The growth of padel in Italy, the second country in Europe in terms of number of fields and practitioners, compared to the 2022 budget shows an increase in structures in the first nine months of 2023 (sports clubs, padel clubs, accommodation facilities) of 16%: from 2,792 to 3,250 plants. The trend – data source “Osservatorio sul Padel – Mr Padel Paddle” recently awarded at the Italian Padel Awards precisely for the work of the Observatory – tells of an increase in playing fields of 20% with 8,520 fields (+ 1,392) compared to 7,128 as of December 31st of last year. The regions with the highest number of camps and structures are always Lazio (1,855 camps and 559 structures) followed by Lombardy (1,149;373) and Sicily (802;309).
In Sardinia, however, the rate of growth in terms of padel facilities and fields is higher than the national average, a clear sign of how much this discipline is taking hold in the ‘Island of Sport’ also thanks to major sporting events such as the Fip Platinum Sardinia which, in addition to offering the great spectacle of the best players in the world, also triggers that ‘propagation’ effect which pushes the increase in the number of players and, consequently, structures. On the island which has decidedly focused on padel since 2020 in accordance with the FIP, there are 336 fields (of which 55 indoor) distributed across 144 facilities with an increase in clubs where you can play padel higher than the national average, as much as 23 % increase compared to 2022. The first province in the region is Sassari (65 clubs 154 fields) followed by Cagliari (47 clubs 125 fields). Nuoro has 17 fields on 10 clubs, Oristano 12 fields on 7 facilities and finally the part of Southern Sardinia with 28 fields on 15 clubs.
As new facilities are installed, the ratio of population numbers per individual field drops. In the first 9 months in Italy we went from one camp for every 8,468 inhabitants to 7,084.
In Lazio the ratio is 3,169 (close to the Spanish one, the reference benchmark, which is around 3,000), Umbria 3,432, Abruzzo 4,476 and in fourth place Sardinia 4,480, another result which indicates how the Island of Sport is increasingly an Island of Padel.