The review written by Sanchez-Alcaraz Martinez[1] provides us with information on the organization of the padel in the world. Two associations managed the old international circuit " Padel Pro Tour ”: the association of professional players of Padel (AJPP) and the Spanish Women's Association of Padel (AFEP). This shows the important place of Spain in the padel international.

However, this circuit took a different turn in 2012, as shown by padelmagazine[2], by becoming the " World Padel Tour (WPT), bringing together the men's and women's circuit, while in tennis for example, these two circuits are quite distinct with the ATP and the WTA. The old circuit, " Padel Pro Tour ”, offered only a few stages (competitions) outside the territory of Spain. Now, the WPT offers stages in 7 countries abroad: USA, Argentina, Portugal, France, Belgium, Sweden and United Kingdom. One of the main stages of the WPT was in 2017 in Buenos Aires, and brought together 20 people. The two best world pairs opposed it in the final by pocketing around 000 euros, which remains little against the world of tennis for example. Only the 20 best players in the world make a living from this sport. The others must have another job to be able to live. However, the endowments are gradually increasing. For example for this tournament in Buenos Aires, the endowments represented 000 euros in 20 and increased by 100% compared to the previous year.

This new circuit is very inspired by those of tennis, by offering roughly equivalent tournaments: “Futures”, “Challengers”, “Masters” tournaments referring to the end of year tournament with the 8 best doublets. A points system has also been put in place to develop the world ranking. It is also characterized by a large presence of Spaniards, Argentines and Brazilians. Based on the current official ranking found on the official WPT website[3], we can establish this distribution according to nationalities:

We can have through these two classifications a large presence of Spain and South America. Moreover, when we draw a graph by separating the countries of South America, Spain and the other nations, we obtain these two graphs:

We can therefore see the great predominance of Spain and South America. Spain is more represented among women (82% of Spaniards) than among men (57%), while South America is more represented among men (39%) than among women (12%) . We therefore wanted to compare these three “categories” men and women together:

Thus, men and women combined, Spain is represented by 69,5% of the players, 25,5% by South America and only 5% of the players are of another nationality.

Through these figures, we can clearly see the enormous domination of Spain and South America, countries in which the padel was born or so appeared many years ago.

To complete and understand these figures including Spain and Argentina, and why these two countries hold most of the best players in the world, we will rely on the article by VERGARA Fernando[1]. He highlights the domination of these two countries in the world of padel.

Today in Spain, the padel is the second most played sport with 5 million players. In Argentina, in the early 1990s, there were 4 million players. According to the International Federation of padel, today there would be 12 million players. A third of the players are in Spain, another third are most certainly in Argentina although this figure cannot be proven.

[1] VERGARA Fernando, “El padel, a particular fenomeno: del resurgimiento en la Argentina a segundo deporte mas practicado en Espana ”, La Nacion, Nov. 13 2017

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/2081712-el-padel-un-fenomeno-particular-del-resurgimiento-en-la-argentina-a-segundo-deporte-mas-practicado-en-espana/amp/2081712

[1] SANCHEZ-ALCARAZ MARTINEZ Bernardino Javier, “Historia del padel =History of Padel", Materials for the Historia del Deporte (11 number), 2013

https://www.upo.es/revistas/index.php/materiales_historia_deporte/article/view/800

[2] https://padelmagazine.fr/le-world-padel-tour-cest-quoi/The 10 / 06 / 2018.

[3] https://www.worldpadeltour.com/en/players/?ranking=todosThe 10 / 06 / 2018.

Pierre Lemonnier

Pierre studied STAPS, and validated a master's degree in sports management, after studying in Reims, Frankfurt and Lille. I discovered the padel in 2014 during my Erasmus year in Frankfurt thanks to a Spanish friend. Damn it is good padel !

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