History of Padel in Italy

A late start

Padel was played in Italy from the early 1990s, but for most of its first two decades it stayed marginal — a handful of clubs, no meaningful competitive structure, and little visibility outside the places where it happened to exist. The sport that transformed Italian participation figures was essentially a phenomenon of the 2020s.

The federation decision

What separates Italy from most European markets is governance. Rather than leaving padel to a standalone body, the Federazione Italiana Tennis took the sport in and eventually renamed itself to reflect it. That gave padel immediate access to an established club network, an existing licence system, a competitive calendar and a national coaching structure. Courts could be added at clubs that already had members, staff and a bar, which lowered the cost of entry for operators and shortened the path from curiosity to organised competition for players.

Expansion

Growth from 2020 onward was steep and sustained. By the Rome Major in June 2025 Italy had 10,220 courts across 3,716 clubs, becoming the second country after Spain to pass ten thousand, with the total up 29% on 2022. Unlike several northern European markets, much of that build-out attached to existing sports facilities rather than to new standalone centres financed on the assumption of permanent demand growth.

The professional circuit

Italy became a fixture of the professional calendar as it grew. Rome hosts one of the sport's Major events, and the crowds it draws have made Italy one of the most important markets commercially as well as by participation. Italian players have converted that exposure into results more slowly than the court numbers might suggest, which is the normal lag between infrastructure and elite production.

Players and the pipeline

Italy's competitive development has run behind its infrastructure, which is the normal sequence: courts and participation arrive first, and players capable of competing internationally take a decade to emerge from them. Italian professionals now appear regularly in the main draws of international events, and the federation's absorption of padel means those players come through a licensed competitive system rather than from ad hoc club play. The women's game in particular has produced players who have established themselves on the international circuit.

What Italy borrowed from Spain

Much of the Italian coaching and competitive model was imported directly. Spanish coaches worked in Italian clubs during the expansion, Italian players trained in Spain, and the tactical vocabulary of the sport arrived largely intact rather than being rediscovered locally. That shortened the development curve considerably and is a large part of why Italian standards rose as quickly as Italian court numbers.

Where the sport stands

Italy is the clearest example of what happens when padel is grafted onto a functioning tennis federation instead of being built from nothing. Participation is broad, the club base is genuinely national rather than concentrated in a few cities, and the competitive structure that produces players is already in place. The open question is whether a market that grew this fast can absorb its own capacity, a question several northern European countries answered painfully.