Autumn Adventures

“Berlin might be coming to Athens as well”

We’re now three weeks out from our next international Club match in Athens, with most of the logistics and bookings already sorted. Flights booked, accommodation organised, players assembled. So, unusually for us, there shouldn’t be any frantic last-minute logistics to deal with.

Then, slightly out of the blue, we get a message from a Club in Berlin. We get chatting about the growth of pickleball across Europe, different venues, the players coming into the sport and where things might go over the next couple of years.

As part of the conversation, we mention that we’d love to bring a Kensington team over to Berlin at some point in 2027. Their response? Why don’t Berlin come to Athens as well and turn the upcoming fixture into a three-way international match?

London. Athens. Berlin.

It’s still pending as we write this, so we won’t get too carried away just yet. But it does highlight something we’ve noticed increasingly over the past few months that word is getting out.

Pickleball is clearly gathering momentum across Europe. The UK has been moving particularly quickly, but more clubs, players and facilities are appearing across the continent. As that infrastructure develops, international club fixtures suddenly become much easier to organise.

And, frankly, we’re quite happy to volunteer ourselves for the difficult task of travelling around Europe to investigate.

As for Athens, keep an eye on our socials for team progress over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully there’ll be more playing action than beach lounging, although we should point out that rest and recovery are a crucial part of being a high-functioning athlete in 2026.

“HSBC are playing incredibly well”

That’s Tom, talking to Coach Nikki as they oversee one of the matches in our Corporate Finance League.

Season One is now well underway and, without wanting to get too carried away, it’s going down a storm.

Although Jon will claim the entire concept was his idea, I don’t mind giving him this one.

The premise was always pretty simple. Get teams from across financial services together for regular competitive pickleball, giving colleagues the chance to do something away from their desks while also meeting people from other firms.

There are plenty of corporate networking events in London. Most involve standing around with a drink trying to remember where you recognise someone from.

We thought adding paddles, a scoresheet and the possibility of losing to a rival firm might improve things.

And it has.

There’s been a proper competitive edge to the matches, but the social side has probably been just as important. The encouraging thing is that interest has already started coming in from outside financial services.

So Season Two is now in the works.

We’re looking to expand the league to include firms from law, property, consulting and other professional-services sectors, with the next competition starting at our new Parsons Green venue in January.

If your company wants to be involved, reach out to us. Ability is welcome but certainly not essential. Competitive spirit, however, appears to be compulsory.

“We only have XLs left”

A few months ago, I was somehow convinced to model our new cotton Club T-shirts.

It wasn’t a particularly difficult modelling brief. Put T-shirt on. Stand there. Try not to look uncomfortable.

Whether my involvement helped sales is highly debatable, but the important thing is that we’ve now sold through the mountain of shirts we ordered.

(Almost). We have XLs left.

So here’s a free piece of advice for anyone thinking about launching merchandise for a sports club: don’t order too many XL sports tops.

It sounds painfully obvious when you say it back.

Still, selling just under 100 shirts in three months has been brilliant, and we’re putting the money straight back into the next run of Club merchandise.

We’ve also been listening to what people actually want rather than relying exclusively on our apparently questionable forecasting abilities.

The most common request has been for proper performance tops rather than cotton shirts, so that was at the top of the agenda when we sat down with our designers last week.

We’re working through some new designs and different iterations now.

Sizing forecasts will be approached with considerably more scientific rigour this time.

“Hitting the first ball”

And finally, the big one.

Things continue to move forward at our new site in Parsons Green.

The prep flooring works are now underway. There is one final Council approval we’re working through. Once that’s secured, we’ll be able to put a firm date in the diary for the launch party, which we’re currently expecting to be around the start of December.

We revealed the full visual plans last month and the response was fantastic. There are also a couple of important partnerships we’ve been working on behind the scenes that we’ll hopefully be able to announce over the coming weeks.

For now, we’re resisting the temptation to reveal them early. Mostly.

The run-in to the end of the year promises to be considerably busier than normal. Athens. The Corporate League. New merchandise. New partnerships. And, all being well, opening the doors at Parsons Green.

Plenty to do.

Although if anyone needs an XL T-shirt, that’s one problem we can solve immediately.