We will try to see if the majority of practitioners in padel corresponds to tennis licensees. And if the profile of the practitioner of padel  has evolved and may vary depending on the types of padel.

As with all sports, the padel and its practitioners are not immutable over time. Center managers are the best placed to see the evolution of their clientele and therefore of practitioners. The percentage of tennis players in relation to all players in padel seems to be decreasing over the years. This new practice made a lot of talk about it in its beginnings in tennis clubs, but not that in all racquet sports centers in general. Athletes from tennis were the vast majority of the first to test this practice. But this practice began to evolve in a way of democratization. He is perhaps a little strong here to talk about democratization, because it still affects only a minority of the sports community in France.

In any case, its media exposure, which is still marginal, seems to attract new practitioners of padel, which are not necessarily from tennis. For example, sports centers, especially indoor ones, which basically offer another practice, will attract a different clientele. In private football centers, the main and basic clientele is obviously represented by football players, and the latter sometimes start to try their hand at playing football. padel. Seeing the grounds of padel initially challenged them, but also, when they do not manage to be 10 for a game of football, they turn to the padel which is less restrictive in terms of the number of partners.

As with many areas, word of mouth plays an important role. More and more people are aware of this activity. When we hear about padel, we immediately hear about a fun, friendly aspect, and this is necessarily positive to spread and encourage people to test.

This hypothesis is therefore not validated. We can think that in the very beginnings of padel in France, the latter mainly affected athletes from tennis. But the profile of the practitioners of any type of sport is not immutable over time, and after the interviews we have had, we can affirm that the padel does not primarily affect tennis players. All the people questioned were unanimous in saying that because of the accessibility of the padel, particularly technical compared to tennis, the padel is aimed at any type of athlete, and any type of profile, whether in relation to age, gender and social background.

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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