In this exclusive blog for The Padel Paper, Carlo Ferrara, Head of FIP’s Research & Data Analysis Department and founder of online padel observatory mrpadelpaddle.com, reveals the stats behind Italy’s flatlining growth, and explains what lessons the UK industry can learn.
Padel in Italy experienced a boom phase from 2019 to 2023, going from just over 1000 to almost 9000 courts. In 2024, there was a more moderate growth phase (just over 700 padel courts installed) while in the first 80 days of 2025, only 30-35 courts were built. This makes a national total, at the time of writing, of 9730 courts.
At the beginning of 2025, it was thought that Italy would break through the landmark of 10,000 courts, but if the current trend continues this will not be hit before the end of the year.
The causes of this reduced growth are several:
- Greater bureaucracy in building facilities (more stringent constraints and permits)
- Rising costs of facilities (both to build and to run a club, especially energy bills)
- The end of the ‘Covid effect’ (The demand for padel in 2020 and 2021 was partly inflated by the temporary closure of the other most popular amateur sports in Italy. Padel quickly became ‘cool’ and fashionable)
- The ubiquity in much of the Italian peninsula of clubs and facilities with padel courts
- Lack of planning in growing junior padel (the average age of padel players is high in Italy)
- The Jannick Sinner effect (a boom in young people wanting to emulate Italy’s world no.1 and opting to play tennis)
Let’s explore these in more depth:
There are areas in Italy, particularly regions such as Lazio (especially Rome), Sicily and Umbria (regions that have a very low ratio of court population) where it is now easy to book a court at any time. Two or three years ago you sometimes had to wait weeks before a court became available.
Clubs that offer outdoor-only courts or do not offer a quality service for players are in great difficulty, especially in the winter period. We have started to see some closures.
In these more distressed areas, court booking prices are coming down (especially for outdoor facilities) or many promotions are being offered. In other areas of Italy where padel has spread later, such as Lombardy and Piedmont, prices remain high for players.
Future prospects
According to industry experts, for Italian padel clubs to be sustainable they must be indoor or mostly indoor (to guarantee revenues 365 days a year), have a minimum of four courts in order to organise tournaments and therefore guarantee a good number of members, offer quality services (such as clubhouse, decent locker rooms, bar and restaurant, efficient secretariat) or high-tech services.
Other experts highlight the benefits of multi-sport clubs with different racket sports but also footsal, gyms, etc.
From my personal experiences as a manager of a padel club and a consultant for 10 years for stakeholders in the sport, and from my relationships with the best experts in the field in Spain and Italy, my advice is that if you decide to open a padel club (but also of other sports in general) the starting point is to have a business plan.
This plan should be made by experts and constitute a team of competent and professional people in the management of your club, without which even a club with important investments made and value-added services, risks not having a future after a few years.
Is Italy heading the same way as Sweden?
Within a very short period, Sweden amassed more than 5200 courts by 2022, with an even lower court-to-population ratio than Spain. Their padel industry has now been in a major crisis for more than two years.
The Swedish scene has been a real bubble, much stronger than Italy’s, where some investment funds who’ve become involved have had completely wrong business plans, not only in the medium to long term but also in the short term.
In Italy, there is now more of a consolidation phase, in precisely the same way as is being experienced in the Middle East. The rate of growth has slowed. If the situation does not change, it could be a problem…
What should growth in Britain look like?
The example for Britain to follow, in my opinion, is that of France.
While Italy has had much higher club and court increases than practitioner (player) growth, France has seen facilities and practitioners grow at more moderate rates for several years.
In 2016, there were more clubs in France than in Italy. Now in France, where several insiders are talking about a boom, we have recently exceeded 3,000 clubs, compared to almost 10,000 in Italy.
In France there has been no bubble but a healthy growth with rates that have steadily increased from year to year. I would not be surprised if in a year or two there will be more players in France than in Italy, but with half the total number of padel facilities.
Great Britain, but also the U.S. (where growth is partly restrained by the explosion of pickleball, a sport with much lower investment costs) or South Africa should avoid oversupply of facilities if there is no real demand, following the French (or previously Spanish) model, rather than the hasty over-supply we’ve seen in other countries.
