VVV Sports: Backing the Racket-Sports Boom

Most ways to invest in padel and pickleball are private: club chains, equipment brands, booking apps, professional leagues. VVV is different. It is one of the first, and still one of the very few, listed companies built as a pure play on both sports, a rare first-mover on a theme most public investors simply cannot otherwise access.

The growth behind it is hard to overstate. Padel has tripled over the past decade to more than 35 million players across 130-plus countries, with a new club opening somewhere in the world roughly every two and a half hours, and 92% of players returning after their first game. Pickleball has grown around fivefold since 2020 and overtook tennis in US participation in 2025. Both are expanding many times faster than established sports, and getting in early, before the commercial scaffolding around these sports matures, is exactly the opportunity VVV is built to capture.

Building and running volume club estates is capital-intensive, and several markets have already seen court gluts. VVV has taken a different route, assembling a vertically integrated platform that spans the sport rather than betting on a chain of clubs. It owns event series (the FIP-sanctioned R3 Bullpadel Cup and Topseries Pickleball), manages athletes, holds exclusive Bullpadel equipment distribution across the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand through MRH Sport, a joint venture it half-owns, and runs a content studio.

The logic is that these divisions feed one another: events generate content and audiences, athletes and brands cross-promote, and a win in one area lifts the others. Most of it carries no heavy real estate, keeping the model capital-light and spreading bets across several revenue lines. The exception is a small number of flagship venues, led by the planned Abu Dhabi Centre of Excellence, pursued as landmark assets rather than a mass court roll-out. Whether the pieces connect in practice is still to be proven, but the design is a real differentiator.

Acquisitions are central to VVV's strategy. Alongside organic growth, it has expanded by buying: R3 Sport and the pickleball circuit Topseries, with management open about wanting more bolt-ons. In a young, fragmented industry full of small private operators, being a listed consolidator is a real advantage. It can use its shares as currency and fold promising assets into a single platform.

What makes that credible is a team combining serious financial experience with established connections across the sport. Founder Jonathan Rowland spent his career in banking and finance, co-founding challenger bank Redwood Bank, before starting padel business R3 Sport, which built Britain's richest tournament series and backs several GB number-one players. Non-executive chairman Nick Basing brings decades in leisure and racket sports, and the wider board and operating team add commercial, events and brand expertise. The plan is ambitious, stretching to a US launch and a future Nasdaq listing, and execution is unproven, but a clear consolidation strategy paired with a connected, sector-literate team is a genuine differentiator.

• Completing the fundraise: closing the ~£5m placing funds working capital and the US push; a shortfall or a token raise would set the plan back.
  
  

• Bullpadel USA launch: extending its exclusive Bullpadel distribution into the US, opening a large new market and a first taste of scaled commerce revenue.

• Securing a Hexagon league: buying into the celebrity-backed padel leagues (Murray, Nadal, Joshua and others) would raise the group's profile and event footprint.
  
  

• Step up to AIM, then Nasdaq: moving off Aquis widens the investor base and profile, though it brings more cost and scrutiny.

• Abu Dhabi Centre of Excellence: the flagship venue progressing from feasibility to a live, operating project.
  
  

• Optionality maturing: media (an Amazon docuseries), the VVV Sport Book betting platform, or bolt-on acquisitions turning into real revenue.

The group generated limited revenue in 2025 due to the recapilisation of VVV Resources in to VVV Sports Ltd and the acquisition of R3 Sport Ltd (revenue generating) and reported a £2.3m loss, driven mainly by an accounting entry for the debt for equity swap with Convertible loan notes from R8 Capital Investments Ltd. The accounts were signed on a going-concern basis that leans heavily on a post-period fundraise of around £5 million (with a minimum target near £2 million). The businesses it has since acquired, chiefly R3 Sport and the Bullpadel distribution arm, do generate some revenue, so 2026 should show the group's first reported sales, but the scale is modest and unproven at group level. If the upcoming raise falls short or investor appetite for micro-cap sports stories cools, the growth plan stalls. New shares and warrants would also dilute existing holders significantly.

The register and the decision-making are unusually concentrated around one family. Jonathan Rowland holds roughly 27% of the shares, and Campana Investments, controlled by his father David Rowland, around 28.5%, so the founder and his family together influence a majority of the company. That concentration runs into the business itself: the R3 acquisition was a related-party deal, with Rowland on both sides as seller and as chairman of the buyer, the deal was independently assessed and valued. There is also no separate audit committee, so oversight of the accounts sits with the directors as a whole rather than an independent body. On a small, illiquid listing, this combination of concentrated control and light independent oversight may be considered as a governance flag.

VVV is a buy-and-build story, and the buying has been rapid. R3 Sport was acquired only days before year-end in 2025, with Topseries Pickleball following soon after, and the group employed only a handful of people to run it all. Bolting several small, recently-acquired businesses into one platform, spanning events, distribution, media and venues across different countries, is hard, and the promised cross-division synergies are unproven. Layer on an expansive agenda, from a US launch to a £120m Abu Dhabi venue, a Nasdaq listing and a betting platform, and the execution demands on a company this size are considerable.