festival held in Fort Lauderdale; Racket Central, its digital commerce platform; and Racket Social Club, which develops padel facilities. The idea is that, together, these individual businesses provide all the elements necessary to scale padel stateside.
“Each company is very different,” he said. “You have the e-commerce platform, where we add a lot of tools to improve the economics. The clubs are a brick-and-mortar industry, but there are a lot of tech-enabled tools behind them. And the trade show also uses technology to organize meetings and help people connect during the event.”
South Florida has become a natural testing ground for Abramzon’s vision. Our region is an early testing ground for new clubs, tournaments, and business models built around the sport. Developers have proposed unusual venues – including courts on top of parking garages in Miami Beach – and high-profile competitions like the Reserve Cup now offer prize pools of more than $1 million.
“Miami today is the absolute Mecca of padel in the U.S.,” Abramzon said. “I’d estimate that around 50 percent of the players in the country are here, and the concentration of clubs has no comparison.”
That momentum is part of the reason Racquet 360 believes the sport is about to expand nationally.
“Today it’s almost nonexistent in mainstream America,” Abramzon said. “But we expect padel to grow significantly in the U.S., and we want to be positioned to grow with the sport.”
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I am a Miami-based technology researcher and writer with a passion for sharing stories about the South Florida tech ecosystem. I particularly enjoy learning about GovTech startups, cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence, and innovators that leverage technology to transform society for the better. Always open for pitches via Twitter @rileywk or www.RileyKaminer.com.
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