Decathlon has opened a first pro shop for padel, according to Diffusion Sport. It is a shop within a Decathlon store, and the location is, of course, Spain – Majadahonda, on the outskirts of Madrid, to be precise.
The pro shop covers about 100 square meters and carries more than 65 models of padel racquets, along with padel shoes, padel clothes and padel accessories.
In reporting this story, Diffusion Sport and TradeSport alike cite a statistic according to which there are more than a million padel players in Madrid. Whether this means the city proper or the metropolitan area is unclear. Suppose it means the latter. The metropolitan area has a population of about seven million, so one in seven Madrileños would be a padel player. If the former, the ratio would be even higher.
Spain is more than the top country for padel. According to padel.fyi, it is also one of the countries where padel players now outnumber tennis players (3.5m to 3.0m), along with Argentina (2.0m to 1.6m) and, by small margins, Sweden and Portugal. In Italy, tennis remains far ahead (0.5m to 2.0m).
