Lukáš Brýdl: business dynasty heir builds padel courts in Czechia

Forty-year-old Lukáš Brýdl, who comes from a well-known Czech family of politicians and entrepreneurs, has decided to bet on padel, a sport whose popularity is surging — and together with his relatives he plans to cover the whole country with courts, from big cities down to small villages.

The Brýdl name is well known in eastern Czechia: his uncle Miroslav spent many years as mayor of Litomyšl and made his name through collaboration with architect Josef Pleskot, while his father Jiří ran Svitavy and sat in the Senate for the KDU-ČSL. His cousins Tomáš and Filip founded the company Story Design in the mid-1990s, specialising in building branded stores for banks and electronics retailers — they later sold it to the Austrian group Umdasch for hundreds of millions of crowns.

Lukáš himself and his brother Jakub stayed longest at Story Design in management roles: Jakub chaired the board until 2021, and Lukáš ran sales for another two years after that. It was through working with an Umdasch client — the Spanish car brand Cupra, which has long associated itself with padel — that Lukáš Brýdl first discovered the sport, about ten years ago.

The idea of turning the hobby into a business came from a friend and partner, Jakub Křivka, a developer with experience running a bowling alley and squash centre in Svitavy: at first they just wanted to build one court for themselves, but along the way they discovered how poorly organised the padel court construction market was in Czechia, and decided to fix that.

The partners set up supplies of ready-made court structures from manufacturers in Spain and the Baltic states, able to deliver premium-quality equipment within weeks, and also developed their own software for booking, equipment rental and accounting. The aesthetic side of the project — including players’ lounge areas — was handled by Lukáš’s brother Jakub through the company Capacity Expo, where he is an investor; the firm designs museum exhibitions, including projects for the National Museum, the Krkonoše National Park Museum and the Napoleon Museum in Slavkov, and also produces high-quality outdoor furnishings.