In Spain, the padel has clearly become one of the most popular sports. Tennis is now well behind both in terms of the number of licensees and in trend research on Google Trend.

For a country that counts and has counted so many tennis stars like Rafael Nadal, Carlos Moya, Sergi Bruguera, Alex Corretja, Alberto Berasategui, David Ferrer, Juan Carlos Ferrero and others, this is surprising. Yet the padel lives exceptional hours in Spain, they even exceed all forecasts.

The symbolic bar of 100.000 licensees in the viewfinder

The Spanish Federation of Padel (FEP) is in heaven. An exceptional end to the year with the long-awaited gift: historic and almost unexpected growth of the number of licensees in Spain. The other good news is that the outlook is very positive. The 100.000 redundant mark should be crossed fairly quickly.

The COVID conditions obviously help. We can see it clearly: non-collective sports which are practiced outdoors are on the rise. Tennis can also take advantage of this unfortunate windfall, but in reality the padel Still widening the gap with an advance of more than 15.000 licensees in 2021.

Remember that in 2008, we had 110.000 tennis licensees for 23.000 licensees padel. Another era!

For Romain Taupin, the expert in the economics of padel and founder of the site Padelonomics :

Le padel has “eaten up” tennis in recent years in Spain but the covid has allowed these two racquet sports to grow simultaneously.

The reason for me is simple: tennis and padel were sports allowed outdoors during confinement, which helped attract new customers.

Note that more than 55% of licensees “padel”Are over 39 years old in Spain (81% over 24). 34% of the total are women (compared to 15% in France).

tennis vs. padel spain 2021

The year of records in 2021

In Spain it was believed that the padel had reached a maximum. 2021 has proven otherwise. On Google, searches have increased by more than 25% in a single year, unprecedented!

Surprisingly, since 2014, the padel was stagnating. Until 2019, the number of searches was even on the decline, but COVID had an effect on the padel unbelievable !

On the other hand, we see that tennis remains in a delicate situation. Even if the Spanish Tennis Federation is seeing an increase in the number of licensees, it is clear that the general trend is not upward with regard to fans. Interest in this sport is clearly less compared to the padel.

 

(padel in blue, tennis in red)

tennis vs spain padel 2004 2021

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovers the padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since padel is part of his life. You often see him touring France going to cover the major events of padel French.

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