Padel at Scale: How 35 Million Players Changed the Game

A Racket Business deep dive into the FIP WORLD PADEL REPORT 2025

That bold opening statistic anchors the central story of 2025: padel has moved — in just a few years — from being a niche pastime to a full-blown global racket-sport juggernaut. The report’s numbers are not just big; they reflect systemic growth across every dimension: infrastructure, federation membership, club formation, and participation.

The rapid upward trajectory defies the usual slow climb of traditional sports. Instead, padel’s growth curve now resembles that of a breakout tech startup – explosive, aggressive, and globally scaled.

Ground-Level Growth: Clubs, Courts and Federations

Infrastructure Explosion

• Global clubs rose by 16.1%; courts increased by 15.2% in 2025 alone.

• According to one estimation, the world now counts over 70,000 padel courts, spread across ~23,000 clubs globally.

• This buildup is all the more remarkable when compared to a decade ago: in 2018, the sport had only about 7,000 clubs and ~21,000 courts, concentrated mostly in its birthplace regions.

What was once the domain of a few dozen countries — primarily Spain, Argentina, and parts of Latin Europe — is now a truly global network. The expansion has been facilitated in part by the growing number of national padel federations affiliating with the global body.

Institutional Momentum: The Role of the Global Governing Body

The global boom in padel is not accidental — it’s being shaped and amplified deliberately by the sport’s governing structure. The International Padel Federation (FIP) plays a central role. Founded in 1991, by 2025 it has matured into a proactive global institution steering padel’s strategic growth.

According to the FIP’s own reporting, the 2025 edition of the World Padel Report — built on responses from national federations across all five continents — reflects the collective pulse of padel worldwide.

This centralisation matters: through FIP, the sport is standardised — rules, rankings, tournaments — enabling growth that is structured rather than chaotic. For example, the ranking system for 2025 preserves competitive integrity: players’ “best 22 results” on the global tour decide their standing.

From Niche to Mainstream: What’s Behind the Surge

Why has padel exploded so fast — and not only maintained that growth but accelerated? The report hints at several structural reasons:

• Accessibility & inclusivity: Padel is easier to pick up than many racket sports — less physically demanding, doubles format encourages social play, and clubs increasingly cater to a wide age range. External sources suggest this helped padel roughly double its participant base from ~15 million in 2017 to ~30 million by 2024.

• Global federation outreach & national support: As more countries affiliate with FIP, national federations mobilise infrastructure investment, club creation and promotional efforts — creating a virtuous cycle of supply and demand.

• Club model & commercial viability: For venue operators, padel represents an attractive opportunity: building a few padel courts can reach more players per square metre than a tennis court, making it an efficient business use. While the 2025 report summary doesn’t leak corporate numbers, the scale alone speaks volumes about padel becoming a commercial asset — not just a sport.

Competitive Layer: Consolidated Global Tour & Institutional Depth

It's not just amateurs and weekend players driving growth — padel’s competitive architecture is maturing. The FIP’s tour structure, including the Premier Padel Tour and the CUPRA FIP Tour, provides regular, structured opportunities for players worldwide. The 2025 global calendar runs from January to December.

The ranking system remains rigorous: players’ best 22 tournament results within the year define their standing — ensuring consistency and rewarding performance across geographies.

This global tour — unifying previously disparate regional competitions — gives padel a stability and professionalism more typical of established global sports like tennis, but on a steeper growth curve.

What’s (Likely) Next: Opportunities and Challenges

Based on the patterns in the report, here’s what appears to lie ahead for padel:

• Continued explosive growth: Given a 15–16% expansion in key infrastructure metrics in a single year, double-digit growth seems baked-in for at least the near future. The ripple effect of new clubs, new players, and new federations suggests we may be approaching a plateau — but that plateau may itself be enormous.

• Widening global footprint: As federations across continents deepen their presence, padel risks outgrowing its traditional European/Latin base. It could become truly global: something people play irrespective of background, culture or geography.

• Commercial and institutional professionalisation: With unified tours, rankings, regular events, and global federations, padel is rapidly morphing from casual social sport to a professional ecosystem. That opens doors to sponsorship, media rights, and greater capital investment.

• Sustainability — social and competitive: As the sport matures, the question becomes whether clubs, federations, and governing bodies can maintain quality, inclusivity, and stability — or whether rapid expansion will breed fragmentation, inequality between nations, and over-concentration in certain markets.

A New Chapter: What This Means for Clubs, Players — and the Future

For clubs and operators, the 2025 FIP report is a green light. Infrastructure investment seems not only justified — it may be overdue. Building courts, attracting federations, offering structured competitions — all align with a market that’s no longer in early days, but in full bloom.

For players — from weekend social gamers to aspiring pros — padel has become more accessible, consistent, and global than ever. The breadth of membership, clarity of ranking, and coherence of tour structure create real pathways for progression.

Institutionally, what was once a “boutique” racket sport is now a global movement. With federations spanning continents and millions playing worldwide, padel in 2025 doesn’t just look like a fad — it looks like the next big racket sport.

If padel really is doing what the report suggests, we may be witnessing a historic inflection point: a shift from tennis-adjacent niche to mainstream global sport — in real time.