[tabs type=”horizontal”][tabs_head][tab_title]Favien Bouttet[/tab_title][/tabs_head][tab]Favien Bouttet is an associate researcher in the “Sport and Social Sciences” team at the University of Strasbourg. He conducts research on the transformations of the sports world and is currently working on the diffusion of padel in France.[/tab][/tabs]

There are competition issues in padel. Padel is structured, but at the same time, the forms of structuring vary enormously depending on the type of investor. Whether private or public, whether tennis player or footballer, the investor creates very diverse padel offers.

The different padel offers

At the local level, the installation of padel courts in tennis clubs or in private commercial structures offering other activities such as futsal, but also the creation of private commercial structures offering only padel, generate the structuring of a padel supply space.

About tennis and working around the concept of sports space, Faure and Suaud explain that “Through their facilities of unequal quality (covered or uncovered grounds, made of different materials, etc.), the clubs of a given city or region constitute a tennis supply area in which each club occupies a particular position and within which competition is organized for access to gambling [5]. »

The situation of padel seems similar.

An original padel offer

In Rhône Alpes, for example, it is possible to see several tennis clubs installing courts and a private commercial structure opening in 2018 (a private commercial structure closed at the end of 2017). Once again, if there are competition issues, cooperation projects are also emerging between associative clubs with only outdoor padel courts and the private commercial structure with indoor courts. This relationship between competition and cooperation and between different types of structures thus makes the space of the padel offer original and interesting to study.

The transformation of the tennis area

This structuring of a padel space also results in a transformation of the tennis space, and more generally of the sports space. By taking up the words of Faure and Suaud, it is possible to see that tennis clubs investing in new equipment are moving within the tennis supply space.

Studying the diffusion and institutionalization of padel therefore means studying the transformation of the world of tennis. It also means studying the transformation of the sports world in a more global way. Padel is developing in market structures that are changing the space of supply of practices and is developing alongside other disciplines such as futsal.

In recent months, the Five/urban soccer channel has installed padel courts in some of these complexes, next to the futsal courts. These new facilities, in addition to the structures specific to padel and tennis clubs, thus produce a diversity of practice locations, associations between disciplines in the same place, and perhaps a diversity of relationships with the different disciplines among practitioners.

sources:

  • The full text is here: https://padel.hypotheses.org
  • [5] Faure, J.-M., Suaud, C., (1989), Sports area, social space and age effects [The spread of tennis, squash and golf in the Nantes area], Actes of social science research, 79, 2-20, p.4.
Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovered padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since then, padel has been part of his life. You often see him touring France to cover major French padel events.

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