Padel in Campania: more than 100 thousand players, over 300 courts

This weekend, the prestigious CUPRA FIP padel tour will also stop in Italy, with the FIP Rise tournament in Nola, in the province of Naples. Italy, after Spain, is the second-largest country in the world for the number of international FIP tournaments it hosts: to date, it has 66, including six draws on the Premier Padel circuit (two men's draws in 2022, two combined draws in 2023 in Rome and Milan, with two more to be added in 2024 in Rome, Milan, and the new entry in Genoa) and 60 draws for both men and women on the CUPRA FIP Tour.

The FIP Rise di Nola will be the first international tournament to be held in the province of Naples and in the Campania region, the fifth region in Italy for facilities, with more than 250 clubs and accommodation facilities and 550 padel courts (of which more than 100 are indoors). In 2023, according to data from the FIP Research and Data Analysis Department, Campania recorded a 38% increase in courts compared to the previous year, higher than the national average of 26%. In Campania, there are 120 municipalities where padel can be practiced, with over 100.000 estimated amateur players and over 400.000 followers on social media.

Naples is the second Italian province by number of clubs (139) and has more than 300 padel courts, distributed in 47 municipalities, including Nola. The Naples stage of the CUPRA FIP Tour will be held at the Pala Padel, a new structure inaugurated in 2023 with four indoor courts equipped with regulation exits for international tournaments. Among the registered players there will also be the young Italians Flavio Abbate and Giulio Graziotti, the only Italian couple to have won two Rise tournaments of the CUPRA FIP Tour in 2024: in Kaunas in Lithuania and in London in the United Kingdom, both in March.