From aerospace engineering to 5 million views a month. 🎙️

In Episode 4 of the Alboran Social Club Podcast, @Outby3 (Alex Robinson) sits down with Gonzalo, better known as Padel Drive, to talk about the journey behind one of the biggest English-speaking padel content channels in the world.

Gonzalo takes us back to growing up in Madrid, moving to the UK to pursue a career in aerospace engineering and discovering a passion for padel coaching, before eventually making the huge decision to leave his engineering career behind and pursue Padel Drive full time.

We also discuss the incredible global reach of Padel Drive, what it’s like creating content watched millions of times every month, working with some of the biggest names in padel, and the relationship between Gonzalo and Tomas behind the scenes.

The conversation also gets into the more difficult side of building an audience, including racist comments, online criticism and the reaction to his appearance with Everything Padel.

Plus, we look at the wider state of padel in the UK, the cost of playing, junior development and why Gonzalo believes that, without significant change, the UK may struggle to produce a truly world-class professional player.

A conversation about padel, content creation, coaching, taking risks and turning a passion into a career.

Subscribe to Alboran Social Club for more conversations from across the world of padel.

We recorded this from the inaugural Premier Padel P1 event in london in August.

We tried to cover as much as we could and on this podcast we actually took a different approach and had Andy be interviewed by Alex.

We talk all things about the event which was filmed just off the side courts in the venue.

Did we guess the winners right, listen now to find out.

🎙️ ALBORAN SOCIAL CLUB PODCAST | Episode 2: Jethro Binns | Live on court at Padel4All Lockleaze, Bristol

Welcome to episode two of the Alborán Social Club podcast, filmed on court at Padel4All in Lockleaze, Bristol. This month we're joined by Jethro Binns, co-founder of Padel Levels, for a deep dive into one of the biggest questions in UK padel right now: do we have a levels and ratings problem?

Jethro's path into padel is anything but conventional, a former professional squash player (peaked at #86 in the world), he built Squash Levels into the trusted global rating system for squash before bringing that experience into padel via Level Tech and Padel Levels. We talk about:

His transition from squash to padel (including ripping a nail off on his first session)
Why the Padel World Summit in Barcelona matters, and what changed between his first and second year attending
The "27% worse" article that crystallised the problem with existing rating scales
Why he sees Playtomic, PadelMates and Nettla as booking platforms with ratings "bolted on," not real ratings platforms
How Padel Levels' algorithm compares actual results to expected outcomes rather than just rewarding wins
The unique challenges of rating a doubles sport, cold starts, and messy match data
The story behind Level Tech's £360k Innovate UK grant (a ~1.5% success rate program)
Ongoing conversations with the LTA and FIP about becoming an official national/global rating standard
Where AI and camera tracking could take padel ratings next

Find Padel Levels at padellevels.io, and follow them on Instagram and LinkedIn.

#padel #JethroBinns #PadelLevels #AlboranSocialClub #PadelBusiness #barcelona #podcast #sportsbusiness #padelcommunity